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Frozen Moments. Database Logic and Narrative Drawing in Chris Ware’s "Building Stories"
Crucifix, Benoît
2015Mediality and Multimodality across Media
 

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Keywords :
Comics; Database Logic; Chris Ware; Graphiation; Drawing
Abstract :
[en] As a box of fourteen separate comics with no fixed reading order, Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012) clearly epitomizes an apparent paradox that seems valid for a large part of contemporary comics production: it foregrounds a clever reliance on print materiality, while encouraging multimodal reading practices that are readily associated with digital media. Taking my cue from Lev Manovich’s description of the database logic in The Language of New Media and from Jared Gardner’s compelling argument in Projections about the importance of comics for twenty-first-century storytelling, I will argue that the random-access structure of Building Stories hones the affinities that comics share with the database logic. While non-chronological page layouts are a well-known feature of Ware’s comics, the database perspective offers fresh insights on overlooked page compositions and on the experimental structure of Building Stories. Furthermore, by looking at intermedial references to photography in Ware’s work, I will argue that drawing and style take a central role in articulating this nonlinearity, posing a challenge to the overbearing emphasis on narrative sequentiality still pervasive in comics theory.
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Crucifix, Benoît ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Doct. lang., lettres & trad. (paysage)
Language :
English
Title :
Frozen Moments. Database Logic and Narrative Drawing in Chris Ware’s "Building Stories"
Publication date :
30 January 2015
Event name :
Mediality and Multimodality across Media
Event organizer :
Klaus Sachs-Hombach & Jan-Noël Thon
Event place :
Tübingen, Germany
Event date :
du 28 janvier 2015 au 30 janvier 2015
Audience :
International
Available on ORBi :
since 25 September 2015

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