Virtual Narrations
From the crisis of storytelling to new narration as mental potentiality
Söke Dinkla

Despite all of the intervening caesuras and interruptions, narration as a cultural practice seems to have experienced a virtual Renaissance at the end of the twentieth century. Strikingly, this can be felt with particular intensity in the electronic media. The Internet as new mode of communication has achieved the status of a mass medium and now requires adequate ways of communicating content. But even the well-established medium of video is once again drawing on narrative strategies and developing a form of storytelling that raises a variety of questions: Do these narrative practices really constitute a Renaissance of storytelling, i.e. do they represent the hope that, after the collapse of the great utopias in the seventies, a new form can be found with which to render narratives viable once again? Or, rather, is a completely new narrative form emerging, one that is in a position to reflect on the history and stories of the modern era and make an incisive statement on the state of our reality? [more]

Critique of realism Joyce and the narrative principle of ‹networking› The Rhizome—metaphor for hypertextual narratives Cybernetics as narrative principle Dialogue experiments in the cinema, theater and television Shared authorship, collective narrative forms Discursive fields Cinematic non-linearity Paradoxical narrative structures Deconstruction of narrations Activation of memory Deciphering cultural codes The mobile viewer Critique of the major narrative blueprints of the modern era Narration as a connective system