christina ljungberg

The insistent interrogations by digital artists of the fluid spaces that have been created by new and sophisticated technologies do not only concern novel kinds of spatial awareness. They even more specifically attempt to map the new forms of human positions and positioning produced by our active and continuous interchanges in real-time, which implies nothing less than new modes of subjectivity. Although maps have to some extent always fulfilled these functions, what is different today are the technologies at our disposal which not only generate new dynamic spaces but also demand the development of new mapping strategies allowing for both improvisational and subjective positioning in constant negotiations for space. I would go even further and suggest that the works by these artists imply that the subject-object framework be relinquished for that of an implicated agent and an expansive field in which the agency of any identifiable presence is intertwined with other agencies. This pr...

Laure Prouvost’s multimedia art uses storytelling, quick cuts, montage and surround sound to evoke softness, gentleness, smell and pain. Simultaneously operating on four different levels – textual, sound track, voice track and image – her videos play with filmic conventions, forcing her viewers to consider how they perceive space, sound and text. Whereas her deliberate misspellings question our relationship with language, her laconic commentary anticipates our consumption of her work, making it both rhetorically and sensorially seductive. The sensorial effectiveness thus created by Prouvost’s use of medial artifacts and language in Swallow (2013) and Wantee (2013) blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, redefines cultural memory and perception and, in so doing, addresses fundamental issues of poetics and aesthetics.

Laurie Anderson's versions of Massenet / Corneille, Melville's Moby Dick, and Doblin / Fassbinder Laurie Anderson’s performances sample elements from various components of cultural performance such as theater, ritual, dance, music, popular entertainment and sport (!), which she meshes with autobiographical references, everyday life events and media culture. This also includes the ancient art of story telling and works of literature, which she brilliantly adapts, transforms and reconfigures in order to build into her intelligent and idiosyncratic performance art. How can we account for these pre-texts and how important are they for an understanding of Anderson’s multimedia performances which thus concern adapting a highly complex intersection of narrative, visual, musical and gestural ‘pre-texts’ mediated by new technologies and the performing arts? Such an undertaking would seem to call for a theorizing the performative effect of the intermedial processes involved in adaptat...

I argue that the use of photography in postmodern and postcolonial fiction functions firstly, by providing a powerful strategy for drawing attention to the creative and subjective ways in which both verbal and visual images are produced and presented and, secondly, by validating a verbal narrative’s exploration of events as well as supplying a special access to events and experiences that may have been forgotten or unknown. Photography emerges as a unique vehicle for moving between past and present and for thinking photographically as the image of a fleeting moment in time and space is allowed to dissolve into a multitude of possible takes, conflating various<br />viewpoints and space-times of the past, present and future.

Intermediality concerns either the transgression of the boundaries between conventionally distinct media or the iconic enactment of one medium within another. How does this function in such a complex multimedia work as Prospero’s Books , Peter Greenaway’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest , which not only comments on other media but also addresses all other adaptations of Shakespeare’s play? How is the figure of dislocation – shipwrecks, loss of home and culture, the disorientation generated by Prospero’s masques – translated into Greenaway’s postmodern adaptation? To what degree does adaptation itself involve dislocation as Shakespeare’s figuration of dislocation resonates throughout Greenaway’s multimedia reworking of this text into contemporary sensibilities? Not only does the film self-reflexively perform the very process of adaptation but by ‘destructuring’ – or dislocating – the text into images, it also creates a visual vocabulary articulating a new order of reading and suggesting a new visual literacy.

Intermedial interaction among various media or sign systems has always existed in most cultures, but since performance art is a relatively new phenomenon,this chapter focuses on the relationship between intermediality and performance art. With the increasingly frequent use of sophisticated digital technologies in multimedia performance, the question regarding what happens when several media interact in performance art has become a pressing one. What is the relationship between intermediality, performance and performativity in multimedia art forms? How does the sense of openness and of unravelling of the source or pre-text translate into the intermedial adaptation that a performance involves? This chapter discusses issues of semiotics, performativity and self-reference in relation to intermediality. For its application of these theoretical concerns, it will use Laurie Anderson, the American performance artist, whose large and complex multimedia productions have not only revolutionised the art form, but also offer interesting insights into the adaptation of the intersection of narrative, visual, musical and gestural source texts mediated by new technologies and the performing arts. In particular, Anderson’s performance “O Superman” from her groundbreaking performance United States (1980) will allow us to discuss the close relationship between intermediality and performance art. Key Terms: Intermediality, performance art, performativity, self-reference, self-reflexivity,multimedia, Laurie Anderson

