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German to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Cinema, Film, TV, Drama
German term or phrase:ausmachen
"Obschon die Interaktion des Protagonisten mit der Kamera bzw. dem Monitor ein zentrales Moment darstellt, erscheint es im Hinblick auf spätere Praktiken nicht die narzisstische Selbstbespielung allein zu sein, die das Medium **ausmacht**, sondern deren Veröffentlichung. Dies bedeutet, dass damit gerade keine „Einkapselung“ des Selbst in eine technologische Klammer geschieht, wie Krauss behauptet, sondern das Gegenteil: Der Autor als Subjekt distanziert sich in dem Moment gegenüber seinem eigenen Abbild, in dem er dieses der Öffentlichkeit preis gibt."
All the rest is clear, but I can't fit any of the dictionary meanings of "ausmachen" into the context (except perhaps "account for", and it sits rather awkwardly). Thanks in advance for any help.
Explanation: as in the defining element. This is about performativity/performance (Bespielung) or here Selbstbespielung:
Identity and Performativity Saturday 17th March 2007 This study day explores the various ways in which performance has been used in recent art, focusing on a range of media including photography, performance, installation, video art and painting. Speakers discuss the relationship between performance and 'performativity', and the uses of portraiture, self-portraiture and 'the face' in contemporary practice. They also explore issues of gender and the construction of sexual identities in the work of contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas. Speakers include Gill Perry, Gilda Williams, Gavin Butt and Lara Perry.
Watch the Identity and Performativity sessions on Tate Channel
Session 1: Gender, Performance and Play: An Introduction Speaker: Professor Gill Perry, Head of Art History, Open University
Professor Gill Perry reviews some of the issues for the day, exploring the relationship between gender, performativity and play. This programme maps out the wide range of practices and theories associated with the labels 'performance', 'performance art' and 'performativity', providing a toolkit with which to explore some of the practices involved. Drawing briefly on the work of Gilbert and George, the programme addresses ideas of gender identity as 'performed' rather than innate, looking closely at a range of recent practices in which the artist's body is the primary subject of representation - whether in photography, paint or live performance. http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/studydays/identityandperform...
Philip Auslander - The Performativity of Performance Documentation - PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28:3 PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28.3 (2006) 1-10 The Performativity of Performance Documentation Philip Auslander Consider two familiar images from the history of performance and body art: one from the documentation of Chris Burden's Shoot (1971), the notorious piece for which the artist had a friend shoot him in a gallery, and Yves Klein's famous Leap into the Void (1960), which shows the artist jumping out of a second-story window into the street below. It is generally accepted that the first image is a piece of performance documentation, but what is the second? Burden really was shot in the arm during Shoot, but Klein did not really jump unprotected out the window, the ostensible performance documented in his equally iconic image. What difference does it make to our understanding of these images in relation to the concept of performance documentation that one documents a performance that "really" happened while the other does not? I shall return to this question below. As a point of departure for my analysis here, I propose that performance documentation has been understood to encompass two categories, which I shall call the documentary and the theatrical. The documentary category represents the traditional way in which the relationship between performance art and its documentation is conceived. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/performing_arts_jour...
Die Fotografin Line Mocké zeigt Selbstbildnisse, intime und persönliche Bilder. In unterschiedlicher Maskierung zeigt sich ein Kaleidoskop vielfältiger Befindlichkeiten: kokett-naive Selbstbespielung, burleske Verzerrung, freche Zügellosigkeit oder kühle, duldsame Verschlossenheit. http://www.tuebingen.de/index_17126.html
Closed Circuit bedeutet die gleichzeitige Aufnahme und Wiedergabe eines Objekts oder Menschen. Closed Circuit Installationen lassen den Betrachter im Videobild zeitgleich erscheinen (real-time). Diese technische Möglichkeit ist relativ jung und ermöglicht einen Schritt Richtung Interaktivität, was die Natur der Videokunst stark beeinflußt. (H.Klotz, 1996, S.8-12) Diese Möglichkeit der direkten Selbstbespielung, die dadurch resultierende Selbstreflexion mit der gleichzeitigen Kontrolle, löst eine starke Auseinandersetzung des Künstlers mit sich selbst aus. Auch der Betrachter kann durch den Closed Circuit selbst Teil des Kunstwerkes werden, eben selbst Inhalt und aktiv Beteiligter. Es entsteht hierdurch eine Art Narziß-Charakter des Mediums. (Videokunst in Deutschland, S.14) Der Narziß-Charakter in Kunstwerken ist bereits zu Zeiten der Romantik oder Renaissance wesentlicher Bestandteil in der Malerei. Im Selbstbildnis kann der Künstler kompromißlos darstellen, was ihm in den meisten Fällen von Auftragskunst aus unterschiedlichsten Gründen unmöglich ist. Wesentliche Strömungen in der Kunstentwicklung der fünfziger und sechziger Jahre, besonders der Aktionismus, das Happening und Concept Art führen zur Aufhebung der Trennung von Kunstwerk und Künstler, was eine Ausgangsbasis und wichtige Bedingung für die CLOSED-CIRCUIT Arbeiten in der Videokunst darstellt. Das Medium wird mit dem Ich identisch, der Mensch wird Demonstrationsobjekt. Der Mensch ist das, was Videokünstler bevorzugt abbilden, sei es der Eigene oder fremde Körper. Es ist eine neue Form des Selbstbildnisses. Im Unterschied zu einem Spiegel sieht man sich im Monitor seitenrichtig, das heißt so, wie einen sonst andere Menschen betrachten können. Während der Spiegel als plane Fläche zumeist vertikal hängt und ein Gegenstand ist, vor dem man agiert, ist die Videokamera beweglich und kann ,,Handlungen" an einem ruhenden Körper registrieren. http://www.grin.com/e-book/98353/videokunst-ein-spiegel-unse...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 4 days (2010-09-02 09:15:54 GMT) Post-grading --------------------------------------------------
Thanks to everyone. Eventually, it was Helen who set me on track, and while I have to preserve a consistency in my use of terms ("medium" is always pre-existent), I needed that shove. 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
to have some sort of art-historical genealogy when you present works like this. But don't think I'm missing things - I'm supposed to be co-curating a performance museum, in fact (it's called MoMO, Museum of Mental Objects) :D (It has MOMA's blessing).
