Strickland email:

Please note that below email conversation follows on from prior emails, and as such has been reformatted slightly to allow for some coherency.
 
From: strickla@slc.edu
Subject: Further questions on Deviant in preparation for a panel at Duke University / SLS conference , July 2004.
SS (Stephanie Strickland): Did the account instigate the project? How did you come to know of Christian? How did you decide to use historical rather than fairy tale or folk texts? What did you start to do when you started this project and then, after you were into it, did that change?
 
DL (Donna Leishman): the anonymous account really instigated the whole mystery/disturbance atmosphere

DL: I came upon the tale at a Scottish history conference, I was at the conference looking around for a historically rooted fable/myths (I almost choose the Benandanti cult and their night battles as a subject area http://members.tripod.com/~benandanti/ (I have it storyboarded in linear at present) but heard the story about Christian, and even then she was just referenced in passing - if I remember the paper was more about demonic possession and atheism. The idea of a 10/11yr old Glasgow girl being central to one of the rare acts of possession, combined with the contemporary view that she was "evil", made her ideal for my imaginings and renderings. I investigated the narrative, discovered an "expert" interviewed him, interestingly he teaches sociology and ethics in medicine…from this point discovering the anonymous nature of the source text sealed the project.
Previous DL: all have a lead female protagonist that in some way is unconventional with regards to the founding narrative texts.
SS: Can you say more about how, in each case, they are "unconventional."? How you intentionally re-directed them, one might say, and out of what kinds of reasons/feelings/motivations/desires?
DL: RedRidingHood = rooted mostly in the visual, transforming her into a blonde, giving her a super sexual mother, attitude wise I wanted to suggest that she was as wiley and as dangerous as the wolf character - readdressing an imbalance that she is passive, then if you explore her musings in the hidden diary - you discover that she was previously (before you encounter her in the narrative) a love struck romantic girl, full of ideals who was "used" by the wolf, this instigated her change of look more confident manner, but sadly she's using it to attract the wolf, so in a sense she was at one point the traditional "weak" RedRidingHood, and secondly the sexual on the surface empowered RedRidingHood, but still in my mind flawed.

In The Bloody Chamber the female lead is shown as equally voyeuristic and psychologically demented, they are obsessed with one another, in respects to the source text the major reinterpretation comes in the form that the Bluebeard is shown as a weaker more human flawed character and the wife character is via the reader in charge of her destiny (s), in the project she never dies, she can only leave or stay.

SS: Is it too much to say you are re-founding the narrative texts based on female desire/desiring?
DL: Not sure what you mean by 'female desire' - do you mean is there an autobiographic element to it?
SS reply: 3-female desire stuff out of all the French psychoanalytic thought, sometimes French feminism. I'm not up to speed on it myself. You seem to be more acting on your own opinions as life brings them.
DL: I would go with that…
SS: And is your relation to that desiring something that comes out of your own experience (minus theory) or is more informed by a combination of experience-theory?
DL: Experience/observations - theory.
Previous DL: Reinterpreting for a new time, however in Deviant I don't do the latter, I do not add an opinion
SS: This seems to me somewhat disingenuous. I would feel that the visual "setting" is itself an interpretation.
 
DL: Your right - I think that I have offered an interpretation by the virtue of how I've presented the world/how things move etc… my stance was a little swayed in regards to all the feedback, which suggests that the visual restyling seemed not to function completely (i.e. for everyone) as a reinterpretation or comment/critique on the narrative…
Previous DL: Language in the artwork e.g. 100% visual diaries. This would be more inclusive.
SS: Is this an issue for you? I see it as a big problem for e-work globally distributed. On the one hand the pith of it seems to me often based in a very specific locale, set of issues. That jail/torture implement Reformation set of traces that surround you. Though I don't know how you found Christian. Did you go looking for her--or is she part of what "everyone" knows where you are? And yet, how to communicate this unknown pre-history to others in "a" language. And is a visual language more global than a linguistic one?
DL: It's an issue in that I like the idea of inclusively or at least enabling a more easy access into the text, for me image based immersion's strength lies in the speed in which it can communicate with the participant, I've always been interested in drawing new / different reading groups into interactive works and I think visual texts can offer this. The difficulty your right in communicating specifics of alien ideas to the participant using solely images is difficult and the text is prone to too much ambiguity, but I think a balance can be achieved if the narrative has universal themes as well as specific lexicons…
Previous DL: where the reverend mouth is talking / he's in reverie at his desk but there is no sound, I'm depowering his spoken voice…
SS: So women today for whatever reason may wish to disempower the spoken and written (founding narrative) voice of men (from the past?) But to substitute their own spoken? written? visual? made-on-their-own? voice/language???? Or for other purposes, on behalf of other kinds of entities???
DL: Rather I'm making the comment that the defaulted language of authority is something to question - or at least not take blindly as truth, much of the (unproven) blame for the deaths of the local people in this narrative is pointed at this reverend Brisbane.
Previous DL: In The majority of the readers saw Deviant as being game-like… I think its because the work of Aarseth etc in games studies has brought a gaming mindset to the fore…I don't perceive Deviant as a game.
SS: Yes, the game vs play vs play-an-instrument etc issue is a big one. Not least because loads of people (not my generation) have gaming experience, as much as Aarseth's work "noticing" that. But
Previous DL: It (Deviant) does use paths that are locked and are open-ended
SS: What led you to this? Would you consider these guard-links in the Storyspace M. Joyce sense?
DL: never used Storyspace - can u explain the term?
SS: How does this programming decision map onto the thematic content?
DL: because Deviant uses no back buttons: they map in the sense that the function ways to create perceived hidden and revealed sections, which ties into creating a sense of mystery, unknown and possible danger
SS: Also--what does open the links? Number of times addressed? Order of times addressed? Something else?
DL: Mostly 'finding' and then the ordering of the links, at least the narratively important links, the others (the embellishments/toys) are sometimes generated randomly.
Previous DL: The participant's need to solve the looping flowers in search for some hidden / important meaning, that surprised me!
SS: But search for the hidden can't quite have surprised you, given that some paths are locked, no?
DL: No (it didn't surprise me) and as stated above its part of the projects theme, only I didn't foresee that level of systematic + detailed enquiry.
SS: Certainly my overall impression of the whole work (which would you believe I have a hard time remembering that is called Deviant-- I think of it as The Possession of Christian Shaw with all the plays on Possession) is that there is something hidden to be feared; I personally felt, she being a child, that it was something that threatened her--and not that she might be a threat to others, though those are co-ordinate. I think the piece is extraordinary at building up the sense of secret bad stuff happening that "the authorities" have no authority over. By contrast Red Riding Hood, though flipping that story, seems jocular, eye-winking. Of course, the fairy stories to begin with have done the job of "normalizing" frightening content.
SS: Why do you call it Deviant? Highly interpretive term, right?
DL: Yes /church/norms of society/easy to remember and apply personal imagery, and deviance in that the project is unconventional in how it enacts / reveals the story!
SS: thanks so much for being willing to talk about it.
Stephanie