Extract of his intervention in the international colloquium “Fiction face to intermediality: Pictures in stories, stories in pictures”, Centre d’étude et de recherche en arts plastiques, UFR 04, Université Paris I ­ Panthéon­Sorbonne, November 27th ­28th 2009.  MAC ADAMS  The Narrative Void  My interest in narrative started while growing up in Wales, a culture rich in the tradition of both                                   oral and written storytelling. Cinema culture in the 1950’s had a huge impact on the Welsh                               collective imagination. The mixture of fact and fiction experienced in darkened halls with a                           solitary light piercing the darkness opened up worlds otherwise experienced only through the                         radio or books. In retrospect it seems perfectly logical coming out of this environment that I                               work in both two and three dimensions making photo diptychs and installations. As a                           storyteller using photographs and objects I have adopted a semiotic approach using extreme                         economy of means. This produces spaces within the narrative. I have termed this space                           between images, or between objects, the Narrative Void. The term, which is intrinsically a                           contradiction in terms metaphorically, sums up the central core of my interest as an artist.   THE PHOTOGRAPH AND FLASH FICTION  

    Very early on, I was aware that the popular literary genres of romances, westerns, crime                             stories and science fiction, often make very successful ‘border crossings’ from low to high                           cultural acceptance. They also lend themselves to move from novel, to screenplay, to movie,                           to TV, to still images. The shift in media each time changes the reading and ultimately the                                 meaning of the original text. Appropriating an already accepted genre took the photograph out                           

the hermetic art world context and moved it into the real world. Because these symbolic texts                               have no beginning or end in the literary sense of a fixed linear time, whatever enters your                                 consciousness begins the narrative process, as does the order you read the images. Left to                             right usually offers a different story than right to left.   In constructing my narratives I am interested in economy. Hemingway, a writer known for his                             brevity with words was once challenged in a bar to write a story in just six words. He wrote:                                     “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” How can one tell a story using no more than two or three                                     images, or a situation using the fewest objects? This is where the narrative void comes into                               play.   The Narrative Void has its origins in the cinema. It describes the space between the                             sequential moving images. 24 frames per second is the speed at which the brain can                             recognize plausible literal space­time in the construction of conventional narratives. What                     interests me is what happens in the space between these images and the space between                             forms generally, and the multiple narratives they evoke especially in the very specific context                           of the mystery. It is in this void that cognition occurs. Cognition is sensuous. Cognition is                               political. This void between image/objects in highly charged psychological situations can                     almost seem palpable. Crime novelist Richard Price told me that he often visits crime scenes                             when doing research for a book and that when he enters a crime scene the objects in the                                   room seem to give off a kind of radioactive energy charging the space with emotional gravity.    FICTION IN THE MIRRORED SURFACE  

   In the early 1980’s I began a series of images titled ‘Post Modern Tragedies’. These works                               were in part a response to what I saw happening under the Thatcher/Reagan economic                           policies in the UK and the USA. I am not a documentary photographer, however I wanted to                                 see if I could construct a situation that reflected the political conditions and contradictions of                             the times. It was also a response to the postmodern discourse of the time.   

I believe it was Jean­Francois Lyotard who coined the term techno­schizophrenia in his 1979                           book ‘The Postmodern Condition’. I interpreted this as a disjunction between the traditional                         notions of form in harmony with content. For example, Philip Johnson’s AT&T building in New                             York City is a collection of architectural styles of the past outside, containing state of the art                                 electronic telecommunications inside.  I took this idea of combining visual contradictions and began making these hybrid collisions                           between social tragedies and designer utensils. The chromed mirrored objects were                     photographed on seamless paper like conventional utopian adverts implying a desire to                       possess. However, reflected on the surfaces were violent unsettling, crimes, shootings,                     interrogations, situations that completely contradicted the objects’ forms with perfect metallic                     skins.   DIGITAL FICTION 

   In the early 1990’s it was very evident the computer was changing the mystery genre as we                                 knew it. It occurred to me that the computer’s panoptical ability to scan vast image banks                               makes the term ‘site specific’ redundant. It’s possible to stand in New York and experience an                               assassination in Israel as a reflection in a window in Paris. Because of this capability I began                                 to use actual criminals instead of actors. Place as we know it does not exist in the cyber                                   world. This confluence of media is redefining the lines between what we refer to as fiction and                                 reality. The introduction of the computer and the forensic science investigation have also had                           a profound effect on the mystery genre. The emphases on human perception and logic as                             demonstrated by fictional super detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marples have been                         replaced by the micro world of DNA analyses as witnessed by the proliferation of CSI                             programs on TV. The political and social implication of modern technology to rewrite history                           inserting fictional people and events into documentation is what prompted me to make my                           digital fictions. 

