In Formation (reprint of my 2018 article in Frame - Journal for Literary Studies 31.2.: 77-94)

Abstract

In the current debates about the contested line between fact and fiction, little attention is paid to a genre closely associated with factual narratives: the information. However, information is a specific form of narrative that is historically connected to news about distant places, events, or people. This means that information conveys stories that listeners have, per definition, never experienced through their own senses. Furthermore, information is nowadays, through the internet, nearly instantaneous, and it loses its value once its content is not brand-new anymore. In this article, I investigate how the characteristics of information—speed, instantaneity, newness, impersonality—influence human perception when they impinge upon the senses. I want to contrast the characteristics of information with the artwork Moule by Anna Lena Grau (2015) that slows down understandings and that asks of its audience to take their time when they try to make sense and give meaning to it. If an artwork slows down processes of meaning-making, it allows recipients to become aware of their own semiotic activities. I will argue that information is a specific form of message that is far from being objective, because it does not include personal experiences and historical, cultural, and geopolitical situatedness in its account. I will ask what is at stake with both kinds of procedures, and develop an alternative vision of connecting to people, histories, and events that are taking place afar.