It is not 'recording oneself' but 'performing oneself'. As a viewer of whatever film/photograph is made, the person captured can look at themselves in a different way than they might if looking in a mirror (ie not reversed). Imagine you are told you have 10 minutes to 'be yourself' on camera. The product will be something other than you unwatched or unrecorded. It is another instance of distanciation that is being explored here. That seems, from what little I have seen of your article, to be the subject matter, or at least part of it.
No prob. But as to "medium", you have to bear in mind it's a material thing in art (like "oil on canvas" in museum labels). A work like Acconci's usual production would be labelled "video". And even if it's not used by an artist, it would still be a medium - like TV.
I'm really sorry about the subject/object confusion. The grammar part of my brain doesn't work when it's late. It is the act of publishing a video (for instance on Youtube), not the act of recording it, that makes the result a medium. I'm fairly confident that there's no other way to interpret this. Again: my apologies for muddling.
but I ran into another problem - the sentence doesn't complete itself that way. So I'm back to the object and reading it as Helen suggests... but I agree, video is the medium (genre is video-portrait). Only, in my particular case, it was closely linked to the camera itself and could be said to be the camera (as a place where the dialogues and the audience point of view meet - the mediating centre).
Es ist nicht die Selbstbespielung (pe se), sondern die Veröffentlichung, die das Medium ausmacht. That's how I read this. I don't see how a medium can identify anything. If you imagine that the "medium" is a video clip on Youtube (not the camera, as has been suggested), it gels.
If the "Medium" denotes the camera and makes "Medium" the subject of the sentence, then there is only one way to read this: the camera identifies/sees/spots/recognizes/discerns/identifies (like Johannas telescope) not just (allein) the self-recording but also its publicizing/publication (through the person's disassociation from himself by putting himself in front of the camera). So, this would be the second meaning of "ausmachen" as in seeing/spotting something as suggested by Johanna.
I read this as saying that the narcissistic performativity of the self is not the defining element of the medium (the camera), whereas the 'publication' of that performativity is. The acting would be as naught without the camera's capacity to share it with the outer world.
in the sense of comprise, make up. I mean, being an element of. The product is a video-generated digital image, but I think it's still the camera mediating. Thing is, it's quite independent of what we do with it, don't you think?
Not (only) "Selbstbespielung" (interesting word - I first read it as "Selbstbespiegelung") but its Veröffentlichung (publication/showing it to the public) is what constitutes the medium (constitutes = is what identifies the medium - in that sense the medium is the object of identification). One could also say the Selbstbespielung + its Veröffentlichung is the essential characteristic of/characterizes the medium. I am just wondering, I take "medium" as the medium of film or video film, not the actual camera although this is the essential instrument used. Selbstbespielung (self-recording) and Selbstbespiegelung - see: http://derknoefel.de/index.php?id=42&L=1
precisely for the reason you state, it can't be an object, but as a subject it doesn't constitute. The medium (this one, specifically) is a video-camera. A lot of people criticised Krauss because she attributed it functions (like therapy). They pointed out it was a neutral device.
That's interesting! I can't turn the medium into an object in your sentence. Maybe you have preceding context to corroborate that, but otherwise, the statement seems to say that Veröffentlichung, not Selbstbespielung, is what constitutes the medium. To make "medium" an object, Selbstbespielung AND Veröffentlichung would have to have awareness. All the best!
On p. 59 she says "That an artist's work be published, reproduced and disseminated through the media has become... virtually the only means of verifying its existence as art". Hence, if we read "Medium" as the subject (instead of object), using "discern" for ausmacht makes sense. I did try "constitute" in the first place, but no way - either as subject or object - could one be said to constitute the other.
Thanks to all, but especially to Wendy - it was while juggling her option back and forth in the sentence that the inversion dawned on me.
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Answers
5 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +2
constitute
Explanation: ... that constitutes the medium ... is how I would word this (one out of a couple of other options, I guess).
itla Local time: 06:38 Native speaker of: English, German
18 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
which is crucial to
Explanation: or @ itla: constitutes the essence of
or is fundamental to
Wendy Streitparth Germany Local time: 06:38 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 4
peer agreement (net): +2
