This is one of the first publications in which my name was listed in the imprint as a translator (alongside Jeremy Gaines, Lilian-Astrid Geese, Ina Pfitzner, Stephan Kovats, Michael Robinson & Richard Watts — all colleagues I have never met).
Of the 16 texts in the book — by Ursula Frohne, Ulrike Rosenbach, Sabine Flach, Elke Bippus & Dirck Möllmann, Mona Schieren, Lydia Haustein, Dieter Daniels, Katharina Ammann, Hans D. Christ, Dennis Del Favero & Neil Brown & Jeffrey Shaw & Peter Weibel, Jean-François Guiton, Rudolf Frieling, Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Rens Frommé & Sandra Fauconnier, Lori Zippay, and Bart Rutten — I translated the 4th, by Elke Bippus & Dirck Möllmann, entitled "Montage and Image Environments: Narrative Forms in Contemporary Video Art".
English-language example of the text: "Montage and collage are considered paradigmatic techniques of the modernist avant-garde. Montage is the generic term for a process which aims at achieving conceptually interpretational associations through the intercombination of heterogeneous individual items. The modern meaning of the term developed correlatively with the industrial production processes of the 18th century and was associated early with photography and film. Collage pursues an analogous principle within the field of painting, music, sound and literature. In collage, as with montage, the following applies: 'Diverse content, unrelated outside of the piece, converge. Forms, which as such are in principle always assimilatory, are to lesser extent coupled than disparate sensory information'. [...]"
English-language example of the text: "Montage and collage are considered paradigmatic techniques of the modernist avant-garde. Montage is the generic term for a process which aims at achieving conceptually interpretational associations through the intercombination of heterogeneous individual items. The modern meaning of the term developed correlatively with the industrial production processes of the 18th century and was associated early with photography and film. Collage pursues an analogous principle within the field of painting, music, sound and literature. In collage, as with montage, the following applies: 'Diverse content, unrelated outside of the piece, converge. Forms, which as such are in principle always assimilatory, are to lesser extent coupled than disparate sensory information'. [...]"
Imagine 12 pages more.
I rather enjoyed translating that text, and made it an exercise to retain the original German sentence structure as much as possible. I came to truly appreciate the practicality of "former" and "latter".
So, what's the book about? Well, to simply quote Amazon.co.uk: "With a history of more than 30 years, media art plays an increasingly important role in the international discourse on contemporary art. The reception of canonical video works and electronic media installations is however restricted to temporary and locally defined displays in museum exhibitions or confined to incomplete catalogue documentations. This volume provides a unique combination of theoretical reflections on the reproducibility, preservation of authenticity, and juridical implications of emulation techniques with practical approaches to archiving methods and commercial aspects of media art's accessibility. It is an indispensable guide to the pros and cons for new forms of de-centralized systems of mediation and the growing demands for liberal rules and easy access to on-line presentations of media art. Uncomparable to other current publications, the book offers a practical manual with checklists of relevant websites and content profiles of major distribution companies."
