Retelling

“Retelling” is a research project on the transformation of meaning in the course of collective transmission. The same story, retold in turn by forty people, makes it possible to observe how facts, emphases, intonation and the very structure of the narrative shift from one person to the next.

Presented in both audio and text form, the project examines how a private utterance, passing through a chain of interpretations, turns into a collective form. In this sense “Retelling” addresses the mechanisms underlying rumour, myth and the media circulation of information — the way a personal statement gradually becomes part of a shared field of meaning.