| dc.description.abstract | This interdisciplinary dissertation presents an investigation into the complex ways in which Steven Cohen’s installation work Put your heart under your feet... and walk resonates with possible worlds. This study, which includes both art historical as well as (post-classical) narratological points of departure, explores the ways in which an art exhibition as an installation artwork suggests possible worlds – with specific reference to the narrativity and ontological multimodal metalepsis that occurs within the installation. Recently, there has been an increasing academic interest in ontological queries. This idea stems from McHale’s (1987:10) statement that the transition from modernism to postmodernism is defined by a shift from an epistemological to an ontological dominant. The current philosophical and narratological climate is characterised by the coexistence of various possible, real and textual worlds. This discourse therefore presents a research-worthy space in which an art-historical inquiry can be launched into the ways in which worlds are constructed and understood in installation works such as those of Cohen. Put your heart under your feet... and walk was originally a performance piece that made its debut at the Montpellier Dance Festival (2017) in France (Stevenson Gallery, 2017). This performance was transformed into an exhibition that was displayed later that year (in October) at the eminent Stevenson Gallery’s Johannesburg space. The exhibition presented many ballet shoes (as found objects) and a two-screen projection performance piece. From a post-classical narratological approach, I argue that Cohen’s installation is anchored in narrativity. Narrativity refers to a text’s ability to elicit a narrative response. The narrativity is embodied within the concepts of fictionalisation, narrative competence, eventfulness, sequentiality, experientiality and tellability. The deployment of these narrativising elements (re)contextualises Put your heart under your feet... and walk as a fictionalised chronotope that can be framed as a narrative filled with type two (b)-events and various character dimensions. As a result of this I contend that the installation suggests a unique story world. Furthermore, I argue that the ontological boundaries between the real world and the story world become problematic. This emerges in the manner in which the ontological over-lappings can be observed in the narrativising activities such as fictionalisation and embodied experience. In this context, the narratologically-based term, metalepsis, is used to explore the overlapping between worlds (and the implications thereof). Within the scope of this study, the concepts ontology and multimodality are added to metalepsis in order to create the linked concept – ontological multimodal metalepsis. Ontological multimodal metalepsis is further utilised as a methodological tool to investigate how performative
semiotic mediums (including paratexual data, the artist, the gallery space, the artworks, the text user(s) and implied characters suggested by the artworks) intentionally and paradoxically cross and confuse (onto)logical different (sub)worlds and/or levels within representations of possible worlds. As the plurality of ontological crossings unfold, the argument is presented that Put your heart under your feet... and walk suggests multiple worlds. In order to trace this notion, the theoretical basis of possible worlds theory, namely that reality is conceived as the sum of the imaginable rather than the sum of what exists physically, is used. In addition to this, the idea is explored that semiotic means that are artistically linked together with a relationship of accessibility suggest a possible world. Through narrativity and ontological multimodal metalepsis the text user places themselves imaginatively in the (potentially possible) story world ontology and becomes a text user-character. This text user-character as a distinctive performative medium peruses other story world mediums and interprets them within the story-world domain. This activity multiplies the playing field of possible sub-worlds. Finally, I argue that by means of narrativity and ontological multimodal metalepsis, Put your heart under your feet... and walk becomes a possible world in itself surrounded by numerous ontological sub-worlds. Here the text user (character) becomes an inventor, creator and explorer of not only one world, but many alternative possible sub-worlds. | en_US |
