Thinking of adaptation as intertextual dialogism aims at eliminating hierarchies between art forms by proposing that every work is bound in an infinite web of relations (in several media artworks, pop songs, for instance, play a key role). The idea of a network also questions the concept of authorship and characterizes each adaptation as a (re)writing that is as valuable as the hypertext.  Referring to the relationship between film and literature, Eikhenbaum emphasizes that although both are specific in their modes of expression, they are not isolated: “None of the arts are fully bound entities, since syncretic tendencies are inherent in each of them; the whole point is in their interrelationship, in the grouping of elements under one sign or another” (Eikhenbaum 1973 [1926], 124f). The context of intertextuality frames the process of adaptation as an interart mechanism triggered by cues in the literary text.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

The emotions that seem to push through the skin turn the face into a transparently lucid, mediating foil. As such, it compares to the painter's canvas, which absorbs the colors, fixing them and making it possible for the observer to experience them.

Claudia Benthien in Skin: on the cultural border between self and the world

 According to Eikhenbaum, then, the difference between the language of film and that of literature is that literature moves from speech to visualization and film from visualization to internal speech. Yet instead of limiting film to a pure visual art form, Eikhenbaum values the subtitle, the word, as being “buried so deeply that it must be divined” (ibid., 125). Considering both ‘languages’ with regard to the cognitive responses of the recipient can become the bridge between them. These ideas resonate with Kamilla Elliott, who further develops Bluestone’s theory by looking for structures of analogies between literary tropes and the filmic images concerning the reader’s or viewer’s respective cognitive response (cf. Elliott 2003, 209–222). Elliott does so in order to “navigate between the visual and the verbal within as well as between signs and arts,” suggesting that “if a verbal metaphor raises mental imaging, then conversely and inversely, a pictorial metaphor raises mental verbalizing” (ibid., 221). Media artworks may not simply translate the literary devices of their precursors or borrow lines, characters, or plot elements; equivalences may also be found in the effect they have on the readers, and respectively the viewer’s, experience of perception.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

Literariness is not only an excessive complication of language; it also is the experience of an aesthetic surplus.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 “When I speak of poetry,” he remarks, “I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality” (Tarkovsky 1989, 21). His theory is reminiscent of Shklovsky’s differentiation between a ‘film of prose’ and a ‘film of poetry,’ in other words, “the necessity […] to work not in the prosaic, plot-centered form, but in the ‘compositional’, poetic form” (ibid., 101). Tarkovsky links an understanding of poetic structuring not only to the subjectivity of the filmmaker but also to the effects of the poetic film on the viewer: “Through poetic connections feeling is heightened and the spectator is made more active,” and it is this “associative linking, which allows for an affective as well as rational appraisal” (ibid., 20).

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

  Jakobson describes a physical response to the form of the poetic text: “Form exists for us only as long as it is difficult to perceive, as long as we sense the resistance of the material, as long as we waver as to whether what we read is prose or poetry, as long as our cheekbones ache’.” (Jakobson 1973 [1921], 59).  Difficult and at times even unpleasant, form is perceivable in media art both from the perspective of the viewer, who is often overburdened with myriad impressions of sound and images, and from the perspective of the performer, who is affected by ‘aching cheekbones,’ as in Vito Acconci’s video Open Book, in which the artist utters words with his jaws spread wide open [...]. Overall, poetic language can be perceived as such if it is ostentatious or if it intentionally creates deviations from norms, a heightened awareness of the materiality and structure of language (cf. Jannidis 2003, 326f)—an ‘aesthetic surplus’ that exceeds the communicative function.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 The defamiliarization of written text in media art does not initially interfere with the supposed telos of script—legibility—but must be regarded as the performance of its inherent auto-aisthetic potential. The literariness of script could then also be understood as ‘literality’ (cf. ibid., 11). Despite almost compulsive efforts “to define, compare, and distinguish pictorial and textual representation” (Gross 2010, 277), strict borders between them remain undefended. They “are challenged by artists; by theories of literature, art, and culture; and not least by subversive acts of reading” (ibid.). The fraying of the arts is not an exception; the call for purism is.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 Script is usually regarded as a medium that neutralizes itself into transparency rather than one that acknowledges the implications of its material presence. However, it is precisely the visibility of script that constitutes its “central paradox”:  “A theory of the mediality of script has to be based on this double dynamic of visibility and legibility. The visibility of script becomes manifest through the body of the graphia. Whether it veils itself or, as in the avant-garde aesthetics of laying bare, displays its nudity, the script-body will always intrusively protrude into the act of reading. As the irreducible other of the sign, this visible, palpable body—that puts itself on display, presents itself to the gaze, threatens to divest itself of its referential function—provokes an aesthesis of the script. (Strätling and Witte 2006, 7)”

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 In contrast to Baldessari’s emotionally detached alphabet performance that foregrounds the sound of words and the arbitrariness of meaning, Rosler performs a feminist kitchen alphabet by displaying exaggerated emotions that shift between boredom and aggression, “hack[ing] out the inventory of women’s repetitive domestic slavery” (Elwes 2005, 42). The artist-performer uncovers the violent potential inherent in these kitchen tools as well as the sexism of television programming and thus forcefully decodes their semiotics. The performative correlation of ‘alphabet’ and ‘semiotics’ makes clear that the production of meaning, sign processes, and communication are not neutral. The presentation uses the alphabet as a “pseudo-scientific ordering” (Westgeest 2016, 39), and thus emphasizes that the alphabet is not a natural given but a taxonomy based on habitualized and therefore unnoticed conventions.  Similarly, genres rely on the reiteration of specific formulas. The ‘cookery show’ genre is based on a set of rules that enforce and therefore produce gender norms; it is a site of gender performativity. “Performativity is a matter of reiterating or repeating the norms by which one is constituted: it is not a radical fabrication of a gendered self,” Judith Butler noted: “It is a compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms […]. The practice by which gendering occurs, the embodiment of norms, is a compulsory practice, a forcible production” (Butler 1993, 22). In this context, (re-)iteration is not simply an aesthetic device. Rosler is bound to perform gender according to a discourse that precedes her, yet her performance attempts to expose that discourse by rebelling within it.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

