NABOKOV-Forum

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> Here is a notice of a web site that appeared in the current issue of
> ARTFORUM. The site is so very odd and diverting that you simply may not care
> about alleged echos of Lolita ("Her enchanting precocity recalls Alice by
> way of Lolita" ; "Like Nabokov's eternal nymphet, Mouchette is a specter of
> fantasy, but to the community that's sprung up around her, she's virtually
> real").
>
> Wayne Daniels
>
> The aim of philosophy is to
> understand how things in the
> broadest possible sense of the
> term hang together in the broadest
> possible sense of the term.
> --Wilfrid Sellars.
>
> ________________________________________________________________
>
> Immaterial Girl
> Robert Bresson's 1967 film Mouchette, in which the fourteen-year-old
> protagonist is driven to suicide, might seem a grim premise for a website,
> but www.mouchette.org
> transcends the merely macabre to offer a gripping prototype for Net artist
> as ghost in the machine. Begun in October 1996 by an anonymous
> Amsterdam-based artist who calls herself "Mouchette" and (still) claims to
> be "nearly thirteen," the site has evolved from simple character
> impersonation into an interactive narrative, attracting devoted fans who
> send its heroine gifts and advice, including novel ideas on how to kill
> herself (for a 1997 work titled Suicide Kit).
> >From its pink-and-green color scheme to the elusive links that flit as flies
> across the pages (Mouchette means "little fly" in French), Mouchette's
> milieu strikes a subtle balance between innocence and ingenuity. Her
> enchanting precocity recalls Alice by way of Lolita. "Put your cheek on the
> monitor," she teases in Flesh & Blood, 1998, an image of her own face
> pressed against the screen. "How does it feel?" An e-mail link is provided
> for replies; if you write, Mouchette will almost certainly respond, in
> character of course. Ghost or no, she has exhibited a number of works as
> individual projects, and she's being considered for a group show at P.S. 1
> this fall.
> The conflation of artist and creation, of sophisticated desires and childish
> games, gives the site an air of intrigue tempered by melancholy, cannily
> evoked in the way Mouchette flaunts her fate even as she questions it ("How
> can I write this since I'm dead?"). Like Nabokov's eternal nymphet,
> Mouchette is a specter of fantasy, but to the community that's sprung up
> around her, she's virtually real.
> -JANE HARRIS