Final Project: Trauma Hypertext
Hello all. Sorry this is a bit late.
For my final project, I’m proposing an experiment that will hopefully inform my MRP for next year. The greater project will be looking at autobiographical experimental documentary, specifically Sadie Benning’s short films, through the analytic lens of trauma theory, and exploring the ability of unconventional and non-linear story-telling techniques to transfer traumatic experiences from author to others. Some theorists that I’ve looked at suggest that there’s a therapeutic potential in the transference of traumatic experience, both for the trauma sufferer and their audience/witness, as a means of catharsis, self-understanding, and an end to isolation, and this is what I want to explore with my Future Cinemas project. So, I’m going to create my own trauma narrative, using myself as a guinea pig, to try and gauge my ability to transfer my own experiences onto others, and the effects of that transference. What I’m proposing is a hypertext narrative based on my life from age 4 to age 6. I’m planning to create a website that’s organized like my childhood home, with different pieces of narrative attached to different rooms and significant objects within those rooms. I’ll be experimenting with the spatial organization of memory, and the attachment of memories to place and significant objects, as well as the intricacies of childhood memory, and the usefulness of metaphors, repetition, and flashbacks in the expression of traumatic experience. I think that eventually, my MRP will look at the community building potential of trauma expression, so as a sidebar to the website I’m going to try to add a discussion form, or comments page. I hope that visitors to the site will feel compelled to respond, and ideally share their own similar experiences. I’m also going to try to embed video clips and ambient noise within the site, as a means of providing a more effecting and immersive experience.