Obsolete.com
Related: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit - electronic music
Intro
http://www.obsolete.com features 120 Years of Electronic Music, a very good timeline onf electronic music developments, written by Simon Crab. It also features an article on Walter Benjamin's Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit
[The Artwork in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility] is a 'seminal' essay, much quoted, much imitated and the inspiration behind countless lectures, books and television documentaries, most notably John Berger's "Ways of Seeing", made for BBC TV (and Penguin books) in 1972. The significance of the essay is reflected in the number of essays that parody the title itself (placing "The Work of Art... in the Age of Mass Media (1983); in the Electronic Age (1988); in the Age of Cybernetic Machines (1988); in the Age of Ecological Recycling (1992); in the Age of Digital Reproduction" (1995); - to name but a few! cf.The essay was written by Walter Benjamin and published in 1936, but not translated into English until 1968 as "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". It's a complex essay, with a series of overlapping arguments and references that clearly relate to the time and place of its own production (post-Weimar Germany). So why is it considered so important?
Benjamin's central thesis is that the meaning of art changes with the character of its technical reproduction. It was written in a time of intense political upheaval and at a time of significant technological change. He considers such changes for their specific technical and cultural qualities whilst managing to avoid disdain for the products of mass culture (something his contemporaries in the Frankfurt School did not do). The advent of 'mechanical' reproduction meant that all attempts to create self-contained unique and autonomous work of art were now, for better or worse, hopelessly out-of-date.
These developments, it is argued, will bring art closer to people and make art less authoritarian in character; in other words, these 'new' technologies are inherently more democratic.
Most importantly, the essay emphasises a politics of art.
It argues that art, largely because of its past placement in religious ritual, acquired a kind of 'aura' giving its products an unique status. Benjamin claims that the authority or autonomy of original works of art derives from their non-reproducibility (except as fakes) which gives them a magical aura, a charismatic halo that surrounds authentic art objects making them seem like holy relics; unique, irreplaceable and hence priceless, produced by the hand of genius. He argues that this aura is eliminated by mass reproduction; appearing in widely-distributed books, posters, postcards, T-shirts, etc. However, it is important that these reproductions should not be seen as lesser copies. In fact, some recent commentators would have it that reproductions have become so much a part of our experience that the copy exists without an original.
Earlier forms of reproduction, such as woodcuts, etching, lithography, and so on, could replicate objects, but photography was different: "From today, painting is dead!" claimed artist Paul Delaroche on seeing his first Daguerreotype in 1839. Photography took over traditional roles of painting, immediately depicting landscapes, the still life and making portraits, etc; doubtless making portrait artists such as Delaroche redundant.
"For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens".
Both photography and film revealed things not seen before and change the conditions in which art is seen, freeing it of "its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be". Therefore art is no longer framed in the same terms.
The aura makes the (art) object 'distant' from ordinary people largely as a result of its physical setting (in the buildings of the ruling classes). Benjamin recognises "the desire of the contemporary masses to bring things closer spatially and humanly". Mechanical reproduction allows objects to come into close range "by way of its likeness, its reproduction". This effect is determined largely by the material characteristics particular to mechanical reproduction (such as the use of close-ups, slow motion, etc) as well as its transmittability - art comes to you, you no longer need to go to it, as John Berger has it.
In this way, "the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from tradition" and brings art closer to the 'masses'. Paul Valéry, quoted in the essay, seems to prefigure an image of the 'couch potato' with remote control in hand:
"Just as water, gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."
The essay welcomes the effects of mechanisation on the arts as a progressive development and stresses the democratic and participatorary aspects of such changes. This process will free the work of art from its dependence on ritual and originality, detach it from the domain of tradition and bring about the emancipation of art production.
Increasingly, it can be said that, "... the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative for instance, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics".
