Installation art has been critically interpreted with reference to themes or situations, the transgressive nature of this art form, place and space, material, or immersion and embodied perception. To a lesser degree, installation art’s narrative possibilities have also been explored. However, the centrality of
Installation art refers to a practice of art making or to a genre in contemporary art. This difficult-to-define art form had risen to prominence during the 1970s (Bishop
Extant scholarly texts do not engage extensively with the narrative possibilities of installation art, although most mention these aspects in passing, and acknowledge that installation art is often narrative in nature. This art form therefore warrants more focused narratological consideration.
This article is situated in the sphere of intermedial studies, a sub-field of postclassical narratology.
However, relatively little attention has been directed towards how narration works in installation art. An exception is the Dutch scholar Mieke Bal who has produced a number of groundbreaking studies of this art genre (refer to footnote 5). One of her central concerns is: ‘how can visual works of art … [
With this article, I set out to participate in broadening the field of inter-medial postclassical narratology. Specifically, I show how the interpretative possibilities of narration in certain types of installation art can expand by using character as a narratological tool, thus contributing to the narratological toolbox as it applies to installation art. Conceptualising the viewer of the artwork not only as a viewer but also as a participant – and then as a participant who is also a
Here, I should perhaps make it very clear to the reader that I am not unaware of the dangers or problems associated with subjectivism. I also realise that many of the works of Van der Merwe are self-referential, and if a spectator is, say, given prior warning of the artist’s initial intentions, it will obviously affect the way a particular work is received. Here I should also speak briefly about reception theory.
Reception is a spectator-centred concept, defined as the meaning or significance that a spectator as
Obviously, the ways of receiving are as varied as any communication can be. The recipient can accept, alter, confirm, deny, emphasise, repress and reject the concepts proffered by the art work. Providing novel (unexpected or unplanned) meanings to accessible information, reception will always alter its source in a variety of ways. Here, it might be considered that the most tyrannical way to receive is to erase. Thus, reception is subjective and has to do with individual and personal selection or projection.
It must also be understood that, unapologetically, Van der Merwe intends his installations for people who are sighted and who are fairly mobile. It would be difficult for, say, a no light perception blindness (NLP) person to fully experience a Van der Merwe installation. However, deaf persons should have little problem. Similarly, wheelchair-bound spectators would not be able to successfully navigate certain pieces, including
Narratologically speaking, installation art can be explored from various angles, such as author and implied author (or artist and implied artist), space and time, and others. In this article, my emphasis is on the role of character in narration. To facilitate a methodologically sequential discussion, I refer to: (1) storyworld, (2) character and (3) narration in installation art. Then I follow (4) focalisation as the means through which these dimensions are bound together and, finally, (5) a definition of the story or fabula in this context. In brief, when approaching the work, therefore, the viewer enters the work (it becomes a storyworld) and this allows for the transformation of the viewer into participant-character. Then, by means of focalised narration a fabula can be constructed. The order in which the terminology is presented here also informs the interpretation of the artwork in order to render my method repeatable for interpreting various instances of installation art.