According to C. S. Peirce, resemblance or similarity is the basis for the relationship of iconic signs to their dynamical objects. But what is the basis of resemblance or similarity itself and how is the phenomenon of iconicity generated? How does it function in cultural practices and processes by which various forms of signs are generated (say, for example, the cartographical procedures by which maps are drawn, more generally, the diagrammatic ones by which networks of relationships are iconically represented)? To what extent are they themselves performances (maps are always both the result of mappings and the impetus for re-mappings)? With examples from texts by Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald and Reif Larsen, I will argue that literary texts provide us with unique resources for exploring, among other matters, the performative dimension of iconicity in the complex interaction among icon, index and metaphor as a prerequisite for semiosis, the generation of signs.

The work of French artist Laure Prouvost involves and integrates viewers into a physical situation by using storytelling, quick cuts, montage and compelling surround sound to evoke softness, gentleness, smell and pain. Simultaneously operating on four different levels – textual, sound track, voice track and image – her videos play with filmic conventions to put her audience on the spot, forcing her viewers to consider how they perceive space, sound and text. Whereas her deliberate misspellings on the text slides – white text on black background – question our relationship with language, her use of a laconic commentary anticipates our consumption of her work, making it rhetorically as well as sensorially seductive, at the same time as it infiltrates the viewer's mind with clashing images. This contribution will discuss the intersemiotic processes in Prouvost's multimedia art, in particular Swallow (2013) and Wantee (2013), to see how she uses medial artifacts and language to achieve such sensorial effectiveness which not only blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction but also redefines cultural memory and perception and, in so doing, addresses fundamental issues of poetics and aesthetics.

Palindromes are chiastic figurations that arrest the habitual tempo-linear sequence of language And, in so doing, focus attention on the very act of signification. In narrative, they often prove pivotal for the overall structure of the text, going far beyond mere wordplay or verbal virtuosity. Because they can be read both backwards and forwards, palindromes emerge as multilayered, multidirectional, and polytemporal mapping reflecting the notorious instability of human lives, where the ever shifting present oscillates between the past and the future. In contemporary fiction, such palindromic vacillation becomes an iconic representation of temporal shifting, allowing us to discern the texture of temporality, not as abstractly conceived but as concretely lived and hece as innovatively performing an unstable present.

... All maps reflect choice: choice of scale, projection, orientation, and symbolization, as well as of key, color, title, and caption, which will ... Juan de la Cosa (c. 1500), one of Christopher Co-lumbus's companions, whose map was the first to show the 'discovery' of the New World ...

The practices and processes by which various forms of signs are generated, for example, the cartographical procedure by which maps are drawn, more generally, the diagrammatic ones by which networks of relationships are iconically represented, are themselves performances (maps are always both the result of mappings and the impetus for re-mappings).  Literary texts provide us with unique resources for exploring, among other matters, the performative dimensions of these complex procedures, turning them into stages on which subjectivity is played out. Looking at texts by John Banville (The Sea), Carole Shields (Larry’s Party) and Michael Ondaatje (In the Skin of a Lion), I will argue that diagrammatic figurations in narrative texts involve not only performance and performativity but also strongly enhance the complex interaction between narrativity and visuality as they transform the text into a stage on which textual activity is performed, 1) as a dramatic dialogue between writer, text and reader and 2) in the dramatic and visual positionings of agents within the text itself. Three kinds of textual performance of subjectivity can be discerned in the diagrammatic figurations in these three novels: on the diegetic level, as the subjectivity performed by the characters and especially the narrators as instances of performativity that is established and maintained in relation to both author and reader; on the level of the author, whose subjectivity is textually performed as self-expression; finally, on the level of reception, as the subjectivity of the reader is itself established performatively in the act of reading.

How do readers make sense of a picture, a photograph, or a map in literary narratives in which visual signs play a critical role? How do authors accomplish their various objectives in constructing such complex texts? What strategies and techniques do they use to project fictional worlds and to provide their readers with the means for orienting themselves there? This book investigates the dynamics of the imaginary diagrams created by cartographers, photographers, and writers of narratives, giving ample evidence of how mapping practices have inspired the imagination of a vast number of authors from Thomas More up to contemporary writers. A special focus is on the effects created by the projection of photographs into the narrative space, and how our seemingly effortless interpretation of photographs and even maps masks complex cognitive processes. The theoretical horizon of this study encompasses the fields of cartography, mental maps, iconicity research, and the spatial turn in cultural studies.

