The Imaginary 20th Century

The Imaginary 20th Century
Authors Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis
Cover artist 2xGoldstein+Fronczek
Country Germany
Language English
Genre Historical comedy, espionage, picaresque, adventure
Published March 15, 2016 ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Media type Print (paperback, e-book, narrated media archive)
Pages 240 (48 illus.)
ISBN 978-3--928201-48-3
Funding: Graham Foundation, California Institute of the Arts, ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Written by Norman M. Klein in collaboration with Gilded Age historian Margo Bistis, The Imaginary 20th Century is the title of a historical comic novel that is available in print (2016) and as an e-book with a companion narrated media archive (2014). This is the rare novel to have originated as an interactive installation that spawned related solo and group exhibitions prior to publication. What has evolved is a layered narrative that offers a literary alternative to gaming and other forms of media storytelling. In 2012, Klein, who coined the term “scripted space” in 1998, and Bistis coined "wunder-roman" to describe this alternative form. As described in the novel, this term references a mythical 19th-century version of the picaresque novel where the layers—as story—roll along a water wheel.

Wunder-roman evokes the mental imagery of navigating the various components: the narrated media archive layered with sound or the comic historical novel with essays. Each component stands alone, but like the lyrics and music of an opera, they belong to each other. In the novel, the massive privately-held “Carrie’s archive” (1917-1936) contains 2000+ documents affixed to cards stored inside a circuitous room and mechanically accessible much like garments stored on dry-cleaner racks. Subscribers to the online package (the archive and ebook of novel) are granted access to these documents: “photographs, films, comic illustrations, scientific and medical imagery, industrial designs, architectural drawings and ephemera like postcards, stereocards, and maps” spanning 1885 to 1925.[1]

The first documents, and the curatorial idea for The Imaginary 20th Century, evolved out of Bistis’ research for “Comic Art: The Paris Salon in Caricature,” a 2003 exhibition organized by the Getty Research Institute.[2] Klein and Bistis started work on the project with support from California Institute of the Arts. Principal support came from the ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the co-producer of Klein’s award-winning media novel Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-1986 (2003). Like Bleeding Through, The Imaginary 20th Century “is not a work of hypertext” but “reveals a more humanistic approach to database aesthetics….”[3]

User navigating The Imaginary 20th Century by Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis during "The Future of the Future." 2010. DOX: Centre for Contemporary Art. Prague. Czech Republic.

The first iteration of The Imaginary 20th Century interface was built by Andreas Kratky, Klein’s collaborator on Bleeding Through. It premiered in 2007, in an exhibition at the ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, followed by solo shows at Orange County Museum of Art and ShowKonstfack, and a group show organized by the Ben Maltz Gallery of Otis College of Art and Design. After considerable redevelopment, the second iteration was built in collaboration with Blanka Earhart directing the interface design; interface production by Luke Domagalski and Raphael Arar; illustrations by Nick Lu; sound compositions by Aaron Drake and Kari Rae Seekins, with additional music by Raphael Arar. It premiered in the 2010 exhibition “The Future of the Future,” curated by Jaroslav Andĕl for the DOX: Centre for Contemporary Art Prague.

The Narrated Media Archive

The structure of The Imaginary 20th Century is built around the way fact and fiction insinuate each other, fill in, and leave “spaces between.” Many facts about the female protagonist’s character that lay concealed in the archive are revealed by reading the novel. An exploratory type of interface prompts viewers to journey through the curated assemblages of card-images. Viewers accompany the protagonist’s misadventures across three continents, transporting them back to various 19th-century events and attitudes that inspired the novel’s construction. It is about the evasions that shaped how we see the future.

The Novel

The novel’s guiding principle is announced in the first chapter: “The future can only be told in reverse.” Each component reveals different aspects of this progress "blown off course." The novel takes the reader into the espionage behind the seductions of the story: while the narrated media archive expands out from the point of view of the female protagonist and her sweetly devious uncle by taking viewers into the minds of her four suitors, and thus into four versions of what the twentieth century might become.

Despite its brevity, The Imaginary 20th Century covers a lot of ground, emulating the breadth and speed of Jules Verne’s 1873 adventure classic Around the World in Eighty Days. Moreover, The Imaginary 20th Century is as much a tour of that era’s burgeoning literary societies, late 19th century social movements, Los Angeles history, proxy wars crisscrossing the globe, capitalist machinations, spy games, and deceit. Rather than simply an open-ended journey, the process of sorting out all of the historical bits that ground the reader’s selected endgame parallels that of historians piecing together clues to create a scenario, or curators trying to assess which set of objects are most likely to prompt the appropriate narrative.

Described as a historical comedy, The Imaginary 20th Century resembles a picaresque, the 16th century Spanish prototype of the modern novel whereby episodic narratives feature shysters and humble survivors in a nearly hopeless world. Over the centuries, the picaresque has gone in and out of literary style in various countries.

Characters

The Essays

Part II of the book contains four essays: on the curating of the archive; on “picaresque disasters”; on the future city; and on the “automated utopia.” This serves as another layer, but also as a linking device. Readers and viewers make the transit from text to image, and back again—from narrative hooks in the story, to spaces between the images. It reveals how the writing of history is similar to the pleasures of interactive storytelling.

References

  1. ↑ Margo Bistis. "Curating Carrie's Archive." The Imaginary 20th Century. Karlsruhe. ZKM/ Center for Art and Media. 2016. p. 169
  2. ↑ Margo Bistis. "Curating Carrie's Archive." The Imaginary 20th Century. Karlsruhe. ZKM/Center for Art and Media. 2016. p. 167
  3. ↑ Kim Beil. “The Imaginary 20th Century.”Artweek. Vol. 39:2 (March 2008). p 20
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