Narratologically speaking, the storyworld is an artifice, a construction. It is a fictional space – usually a mental space that exists in the imagination of the reader of a literary text. However, a storyworld can also be a digital space (in computer games) or a physical space – as, I argue, it is in installation art. Here, I am perfectly aware that different levels of immersion are possible. I obviously acknowledge that in terms of specific, individuated experience, different people will interact with this installation piece in different ways. Here such factors as race, gender, age, cultural identification and disablement will each affect the specifics of an individual’s interpretation. However, what I attempt here is to produce a workable
Character
The topology of postmodern characters as proposed by Fokkema (
Fokkema (
Some overlap may exist between the ontological dimensions of characters in the ‘real’ world and characters in the fictional world of the text. A character in a written text may be metafictionally aware of his or her status as a character and may, to complicate matters, cross boundaries between fictional worlds or pretend to cross boundaries between fiction and reality (McHale
The absent characters that are inferred by Van der Merwe’s works, as in many installation artworks, also inhabit ambiguous ontological ground (Fokkema’s term
Character has conventionally been regarded as a fairly closed entity whereas humans are open and unresolved. However, in postmodern fiction, the borderline between fiction and reality, possibly precarious at best, is often self-consciously erased or problematised. Characters may also be partly or entirely constituted by intertexts, a notion that challenges the boundaries between textual constellations. Paratextual elements (titles and preface-like statements, as well as anecdotal evidence – see Genette
Characters may also have multiple selves, or at least a fragmented self, that suggest a search for identity (Fokkema
Finally, in the fifth instance, postmodern characters are selves in search of others. The many selves, or diverse aspects of the self, and the lack of coherent boundaries between selves and others culminate in a state that is not either/or but rather either/and (cf. Fokkema
The term
Like character, the narrative of a text or artwork is imaginatively actualised in the mind of the reader – here, I argue, in the mind of the participant-character. The fabula therefore refers to the story that emerges, or rather the possible version(s) of the story that come(s) into being through the participant-character’s engagement with the work. A fabula has been defined as a chronologically ordered sequence of events; it is (re)constructed by the perceiver (the reader of a text or the interpreter of a visual artwork) in response to a representation (see Chatman
Therefore, not only in installation art but also in fiction, the fabula is an abstraction (see Eco
To demonstrate how a narratological interpretation with emphasis on character can illuminate interpretative possibilities, I present a narratological interpretation of Jan van der Merwe’s work
Thus, with these provisos in place, ‘I’ begin with a description of a typical individual, entering the work – the storyworld – using a free-flowing approach that draws on Bal’s (
Once ‘I’ begin to reflect on this description, it becomes possible to trace the processes through which ‘I’ become a character. From here, ‘my’ focalisation guides the possible processes that drive the narration. This allows ‘me’ to trace the way in which this type of focalised narration allows for a new approach towards the construction of character and the fabula.
Before describing the work, I will briefly introduce the artist Jan van der Merwe and then proceed to describe the artwork-as-storyworld in subjective terms as ‘I’ experienced it. Finally, I will offer some interpretative insights on character, narration and focalisation as these contribute towards constructing thematised fabulae in the context of the work.
Jan van der Merwe is a South African installation artist. His works typically feature life-size interiors clad or created with or in rusted cans.
Van der Merwe’s
Van der Merwe’s
Van der Merwe’s
Projected image of rain on window in Van der Merwe’s
There is a cubicle in the gallery, only large enough to accommodate one or two persons (
‘My’ presence in the artwork initially seems almost invasive: ‘I’ am looking at someone else’s ordinary, intimate things in a space that is not ‘my own’. But yet, ‘I’ am inside, and strangely engulfed. The space is someone else’s, but in another sense it accommodates ‘me’. It is familiar enough to be ‘
In the work, ‘I’ notice movement in a monitor positioned inside the sink. ‘I’ see hands moving around in a perpetual circular motion – they are scrubbing a saucepan, continuously, over and over:
Whose hands are they?
A washing-up area is viewed by many people, perhaps automatically, as a woman’s place?
Certainly the hands belong to a female, and because the space is so intimate, so nostalgic, so
All possibilities exist here. Perhaps it is meant to be the artist’s grandmother?
He could have made this for her, and so it’s a place of memory?
Also there are other possibilities. For example, ‘I’ (at this early stage) see the hands as most likely those of a European woman. Thus, as a small example of the significance which a spectator as
Therefore, there seems to be important but absent role-player(s) in the story: in
For one illustrative example, the artwork may present ‘me’ with the suggestion that ‘I’, ‘my assumed aunt’, or perhaps the artist’s imagined grandmother, can all be accommodated in this work. The work generates a sense of longing, possibly because it recalls the absent ‘one(s)’ whose space ‘I’ occupy. When ‘I’ look up, ‘I’ see raindrops like tears drizzling down a window in a continuous motion, above the kitchen sink (
As suggested above,
In this sense, I argue that ‘I’ as the viewer-character experience narrative identification – ‘I’ identify with the absent other sufficiently to care about ‘her’. However, narrative identification does not fully circumscribe the sense that ‘I
To empathise takes one further: ‘[I]n regards to narratives, empathy facilitates imaginative participation’ (Daly
The experience of intersubjective becoming the other is a function, I argue, of focalisation. Firstly, focalisation is a means of
The intersubjective experience whereby the participant-character in Van der Merwe’s works co-focalises with the absent person allows for the sense that the absent protagonist is remembered and re-membered (made real, and corporeal) because the body and the self of the participant are in some way ‘home’ to the absent other.
