In Olia Lialiana’s ”My Boyfriend Came Back from The War” there is only one certainty – besides that the reader will initially be confused by her art – and that is that every reader will read the same lines in the beginning and in the end of the piece. “My boyfriend came back from the war. After dinner they left us alone.” is how the work begins, and with her name and year of publication (1996) is how the work ends. Did I ruin the tale of a returning soldier for you? Don’t worry I didn’t, since you as a reader decide what occurs between the beginning and the end, and how you interpret those occurrences. Thus after reading Liliana’s net art you will conceptualize the work in your own way, and trust me, it’s likely that your interpretation is going to be one of a kind.
“My Boyfriend Came Back from The War” is a net art that uses graphic interchange format in order to deliver a personal tale through said and unsaid expressions. What is being said and what is left unsaid? It’s decided by you. In fact, everything is decided by you! Liliana only places you into the piece. A piece where one region of the page presents the “boyfriend’s” presence through alternating images, and where the remaining frames serve as the venue for the conversation. An internal and external conversation that can be realized in a lot of ways, but which unlike other web literature, has an end – I use the word “lot,” since I have no idea as to all the possible ways the conversation can be realized.
If everything is decided by the reader, what is the purpose of this work? I think the meaning is once again, like in Firefly, is not in the words, but the way they are presented, and if the presentation indicates anything, then it’s that we are free to do what we will. Let’s not think about what the author intended! Once again the focus is not on the writer, but on the reader. If you read some of the remixed piece of “My Boyfriend Came Back from The War” – liked the one that reminds me of Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” by going backwards in time – you will definitely get the idea that this work focuses on the reader’s and not the writer’s imagination.