On Remediations of Reality and Poetics of Philosophy. Working Through Complexity and the Strange Case of Korsakow Documentary

Abstract

This contribution explores in how far Korsakow documentary, one type of interactive database documentary, (re-)mediates 'reality' and its medial representations/constructions. Racing Home (Hoffman & McMahon 2014), a multi-authored poetic, self-reflexive, interactive assemblage serves as a test stone for the hypothesis that due to its algorithmic complexity and narrative multi- layeredness, the configuration opens up dimensions of intertwined 'realities' that are otherwise difficult to access.

Tackling the controversial topic of the racial past of a small American town, Racing Home probes into what can be called 'home'. However, Korsakow documentaries rely on non-linear, procedural, algorithmic editing, on ostranenie, loose and ephemeral probabilities, on more or less likely connections between clips which are obscured to the 'authors' themselves due to the sheer combinatory complexity of rules which are hidden under the surface of the experience. Thus, Korsakow documentaries not only fathom the (im)possibility to represent 'the real' (i.e. the documentary endeavor), they also question the notion of 'the real' as such as well as conceptualizations of 'memory' and 'commemoration'.

Revisiting traditional documentary theory and bringing them into dialogue with positions deriving from so called 'new media studies', this essay reviews the different ways in which interactive documentary assemblages of the Korsakow-type figure as art, as representations/constructions of some sort of 'reality' (subjective? objective?) and as an agentic interactor in the world – and it examines in how far these considerations meet philosophical thinking.