Inter esse. The Creative Subject, Norén and Reality
The dissertation Inter esse. The creative subject, Norén and Reality throws light upon the motive behind the film director Lars von Trier’s manifest ”Dogumentary”. Under the headline ”Defocus” von Trier writes:
“We are looking for something which lies in-between facts and fiction. Since fiction is limited by our fantasy and facts by our knowledge, the part of the world that we want to portray neither is encompassed by a ’story’ or overviewed from a ’point of view’.”
Overview
At the centre of the thesis Inter esse is the artistic formation and, as an extension, the scientific formation. The purpose of the work is to reflect on the way from ambition to creation, to capture what about this process is unique.
I have chosen two objects for my research. First, the internationally acclaimed Swedish playwright Lars Norén’s direction of a new work for the theatre, his own play Kyla (Cold). Second, Swedish Television (SVT), in collaboration with the two Swedish media companies Jarowskij and Troja, as together they produce their largest-ever stake in the field of entertainment, the TV series Riket (The Kingdom). According to the producers, it was a new format in a new genre: The Realitydrama. It is likely that neither Norén nor a production of Reality (short for Reality TV) has ever been subject to a study of this kind.
The formation, that is, the creative process, is one sort of an object of knowledge and the form, that is, the creation, is another. Even if the result is critical to the comprehension of the process that preceeded it, it is not the aim of my analysis. My focus rather is the originator’s way to the finished work.
Artistic processes continuously bring new issues to the fore. For this reason, insights in the new field of artistic research are invaluable. From my perspective, this new field of research has its main focus in praxis-based, problem-solving reflection. It is about creating an awareness of the extremely inaccessible modes of artistic choice, the choice between intuition, intention, chance, tradition and also the different frameworks that different institutions – from TV to theatres – provide.
Concerning the creative process, I partly focus on beginning and end, and partly on the transformation from chaos to order. In this way I am actually able to focus on the way something unexpected occurs, on the emergent, and it is a decisive aspect of the process to which I devote a special interest.
The question of what constitutes creativity is often raised, but I set out to frame it in my own way: not only with the help of two processes, but also within myself. What is the difference between being a subject, doing something oneself, and observing?
In this research I assume both positions, in a double role. I am a registering and documenting researcher as well as a filmmaker. I want to elucidate the creative process in both theatre and Reality. I also want to demonstrate how I with my own artistic methods and processes have in some respects reached farther than I would otherwise have been able.
The work is structured by a principle of three. First, a documentation of the creative processes. Second, a documentary film on Norén, Norén’s drama. Third, a dissertation which unites everything into a synthesis. This is central for the body of work and relates to all the other processes. In so doing it also follows the formation closely, and everything I have done comes together in a form that belongs to a scientific tradition. Above all I compare my empirical material with a reference to my own model – the dramatic model. The central axis consists of the creative subject, the process and the work. The secondary axis, going sideways, consists of what foremost characterizes the dramatic tradition: the roles and the story. Finally, the dissertation itself is divided into three parts: The beginning, the empiri and the conclusion.
This result of research is meant to be a contribution to science in several ways:
First, my work acts as a purveyor of insights into and understanding of two major, exclusive and very different creative processes: two meetings between scriptwriting and directing in two genres of the dramatic tradition.
Second, it is about two extremely established contemporary phenomena: Norén and the SVT together constitute somewhat of a counterpoint, which make it possible to compare a creative process within the art of theatre to one within TV/entertainment. For me this is not about a simple division between high and low culture, something similar comparisons tend to become. If my examples take divergent paths then they are all the more interesting; they capture a landscape within modern drama that has both width and scope.
Third, my work creates a field of tension between the creative process and the analysis via my own production. Norén’s drama is both a tool of interpretation in the study of Norén and an intensifying of the overall research result. With the film I try to chisel out the unutterable creative subject and in so doing I attempt to widen a limit within science. While the dissertation is built upon comprehension, the film displaces the content and enriches the whole.
Fourth, my dissertation aims to bring together aspects, categories and literature in a new way. Since there exists no overview of earlier writings on the subject, this study has demanded a mapping.
Read about Norén’s Drama by Per Zetterfalk
Download Inter esse Abstract
