Methods of Translating
For the written response this brief I choose to translate Susan Sontag’s chapter „On Style“ in her book Against Interpretation and Other Essays (2009, pp. 15–36) by applying the style of the introduction in Jeremy Till’s book Architecture Depends (2009, pp. 18-61). The chapter’s main argument will be rendered into an elevator pitch in the following:
Susan Sontag, a man and an elevator
The main point of my writing is simple. While working on this text, I was often questioned,
„What are you writing about, Susan?”; „You want the quick or the long answer?” I would respond.
“A lift conversation in between floors.”
“Style is foremost decision making in an artwork. Secondly, the supposed contradiction between form and content is what plagues any current usage of the term ‘style’. My writing investigates this antagonism.”
The lift brings us from ground to the first floor.
“Now, by contradiction, how exactly do you define it?”
“I meant,” I glance at the display indicator, which flicks from one floor to the other, “the concept that style is not an adjunct to content. A lot of criticism doesn’t seem to grasp that. What they believe is that they are properly covered by some intellectual clause about the crude demarcation of style from content, whilst reinforcing the very thing they are theoretically trying to deny with their judgements. And since humankind is able to adopt multiple attitudes, the arts are consequently affected by thousands of potential styles.
“Isn’t that super obvious,” says my lift attendant, „what’s the fuss about?”
“No fuss, but perhaps a major issue, which is that critics are prone to place content on the inside and style as the shell. The dislike of one ‚shell’ is always a dislike of a particular shell. Well, you can’t have style-less artworks, you can only have artworks that fit into different stylistic patterns and norms.”
“Well, wasn’t that obvious too? And you want to be a good writer? Your writing seems to contain only two truisms” This is where he got me. This argument maybe is so obvious that it seemed too obvious to say out loud. Or are we afraid to seem to simple minded? Are we too comfortable? Or is there a fear or taboo around this topic?
In the silent hope that my last statement is true I continue:
“Ok, fine, so what if this writing actually talks about the collision of both of these truisms and the gulf that divides them?”. The gulf between what style is (in all its dependence and contingency), and what criticism would like it to stand for (in all its false perfection). So what?“
Not capable in answering he mimics a mix of amusement and concern (well you know he also works as an art critic), perhaps recognising his own weakness while wishing to shake it off.
“So what if,” I proceed to underline my point, „my writing makes the argument that we need to stop treating artworks as propositions and deny that they are stylised? That the inevitable truth of art is that it is an experience, not a proposition nor a response to a problem. That the best artworks are those who can say things that are unsayable and style is something that accompanies every form of this experience. What happens then?
“Then maybe I would read your text.”
On the fourteenth floor we both get out of the elevator.
Sontag, S. (2009) Against Interpretation and Other Essays, London: Penguin.
Till, J. (2009) Architecture Depends, Cambridge: MIT Press.