Some thoughts on crumpled storytelling

I like to think about the stories I tell as crumpled stories. In crumpled stories, just as with crumpled objects, some parts are exposed whilst other parts are hidden. We do not expect a crumpled object to be a flat surface. There is no fixed form, no stable architecture, just layers upon layers which I invite you to play with. To crumple, fold and cut. Crumpled stories move into the space, with a shape as yet undefined but multi-dimensional. Crumple a story and it will never be crumpled the same way again. I crumple my stories and throw them to you, my collaborator. Crumpled stories are able to fly like this, if only for a short moment.

Crumpled stories insist on their complexity. There is no easy way to describe this mess of folds, this compressed surface which became a body just like this. Crumpled by a hand, ready to throw it. With a crumpled story you will never get the full picture, hear the whole story. It's a crucial part of it, only to be told in parts. It seems arbitrary which parts you get to know but yet there is a pattern, a structure. Ungraspable but present. There is no full story, no flat surface, no fixed truth to rely on. Just a broken figure, exposed in parts and ready to be transformed yet another time.

Crumpled stories are neither composed nor accidental.They are a particular perspective of a storyteller in a certain moment. Crumpled storytellers stumble through life, never knowing where they are going and embracing that. They stumble upon folds and folds and folds. Never ending repetition yet never the same, always a new one.

Written by Emilia Schlosser