   A somewhat different use of digital fiction occurs in the environmental piece ‘Claire’s Room’.                           In this installation at Châteauroux in 2004 I had the opportunity to do a historical mystery. The                                 museum allowed me to use its historical artifacts to construct a story. Most of the clothes                               came from the wife of General Bertrand, Napoleon’s second­in­command. In going through                       their photo archive I discovered the rather tragic 19th Century poet Maurice Rollinat. A                           popular poet of his time, he was friends with Rodin, Sara Bernhardt, etc. He was born in                                 Châteauroux, left to live in Paris and then returned to die by suicide. I decided to make him                                   the center of my story. In the pictures I discovered of him he always looked unhappy and                                 alone. I decided to introduce a fictional woman into his life by digitally altering these photos.                               The woman in the altered photographs looks happy to be with him and he in turn looks happy                                   to be with her. I challenged myself to change history through digital manipulation. I also hired                               an opera singer to record the singing of his poems, continually played on a soundtrack                             throughout the space.  FICTION AND REAL TIME 

    

The concept of narrative fiction and real time has been a theme in my work since the                                 early seventies and has evolved from real objects to the projection by the sun of real                               shadows as objects. The construction of fictional environments which involve a crime, or at                           least the realization that a crime could have happened, led to the inclusion of real time                               elements. These take a variety of forms: the wind moving a curtain in a room, bubbles being                                 formed in a continually running bathtub, the disintegration and rotting of food, the sound of                             music or the scent of perfume permeating a room. Many of these environments were                           influenced by the study of how the camera in film moves through a scene;, using different                               lenses to give narrative tension to what actually appears in the frame and what is implied in                                 the narrative void. These strategies were built into my structures, the viewer’s eye becoming                           the camera but, unlike a camera in film forming a linear structure, this time a fragmented                               non­linear structure forms on the retina.   The filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was often asked how he constructed his high­tension mystery                         narratives. He would reply by talking about the MacGuffin theory imbedded in his films. The                             Macguffin is simply the engine that drives the narrative. Very often it can be ambiguous,                             completely undefined, generic or open to interpretation. I adopted a similar strategy by using a                             changing sculptural device, such as bubbles in a bath, a moving curtain in a room, a                               tablecloth pulled off a table. These, too, became central devices driving the narrative and                           involving the viewer in the plot. This mixture of real time phenomena, running water, scent,                             etc., brought the fictional aspect into the moment, suspending disbelief. It is important that                           only strong spotlights light an otherwise darkened room, just as the light projected from                           behind the audience in the movie theater enhances the cinematic sense.     ARCHITECTURAL FICTIONS 

   

In the early 1980’s I was invited to teach some classes at Parson’s School of Design in New                                   York City. I had been thinking of the term Narrative Architecture for a while but being placed in                                   this situation made me form my ideas quicker than usual. I was fascinated by the way clues in                                   a crime worked visually in space. The objects themselves offer only circumstantial evidence at                           best. It is the relationship between these objects, the void, is highly charged. I began making                               abstract representations of mysteries that only when a strong light is played on what appear                             to be disparate objects from a very specific angle is a figurative image created and the image                                 revealed.   I began to make models for large­scale sculptures, which were based on figurative systems                           and the shadow they produced as a performative space, happening only at certain times of                             the year by responding to the earth’s tilt and shift. The silhouette these structures projected                             were understood only when one positioned oneself spatially. Otherwise they read like a                         Rorschach inkblot, revealing more about the viewer in their musings for meaning. Only after                           the image was recognized and the silhouette registered into the consciousness did meaning                         occur. The question immediately emerges, is meaning a temporary, transient condition                     controlled only by recognition of socially ingrained archetypes?   In conclusion I have been asked if what I do is ‘sculpture.’ My response is that my work is                                     between Agatha Christie and Anthony Caro, the narrative structure of Christie, with all its                           puzzling ironies, married to the rigorous formal sculptural maneuvers of a Caro. However, I do                             not see what I do as whodunits, where a definitive conclusion closes the book. If any                               classification has to be made, they are more like whydunits. ‘Why’ being the operative word in                               questions of human behavior and the understanding of visual phenomena.