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Video:TheAestheticsof Narcissism
Rosalind Krauss
October, Vol. 1. (Spring, 1976), pp. 50-64.
Stable URL:
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Mon Jan 22 19:34:29 2007
Video:
T h e Aesthetics
of
Narcissism
ROSALIND KRAUSS
It was a commonplace of criticism in the 1960s that a strict application of
symmetry allowed a painter "to point to the center ofthe canvas" and, in so doing,
to invoke the internal structure ofthe picture-object. Thus "pointing to the center"
was made to serve as one ofthe many blocks in that intricately constructed arch by
which the criticism ofthe last decade sought to connect art to ethics through the
"aesthetics of acknowledgement." But what does it mean to point to the center of
a
t.v. screen?
In a way that is surely conditioned by the attitudes of Pop Art, artists' video is
largely involved in parodying the critical terms of abstraction. Thus when Vito
Acconci makes a video tape called
Centers
(1971), what he does is literalize the
critical notion of 'pointing' by filming himself pointing to the center of a television
monitor, a gesture he sustains for the 20-minute running time ofthe work. The
parodistic quality of Acconci's gesture, with its obvious debt to Duchampian irony,
is clearly intended to disrupt and dispense with an entire critical tradition. It is
meant to render nonsensical a critical engagement with the formal properties of a
work, or indeed, a genre of works-such as 'video'. The kind of criticism
Centers
attacks is obviously one that takes seriously the formal qualities of a work, or tries to
assay the particular logic of a given medium. And yet, by its very
mis-en-sctne,
Centers
typifies the structural characteristics ofthe video medium. For
Centers
was
made by Acconci's using the video monitor as a mirror. As we look at the artist
sighting along his outstretched arm and forefinger towards the center ofthe screen
we are watching, what we see is a sustained tautology: a line of sight that begins at
Acconci's plane of vision and ends at the eyes of his projecteddouble. In that image
of self-regard is configured a narcissism so endemic to works of video that I find
myself wanting to generalize it as
the
condition ofthe entire genre. Yet, what would
it mean to say, "The medium of video is narcissism?
"
For one thing, that remark tends to open up a rift between the nature of video
and that ofthe other visual arts. Because that statement describes
a
psychological
rather than a physical condition; and while we are accustomed to thinking of
psychological states as the possible subject of works of art, we do not think of
V i t o Acconci.
Centers.
1971.
(Photo: Kathy Dillon.)
[...].. .Video: T h e AestheticsofNarcissism a double repression: for through it consciousness of temporality and of separation between subject and object are simultaneously submerged The result of this submergence is, for the maker and the viewer of most video-art, a kind of weightless fall through the suspended space ofnarcissism There are, of course, a complex set of answers to the question of why... But the condition of these works is to acknowledge as separate the two surfaces on which the image is held -the one the viewer's body, the other the wall-and to make them register as absolutely distinct It is in this distinction that the wall-surface -the pictorial surface-is understood as a n absolute Other, as part ofthe world of objects external to the self Further, it is to specify that the mode of. .. contains the projector Inside the room, the viewer is out ofthe range of the camera and therefore nothing appears on the wall-surface It is only as he leaves the room, or rather is poised at the threshhold ofthe doorway that he is both illumined enough and far enough into the focal range of the camera to register as an image Since that image projects onto the very wall through which the doorway leads, the. .. been performing the actions recorded on the tape, from within the coils of the camera/ monitor circuit, breaks through the parenthetical closure ofthe feedback situation to face the camera directly-without the agency ofthe monitor's rolling image If it is the paired movement ofthe video scan and the tape-reel that is isolated as a physical object in Vertical Roll, it is the stasis ofthe wall-plane... triangular field ofthe works, the viewer sees nothing but the large, luminous plane of one ofthe walls in a darkenedroom Only when he moves into the range ofthe camera is he able to realize an image (his own) projected onto the wall's pictorial field However, the conditions of seeing that image are rather special in both m e m and dor In the latter the camera is placed in the hallway leading to the room... forced to enter the video situation, and where that time is understood as a propulsion towards an end In this work access to a sense of time has come from fouling the stability ofthe projected image by de-synchronizing the frequencies ofthe signals on camera and monitor The rhythmic roll ofthe image, as the bottom of its frame scans upward to hit the top ofthe screen, causes a sense of decomposition... only parallel to the plane ofthe illusion, but continuous with it His body is therefore both the substance ofthe image and, as well, the slightly displaced substance ofthe plane onto which the image is projected In m e m both camera and projector are to one side ofthe wall-plane, stationed in such a way that the range ofthe camera encompasses a very thin corridor-like OCTOBER slice of space that... which Video: T h e AestheticsofNarcissism 61 the zoom is included as one possibility) or by cutting And while it is true that Jonas has had to use these techniques in making Vertical Roll, the constant sweep ofthe image renders these movements invisible That is, the grammar of the camera is eroded by the dislocating grip ofthe roll As I have said, the illusion this creates is one of a continuous dissolve... video as a body centered between the parenthesis of camera and monitor Due to Vertical Roll's visual reference through the monitor's action to the physical reality ofthe tape, one side of this parenthesis is made more active than the other T h e monitor side ofthe double bracket becomes a reel through which one feels prefigured the imminence of a goal or terminus for the motion That end is reached... against the grain of those 525 lines of which the video picture is made Because one recognizes it as intended, the vertical roll appears as the agency of a will that runs counter to an electronically stabilized condition Through the effect of its constant wiping away ofthe image, one has a sense of a reflexive relation to the video grid and the ground or support for what happens to the image Out of this . tapes are another example of the double effect of the
Vito Acconci.
Air
Time.
1973.
55
Video: T h e Aesthetics of Narcissism
performance-for -the monitor others, the revivification of the
pathogenic conflict and the overcoming of the resistance due to the repressions, cannot
be
effected with
them. They