Fact / Fiction

Fiction has the potential to reveal truth and fact can be a well crafted fiction. By exploring the definitions of FACT and FICTION and by working between these categorizations artists and cultural producers have the potential to explore how information is communicated, how systems produce truth and how forms carry meaning.

‘A journalistic report, an artwork or a literary narrative would not fill the gap between reality and its representation but reveal it, generating a story with an inner self critique. A fictitious or aesthetic approach does not necessarily mean that the work is irrelevant or useless. If we were to climb a building any single ornament and decoration could be useful.’ Aesthetic Journalism, pp. 32.

This analogy explores form and function in relation to fact and fiction, highlighting that it is not only the content of a work that gives or denies it authority; a context and form can often communicate more than what is actually being said and establish whether something is factual or fictional, actual or imagined. Two examples that exploit this relationship between form and content in relation to establishing fact from fiction are ‘Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote’ a short text by Jorge Luis Borges and the work of Walid Raad and the Atlas Group.

Borges’ text is written as a non fictional account reviewing the work of a recently deceased writer, Pierre Menard. One of Menard’s most ambitious projects involved rewriting Don Quixote word for word, but not by a process of copying, though learning 16^th century Spanish, forgetting modern history and essentially trying to be Michel de Cervantes. Borges adopts a formal and authorative tone, uses footnotes and references, and gives us no clue that Menard does not exist. It is the reader who must decide how believable this account is and how the tale of this obsessive writer may relate both to the tale of Don Quixote and the nature of fiction itself.

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, J.L. Borges

Don Quixote

Walid Raad documents the contemporary history of Lebanon through The Atlas Group. The Atlas Group has an archive of documents available to view on line. Examples of these documents are the Fakouri File Note Books (attributed to the fictional author Dr Fadl Fakouri). Notebook number 38 contains 145 cut outs of cars. They correspond to the exact make, model and colour of every car that was used as a car bomb between 1975 and 1991.

In a recent talk given at Anthony Reynolds gallery for his current exhibition ‘Scratching on things I could disavow: A history of art in the Arab world _ Part I _ Volume 1 _ Chapter 1: Beirut (1992-2005) Walid combined the factual and fantastical within the familiar framework of a gallery talk. This opened up space between what was being said and the interpretation in the mind of a viewer. For the first time in a while I left a gallery full of thoughts and ideas, questioning my experience whilst trying to build a web of understanding between various references.

The Atlas Group, Already Been in a Lake of Fire_Notebook Volume 38

The Atlas Group, Image from Sweet Talk: The Hilwe Commissions 1992-2004

- http://www.anthonyreynolds.com/home.htm

- http://www.theatlasgroup.org/