Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism by Krauss

The reading starts out discussing the Vito Acconcio video piece entitled "Centers". In it, Acconci used a video monitor as a mirror and points at it. The viewer is placed inside of the eyes of Acconci pointing back at himself. This brings up the idea of video art being based on narcissism. It relates video to the idea of a spiritual medium; it reasons that there is both simultaneous reception and projection of an image and the human psyche is used as a conduit for this. Since video art has the ability to act as a mirror, the human body has often been used as the subject in the work and many times that human happens to be the artist. Through further examples of work from Acconci and from Holt, we are introduced to the idea of being surrounded by one's self. When the reading asks what is the difference between portraying yourself in a video piece and some other art form like a paint it answers, "Reflection, when it is a case of mirroring, is a move toward an external symmetry; while reflexiveness is a strategy to achieve a radical asymmetry, from within." I took this to mean that the act of reflection is a time-based idea that you can interact with and that reflectiveness is often a one-sided means of achieving a point of view. Three ideas that run counter to the main argument of the article are (1) criticizing the medium by exploiting it, (2) depictions of an assault on video to break out of its hold, and (3) installations that use it as a subspecies of other art forms. It wraps up with discussing Campus's art. It is described as a way for him to break down the world into smaller groups and reassert himself as the object.



This was an interesting reading. It allowed me to realize how the field could be categorized as narcissistic. Prior to reading I thought of narcissism with only a negative connotation in mind but I realized that through the guise of narcissism, self exploration is made possible. Through many of the works described in the article, artists were interacting with their own digital reflections: an exploration that would not have been able to occur had it not been through this relatively young medium.


Question: Reasoning that narcissism can be achieved in most, if not all, fields of art, why does video attract the most attention for it? Is it just the easiest medium to work with your own image or is there another reason?