"What the Probes Report": An Exercise in Operative Fiction by Elena Peytchinska

With Operative Fiction, we introduce a practice of spatial storytelling driven by the dynamics of prepositions rather than verb-centric narratives. Here, the textual body becomes embedded in the medial spatiality of a printed book, digital interface, or performance space. The physical or virtual site of the text thus becomes integral to the storytelling process. Spatial production methods merge into the texture of the text itself; simultaneously, the text reshapes the unfolding of space, place, and site. The material and procedural qualities of the text actively engage and activate the digital interface as a site of narrative unfolding, intertwining textual and spatial experiences. We begin our first exercise in Operative Fiction with Thomas Ballhausen’s What the Probes Report, transposing the text from the printed page (FLORA, 2020) into the digital interface of a Research Catalogue exposition. The non-human protagonist – emerging through and evolving within the text – disrupts subject-centred narration. It becomes entangled in the linguistic and scenic fabric of its own development, thus, through its procedural logic and function, becoming an active agent in its own staging. A line, speculatively re-enacting the machine's operations, simultaneously traces the topographic texture of the digital landscape. Using a drawing technique typically applied in performance design drafts, we explore the friction between staging and spacing by deploying minimally visible images and textual cues of direction. The operational plasticity of these technical images enables dramaturgical intensities to gather (staging), while also allowing the story to disperse through the digital architecture of the exposition into hyperlinked virtual spaces (spacing). Alongside a linear reading mode, which follows the story’s original chronology, we propose a contingent reading mode activated via time codes. These time codes function both as compositional elements within the drawing and as hypertextual links. They suggest the duration and shape of a staged terrain, occasionally layering multiple time zones within a single topographic entity. In this way, the timelines act as more-than-texts, generating a multiplicity of positions and proximities, and intertwining temporal aspects of space with the speculative grammar of the story.

This exposition traces a connection between our monographs, Flora: Language Arts in the Age of Information (2020) and Fiction Fiction: Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling (2023), both published by De Gruyter / Edition Angewandte.
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/shared/1b398140b0c821f6978d3cc6b770307f

Thomas Ballhausen’s text, What the Probes Report, first published in Flora, prompted our further exploration of non-linear, non-finite, and more-than-text formats. The text unexpectedly entangled itself with – and began to operate through – Elena Peytchinska’s topographical text(ure)s, which in turn helped shape Fiction Fiction.

We warmly thank David Ender for his translation of the original text Was die Sonden berichten, and Katharina Holas (De Gruyter), Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmied (Edition Angewandte), and their teams for their generous support throughout the making of our monographs.

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