The title of the essay refers not simply to 'art' but to the 'artwork/work of art' - not just the image but the object produced through work - the commodity. It is therefore invested with value (associated with the labour of its production). The mechanical reproduction of art destroys the exclusivity of art as a commodity. What is important about new technological forms is the ways in which the commodity form of art is threatened along with a bourgeois notion of creativity and 'good' taste. Both Dada and Surrealism shared this distaste for the work of art with aura. Such threats to all that we consider to be 'great and good' have to be incorporated into the (art) system by capitalism to preserve its control and health of its institutions; it seeks to re-frame these changing conditions. A consumerist aura now extends to anything with a halo of the relic - anything with nostalgia value, or indeed with the allure of the 'new' - especially where technology is concerned in the name of progress.
The invention of photography facilitated a crisis in art as it attempted to cope with the loss of aura by retreating into purist forms of aesthetics; the l'art pour l'art movement (associated with the poet Mallarmé). Value judgments between the artistic merits of painting and photography entirely skirt the issue that mechanical reproduction had transformed the very nature of art. Benjamin says, "Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question - whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the nature of art - was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to film".
The 'aura' disappears when art is reproduced many times but also as it is easier to distribute more widely - replacing art's ritual value with its exhibition value. Technological and social change have allowed for the work of art to be seen in different viewing conditions.
Just as the work of art no longer exists purely in its presence in time and space, its meaning are made more transmittable too. As a result of this, "Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses towards art". Everyone becomes a connoisseur in the new arts; a "worker-correspondent", an 'art' critic - and not before time. It brings things closer- the idea of academic critical distance (of the art historian, for instance) is outmoded.
This effect will be seen most markedly in the medium of photography and, by extension in cinema- tography. Benjamin returns to his distinction between traditional and modern technologies, comparing the painter to a magician and the film-maker/photographer to a surgeon."The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web". Benjamin also recognises the contemporary masses' "ardent bent towards overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction."
Throughout the essay and in various footnotes, Benjamin speculates on the special relationship between mass reproduction and the reproduction of the masses in newsreels; about how "the mass is a matrix from which all traditional behaviour toward works of art issues today in a new form". Benjamin is thinking here of the 'Kino Pravda' newsreels of Dziga Vertov and the documentaries of Joris Ivens. He believes these new consumer-as-producer relations are inherent in the new media.
He makes a crude distinction between the products of mainstream Hollywood and Socialist film, contrasting the ways Soviet films use ordinary people as actors with those of Hollywood that promote the 'star system'. From this dissimilarity, he wishes to stress the point that changes in technology do not determine a political direction (therefore this argument is not technological-determinist!). There is both a potential to disrupt and reaffirm aura in every aspect of technological change. He recognises that the 'aura' can be retained through restricted copies (editions) and when it is viewed in restricted locations. Indeed, multi-million dollar prices for originals might be said to be proportional to their availability in mass reproduction which has made them all the more desirable to own.
He clearly prefers a situation where "... work itself is given a voice".
Under these (ideal) circumstances, the audience begins to identify with the camera (rather than performer) promoting a critical stance by way of its collective viewing. This is important for the author and audience relationship is not fixed and need not reflect authoritarian politics:
"Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer."
All these issues turn on power relations.
The essay concludes with a plea for the 'politics of aesthetics' in sharp contrast to an 'aesthetics of politics' which reflects the Futurists' confusion of the freedom of expression with the expression of freedom. It ends, with a warning that clearly reflects the time and place of its production:
"Its (Mankind's) self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicising art."
N.B.
Of course, it has to be remembered that all this was written in 1936 under particular historical and political conditions; and when "when old technologies were new" (to quote the title of a more recent book). This is the year of the 'Berlin Olympics', Picasso's 'Guernica', Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will' and Chaplin's 'Modern Times'.
The question is of the usefulness of this essay at this moment in time. How might this general line of enquiry translate to the present day where 'digital reproduction' has further affected the ways in which images (including the work of art) are produced, distributed and consumed? What does the essay have to tell us about the relationship between contemporary technological change and social change? How might the essay translate to present conditions?
--source: http://www.obsolete.com/artwork/commentary.html, accessed Apr 2004
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