Media art not only challenges our assumptions about art and culture, but also about the scope of academic disciplines. It invites exploration, testing, and pushing beyond disciplinary boundaries. In other words, media art itself calls for the revitalization of academic perception. It is not only the arts that may mutually elucidate each other; an opening up of the disciplines may also bring undiscovered knowledge to light. The exploration of the literariness of media art has demonstrated the general need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Such an approach to research does not haphazardly fuse a mix of concepts into an undefined pulp. Rather, it brings to the table specific knowledge to help recognize complex structures—in other words, it helps to point to similarities in difference.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 [...] immersion must be understood as a two-way process between an artwork and the viewer. On one hand, the aesthetic object demands that the viewer combines the signals that address multiple perceptual channels. On the other hand, the viewer needs to direct his or her perceptual and empathetic capacity towards the object (cf. Curtis 2008, 97). This echoes Eikhenbaum’s concept of inner speech as well as film theorist Vivian Sobchack, who insists on the activity of the viewer. Along with her observation on the perception of film, the media art experience can be considered a dialog and dialectic between viewer and artwork (cf. Sobchack 1992, 23).

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 Because some of the footage matches the content of the poems, nebel could be seen as as a mere illustration. Yet this interpretation overlooks the subtler layer of self-referentiality offered by M��ller’s film. This reflection is foregrounded in the sequences showing the disintegration of a book, and by the marks of damage and decay of the analog film material. Books and analog film are storage media that can record thoughts and moments, and although they are prone to decomposition, they could be preserved indefinitely. In the digital age, paper and celluloid are often regarded as obsolete in terms of production and distribution, yet for long-term preservation, analog film stock is (still) regarded as superior to digital data (cf. Fossati 2009, 64f). In contrast, digital texts and images seem to be ‘forever new’ until they suddenly break down and disappear, while analog books and films show their age through signs of wear. By using archival footage and excerpts from his own home movies—meant to preserve the memories of his childhood—Müller’s nebel takes on the inverted temporality of Jandl’s gedichte an die kindheit and highlights the complex life cycle of printed books and celluloid film.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 “Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. ‘If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.’ And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. (Shklovksy 1965a [1917], 12)”  Or, as another translation reads, this device has the power to liberate perception from the deadening effects of automatization:  “Automatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at our fear of war. | If the complex life of many people takes place entirely on the level of the unconscious, then it’s as if this life had never been. | And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art. The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight instead of recognition. By ‘enstranging’ objects and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and ‘laborious.’ The perceptual process in art has a purpose all its own and ought to be extended to the fullest. Art is a means of experiencing the process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant. (Shklovsky 1990 [1917], 5f)”  This rich quote—reproduced here in its two common English translations—contains many of the key ideas that resurface in the writings of other Formalists and Structuralists: the emphasis on perception as central to the aesthetic experience, an experience made unfamiliar by using artistic devices in a particular way; the importance of materiality for the process of perception; and a socio-critical move against the dulling automatization of daily life. Shklovsky defended art’s potential to effect a “complete perceptual overhaul” (Lesič-Thomas 2005, 17).

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 Robert Stam adapts the established Poststructuralist concept of intertextuality to theorize the ‘palimpsestous’ relationship between an audiovisual adaptation and a literary text. Transferring the concepts to adaptation and amalgamating them, Stam points out:  “Adaptations […] can take an activist stance toward their source novels, inserting them into a much broader intertextual dialogism. An adaptation, in this sense, is less an attempted resuscitation of an originary word than a turn in an ongoing dialogical process. The concept of intertextual dialogism suggests that every text forms an intersection of textual surfaces. All texts are tissues of anonymous formulae, variations on those formulae, conscious and unconscious quotations, and conflations and inversions of other texts. (Stam 2000, 64)”

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 ‘Appropriation’ is my translation of the German term Aneignung. Aneignen means ‘to make one’s own’ what was initially ‘alien.’ According to the intention of the word, the aim of all hermeneutics is to struggle against cultural distance and historical alienation. Interpretation brings together, equalizes, renders contemporary and similar. […] Appropriation is the concept which is suitable for the actualisation of meaning as addressed to someone. It takes the place of the answer in the dialogical situation, in the same way that ‘revelation’ or ‘disclosure’ takes the place of ostensive reference in the dialogical situation. The interpretation is complete when the reading releases something like an event, an event of discourse, an event in the present time. As appropriation, the interpretation becomes an event. (Ricœur 2016, 147)

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art

 [...] Jakobson stresses the temporality of poetic norms as well as the dependence of literary language on the guidelines of the canon. According to him, a norm or tradition is defined by a certain dominant, it is the “shifting” (ibid., 44) of this dominant that is the stimulus of literary evolution or, more neutrally stated, change. The shifting of the dominant results in “a shift in […] hierarchy” (ibid.) of the artistic devices. Artistic innovation emerges against an established background, and art always stands in a dialectic relationship between a simultaneous preservation and breaking away from tradition (cf. ibid., 46). The changing dominant also affects the relationship between the arts, making the boundaries porous.

Claudia Benthien, Jordis Lau, Maraike M. Marxsen, from The Literariness of Media Art