Group Members:

Anne Cong-Huyen

Andrew Kaladjian

Amanda Phillips

Background:

In 2001, The Guardian published an article, "The man who fell to earth," that describes in terrible and heartbreaking detail how the body of a young Pakistani man, Mohammed Ayaz, was seen falling from the underbelly of an airplane and ended up landing in a parking lot of a chain home improvement store, several feet away from a major highway in London.

In 2002, writer Amitava Kumar, published a brief essay, "Flight," in his essay collection Bombay, London, New York in which he reflects upon the story of Ayaz, and the difficult realities of escape, flight, and falling for the South Asian itinerant worker.

In 2007, Kate Pullinger and  Chris Joseph launched the "Flight Paths" blog with the intention of creating a "networked novel." Through their blog they worked through their writing process and solicited feedback and contributions with others. In 2009, they relaunched the site with an electronic story "Flight Paths," which narrates the story of the migrant Yacub, his attempt to enter the UK through the undercarriage of an airplane, and an Englishwoman, Harriet, whose life intersects with Yacub when his body lands on her car.

Screenshot of "Flight Paths" electronic novel introductory page, with links to different chapters, and to the Flight Paths Universe

Screenshot from Chapter 2 of "Flight Paths," "Yacub at the Airport"

Screenshot from Chapter 4 of "Flight Paths," "Dark Mass"

The story of Yacub and Harriet, though fascinating in itself, is only one part of the Flight Paths Universe, as Pullinger and Joseph term it, in which other contributors are invited to submit and share their own additions to this network of narrative constructed through various media (digital video, photographs, poems, short stories, websites, etc.)

Screen Shot of front page to the Fight Paths Universe

Screenshot with sample past contributions to the Flight Paths Universe

Proposal:

This project will attempt to look at how various texts have inspired and contributed in this resulting "universe." By looking at the various processes present in this example of "transmedia storytelling" (Jenkins, Convergence Culture) or "vast narrative" (Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, Third Person) we propose to examine how varied perspectives from different individuals and organizations have led to a very divergent and troubling, though potentially very powerful, practice of storytelling. 

"Transmedia storytelling" serves as a fruitful foundation for some of the underlying notions that motivate those individuals and institutions that have invested in the Flight Paths Universe, namely the concepts of collaboration and exchange in the narrative process. As Henry Jenkins writes, "Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making. To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels...these grassroots artists are finding themselves in confict with commerical media producers who want to exert greater control over their intellectual property" (21).

Another area of concern: the various parts of these narratives, especially as they are manifest in "Flight Paths," often egregiously elide issues of (mis)representation, privilege, and agency on the part of both the artist and the object/subject. How can this be addressed and how can it be reconciled with the potentialities of this form of narrative?

A second potential component of this project is the narrative mapping of the Flight Paths universe. Flight Paths begins with a split in narration: Harriet the housewife and Yacub the laborer. In the fifth segment of the "official" text, these two paths cross, and the resulting collision is supposed to inspire the user-driven production that follows. However, there is a disturbing split in the contributions to Flight Paths: narrative segments deal with travel and flight or immigrant labor, but they rarely cross. We would like to trace the paths of these narratives to see how a more productive critique of the narrative situation can result.