Rosemarie Trockel

Ralph Melcher

Rosemarie Trockel: “video!”

“If the word “video” is understood literally — viz. the Latin “I see” — to mean the filming of that which a person sees or chooses to see, then what is registered on videotape is linked with what the so-called “ego” has recorded in his or her consciousness. The magnetic recording can thus be said to be an embodiment of the “stream of consciousness”. However, when the video is played back it is disengaged from the actual events of consciousness. Has what is now visible become memory? By this point, at the latest, such stark distinctions have arisen between the ego, its awareness, perception of that awareness and repetitions of those perceptions that the very complexity of these relationships obscures the documentary nature of a videotape — and reveals that perception is unreliable for reassuring conscious awareness about its identity with the self. This is the fundamental theme in many of the videos by Rosemarie Trockel, and it is also one of the crucial questions posed by her artistic work as a whole.”