Peter Greenaway’s “The Tulse Luper Suitcases” project (2003-2005): transmedia storytelling as self-reference multimediality

As early as 1997, long before the publication of Henry Jenkins’s theory on media convergence, Peter Greenaway avowed that he wanted to start catering to different audiences; he wished to work in a project composed of instalments for several media which could work autonomously but still enable possible cross-over situations. Thus, "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" Project, which ran at full throttle from 2003 to 2005, was born. The project was first composed of five films, two books, a computer a game and several internet websites; over the years other books, installations, exhibitions theatrical work and VJ performances were added. This project is a perfect example of transmedia storytelling and probably one-of-a-kind, since it contradicts some of the assertions made by Henry Jenkins and Marie-Laure Ryan about that phenomenon. I contend that "TLS" is a top-down transmedia storytelling project according to Ryan’s definition, and, furthermore, of the “artistic” variety that Ryan considers nonexistent in practice. Transmedia storytelling, which is usually relegated to the entertainment industry and considered a marketing strategy, works very differently here. Reviewing Henry Jenkins’s two necessary conditions for producing “good” transmedia storytelling͞—world building and seriality—I contend that the most effective operation of the "TLS" Project is the successful marketing of Greenaway’s authoritative voice, his artistic persona. Regardless of the project’s point of entry, the user’s efforts always lead them to Greenaway in a centrifugal manner, since the "TLS" is a "mise en abyme" of his own "oeuvre", i.e., a reduplication or mirroring of his entire body of work via the main character, Tulse Luper, Greenaway’s alter ego present in his films since 1978.