Re-membering has to do with ‘fleshing out’ – it entails that an absent person’s physical body gains some sort of physical existence. This happens, of course, through focalisation: ‘I’ as the participant-character see the rain on the ‘window’ created by the projection (‘I’ see what the absent person’s position suggests, ‘her’ seeing). ‘I’ look down, directing ‘my’ embodied gaze where the ‘looking’ absent subject would also cast ‘her’ gaze – at hands which are neither ‘mine’ nor ‘hers’, but suggestive of being both ‘mine’ and ‘hers’.
The incompleteness, the layered complexity of character
For the current interpretation, the layeredness and complexity of character suggested by Van der Merwe’s works are therefore lodged precisely in this incredulous appearance of a man’s hands where a woman is imagined as standing. The artist also put himself in the place of the late grandmother who is re-membered in the work – a loss of boundaries occurs between himself and another character.
The absent grandmother can accommodate the artist, but more significantly, ‘I’ also
Metaphorically speaking, the work gives a voice to one who is not there and who does not have a voice. This is much like offstage characters that actually constitute the central concern of a stage play (Mahfouz
This intersubjective merging with the other allows one to transcend the self. Self-transcendence is concerned with a greater awareness that rises above the self so that the body as well as the mind can transfer themselves into another tangible or intangible, living or imagined entity.
While transcending the self, in installation artworks like this, one also allows the participant-characters to insert recollections from their own lives in order to integrate their experiences with the experiences of characters so that they can construct the story
In the process of making sense of the narrative, ‘I’ am therefore myself narrated and ‘I’ am aware of myself as a character; ‘I’ also become an ‘other’. All these becomings are transformations brought about in the context of the artwork parallels – a process that Paul Ricoeur (
This article argues that given the paucity of narratological consideration of installation art, the narratological toolbox applicable to this artform can be expanded by using terms such as ‘character’, ‘narration’, ‘focalisation’ and ‘the fabula’ in a more flexible and synthesising manner. Specifically, I propose that
In conclusion: Interpretative possibilities have been facilitated by using character with focalisation, narration and concurrent embodied processes of the cognitive, as well as emotional intersubjective possibilities of merging with absences as a narrative key in installation art. Thus, the expansion of the narratological toolbox for purposes of installation art has proven to open up various possibilities of experiencing this art form in profound and meaningful ways.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
This article was co-written by L.C. and N.P.L.A. and they thus contributed equally to the writing of this article.
For example, the work called
The contemporary installation artist Anne Hamilton’s work
Among these works are Bishop (
Mieke Bal has done so – but as I aim to demonstrate, I would like to add to this repertoire of tools by emphasising the role of character in installation art (see Bal
Postclassical narratology embraces text-based, as well as other types of narrative. See Meister (
This publication also deals with communicative products that use more than one modality (film, opera, the artist’s book, for example).
Although this article has two authors, the pronoun ‘I’ is used throughout since the greatest part of the article is written from the point of view of a subjective experience.
The same argument has been brought to bear in text-based narratives – compare, for example, Chatman (
The title is a wordplay in Afrikaans (
This terminology is used by Bal (
Character is not often used in the visual arts where one would often speak of a figure or sitter – compare Rathbone and Lotz (
Compare, in this regard, Mahfouz’s (
Works by various artists contain clothes or shoes as metonymical of the bodies of people to refer to themes of memory, trauma and violence related to the absence (death) of the characters.
Examples of the artist’s work, as well as essays on his art can be perused at
This description reflects on the artwork as it appeared at the Oliewenhuis Gallery in Van der Merwe’s solo show
As noted in footnote 11, giving the title
The artist’s intention, or his version of the narrative, is taken into consideration in this article because artistic intention, ominously fallacious for some scholars, can play a role in the interpretation of an artwork. This is the case here because Van der Merwe’s work engages with highly personal, mostly autobiographical themes (albeit with a rather universal resonance – see Hundt
In the Merleau-Pontian sense; Merleau-Ponty (
Fokkema’s (
Again, I refer to Fokkema’s character typology in
Both Fokkema (in
A similar argument is presented with reference to a film based on a graphic novel in the article by Nixon (