Abstract. ‘Wilderness’ is a concept which has undergone a radical change in recent years. Owing to the scale of global destruction of the natural environment and, hence, of the wilderness and its various ecosystems, the idea of wilderness has been transformed from its original negative sense as an Other into a matter of public concern. A growing awareness of the irreversible implications of the destruction of natural spaces has shaped a new sensibility for our dependency on nature; it has also replaced the understanding of ‘wilderness’ not only as a place but as a category closely linked with the development of human culture and whose ecological sign processes need to be carefully interpreted. As the result of human practice and representation, nature is thus also political.  Models and concepts of nature in the creative arts can hence be said to be indicative of a certain culture’s relationship with nature, as they communicate prevailing ideologies. This is particularly pertinent to concepts of nature in Canada where wilderness includes vast tracts of forests, lakes and an Arctic North, which has led to a distinctively Canadian relationship between Canadians and their natural environment. The change in the literary representations of interactions between humankind and environment in Canadian fiction - from the ‘double vision’ resulting from the view of the wilderness both as a threatening Other and free space; to the view of threatened nature as a means of identification; and, finally, as a postmodern place of transgression and possibility - invites questions about both the semiotic threshold between nature and culture, and about the function of boundaries in the constitution of identity.

Intermedial interaction among various media or sign systems has always existed in most cultures, but since performance art is a relatively new phenomenon, this chapter focuses on the relationship between intermediality and performance art. With the increasingly frequent use of sophisticated digital technologies in multimedia performance, the relationship between intermediality and performance art has moved into sharp focus. What happens when several media interact in performance art? What is the relationship between intermediality, performance and performativity in multimedia art forms? How does the sense of openness and of unraveling of the source or pre-text translate into the intermedial adaptation that a performance involves? This chapter discusses issues of semiotics, performativity and self-reference in relationship to intermediality. For its application of these theoretical concerns, it will use Laurie Anderson, the American performance artist, whose large and complex multimedia productions have not only revolutionized the art form but which also offer interesting insights into the adaptation of the intersection of narrative, visual, musical and gestural source texts mediated by new technologies and the performing arts.
Intermedial interaction among various media or sign systems has always existed in most cultures, but since performance art is a relatively new phenomenon, this chapter focuses on the relationship between intermediality and performance art. With the increasingly frequent use of sophisticated digital technologies in multimedia performance, the relationship between intermediality and performance art has moved into sharp focus. What happens when several media interact in performance art? What is the relationship between intermediality, performance and performativity in multimedia art forms? How does the sense of openness and of unraveling of the source or pre-text translate into the intermedial adaptation that a performance involves? This chapter discusses issues of semiotics, performativity and self-reference in relationship to intermediality. For its application of these theoretical concerns, it will use Laurie Anderson, the American performance artist, whose large and complex multimedia productions have not only revolutionized the art form but which also offer interesting insights into the adaptation of the intersection of narrative, visual, musical and gestural source texts mediated by new technologies and the performing arts.
Keywords: intermediality, performance art, performativity, self-reference, self-reflexivity, multimedia, Laurie Anderson

... of photography Piotr Sadowski Unbinding the text: Intermedial iconicity in Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books Christina Ljungberg Argumentative ... Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa ...

... Iconicity and historical change Iconicity and etymology 243 Anatoly Liberman Iconicity typological and theological: JG Hamann and James Joyce 259 ... and The Swiss Academy for the Humanities (SAGW), and the editors wish to thank Kees Vaes and Martine van Marsbergen at ...

... Ljungberg Part III Structural iconicity The iconicity of Afrikaans reduplication 203 C. Jac Conradie ... Harm Creative syntax: Iconic principles within the symbolic 243 Beate Hampe and Doris ... greatly from the competent and enthusiastic assistance given by Dr. Eva-Maria Orth and ...

... Similarly, although Maria, Daisy's father's second wife, is said to have a disfiguring scar on the left ... And then, if you study the picture, you begin to realize that all these men are the ... 142 Christina Ljungberg Figure 2. Trick photograph cover, The Invention of Solitude (Auster 1982). ...