IM1 Reading 07

Given that this was quite an extensive document, I am only going to cover a few points I was able to pull from this weeks reading.
“Complexity, flux and webs of connection” by Louise Frankham is a document regarding ‘poetic approaches to documentary’.
There were two main concepts I was able to pull from Frankham’s article, these were the ideas of Lists and Montages in non-linear structuring of stories.

I must admit that if I was to read this article only a few weeks ago, I would have been totally perplexed at the ideas and issues raised. However, following recent lectures and classes, the reading has actually been interesting and insightful – and surprisingly not as painful as it’s length would have had me to believe.

It did require my utmost attention (no eavesdropping on the conversation going on over the table), however I was able to get a grip on why Frankham was rattling on about lists. We all know what a list is, right?
Well yes, just maybe not in the sense that Frankham is regarding it in.

Frankham regards lists as “…a strategy to facilitate spaces for engagement and openness of interpretation” (138) as they are “…a structuring device in creative screen based documentary (that) is a formal approach(,) that also speaks of the infinite possibilities in combining and making connections across a networked field of elements” (139).
Frankham also states that lists can be “…gathered and assembled according to a logic that may be thematic, topical, place based or conceptual…but the relationship between parts is kept loose” (139).

Another area in this article which I found interesting was Frankham’s discussion of montage.
“Montage brings elements into contact and thereby gives rise to new meanings out of each combination…It is a process of organising complexity, sifting through infinite possible gatherings and sequencings, allowing logics to accrete as we recognise and make sense of the patterns that emerge” (142).

The reason why I found these two areas of this reading of interest is because of Frankham’s discussion of their relation to narrative. Lists and montage’s aren’t the usual suspects when someone speaks to me of narratives, however, as is stated within the reading, within the lists and montages created “there are thematic and structural relations generally established amongst the parts of the lusts but narrative links tend not to be strongly formed. Nonetheless, the potential may exist for narrative links to be activated or imagined“, even within the gaps of those elements left out from the list/montage.

 

all quotes taken from: http://cdn.dropmark.com/4931/1b4fbe81038716f0330dff9098e29cc3652445e4/07%20Frankham.pdf