My interest in unique narratives originated from the moment I got acquainted with the work of Harmony Korine. From "Kids" to "Gummo", I delved into his universe, leading me to associated artists like Larry Clark and Todd Solondz. After that, I returned to studying Korine’s work and got my hands on his book “A Crack-Up at the Race Riots” [1]. As the Amazon description reads: “In actuality, it is a collection of hard-luck stories, off-and-on-color jokes, script scraps, found letters, free rhymes, drug flashbacks, and other missing scenes, all exploring the world of show business with fingers prying in the cracks and feet set lightly in the black humors of the real world. With chapters about books found in Monty Clift's basement and Tupac Shakur's 10 favorite novels, and a set of 11 suicide notes with room included for the reader's signature, the book is a one-of-a-kind post-postmodern examination of the dangers of public life”[2]. As the author claims: it’s the next great American choose-your-own-story novel. Though labeled as a novel, I found no clear connection between the pages, other than certain similarity regarding the nature of the writing. This uncertainty fuelled my passion to understand it better.

I felt doubtful about the decision to choose the works of Harmony Korine as a sort of starting point for this text. It felt somehow wrong to do it for two specific reasons. The first: in my understanding Korine’s work is meticulously made NOT to be analyzed and understood in a straight-forward way using simple analytical tools and theories of film narrative. He is a creative iconoclast whose work doesn’t want to be perceived as “just a book” or “just a movie” so I knew that I was taking up a task of examining work that is much easier described or summarised than explained[3].

The second reason is simply the cult following but also the mainstream status of Harmony Korine, which clashed with ambition to study something that’s outside the established, widely-known popular culture and therefore I felt a clash on many occasions during the research process. To tackle this issue I attempt to explore highly specific aspects of the oeuvres of Korine and other creatives, in a process that hopefully leads to the production of new knowledge, useful in the context of narrative creation and creative direction. The bottom line is to examine alternative narrative methods in the analyzed literary and film material. My goal is to uncover some methodologies and ways of “activating” the viewer with specific elements of narrative complexity and uncertainty, that can be utilized across a variety of mediums and disciplines of visual arts. I am not aiming to perform a comprehensive, general study on the topic of alternative narrative methods, but rather to summon certain interesting and meaningful examples that can hopefully be found inspiring and productive for a fellow creator.