Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility Premise: centrality of media technology...
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Transcript of Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility Premise: centrality of media technology...
Work of Artin the Age of its Technological Reproducibility
• Premise: centrality of media technology in the production (and capacity) of modern culture
• Note text and type just one medium among many…
• In the 19 Theses, I see four main themes at work
Four Themes in Work of Art
• Theses I to IV: Media as the medium between the base and superstructure
• Theses V to VIII: Room for Play as a radical renunciation of eternal value
• Theses IX to XVII: Film Action as a model and transformation of all Social Action
• Theses XVIII & XIX: Futility within Capitalist Relations, leads to Fascism
Thesis I
• Early historical materialism (i.e. Marx) was formulated in infancy of capitalism
• Relation between culture and economy, structure and superstructure is only now possible to see in maturity
Thesis II
• Techno Repro makes art accompany everyday life
• Art keeps pace with speech and action
• Sound film (in 1935) is the apex of potential for art
Thesis III
• Reproduction has no history
• History and unique trace is source of aura
• Aura withers in the age of Techno Repro
• Substitutes a mass existence for uniqueness, liquidates value of tradition
Thesis IV
• That premise is not techno determinism
• The medium is conditioned by both history and nature, all perception is cultural
• Thus, decay of aura is response of the masses’ desire for experience. Aligns the masses with reality (and vice versa)
Thesis IX
• Film rejects mere copying and embraces the capacity for editing
• Use natural means to give convincing expression to the fairylike, the marvelous, the supernatural (Utopian imaginary?)
Thesis X
• Film reproduces its own production
• Film art comes only in montage
• Film actor is in a state of “test”, so that screen test is the epitome of acting
• Experience of masses itself is “test” confronted with the apparatus
• Film makes this test capable of exhibition
Thesis XI
• Film actor merely acts him or herself
• Completely forgoing aura and identity and essence
• No original, no aura, in film acting
Thesis XII
• Film actor is displaced before the masses
• Masses control the image
• BUT PROVISO: Not possible under capitalism, not as a mass audience…
• Question: Needs to be mass without being mass audience? How possible?
Thesis XIII
• Newsreel: everyone can be film actor
• Has parallels in newspapers, in bureaucracy, in democracy, in literacy…
• Distinction between author and public is no longer axiomatic
• BUT PROVISO: Not yet true for Hollywood
Thesis XIV
• Film Spectator, like the film actor, always has the camera (apparatus) in view
• Cinematographer penetrates, is a surgeon of reality
• Film provides the equipment-free possibility of interpenetration of reality with the technology (with the apparatus?)
• We are all cinematographers of reality…
Thesis XV
• Techno Repro changes relation of masses to art, infuses pleasure into appraisal
• In cinema, individual reaction is concentration of a mass reaction
Thesis XVI
• Social Function of cinema is equilibrium of humans and the apparatus
• Insight into the necessities governing lives
• Assures vast, unsuspected room-for-play (speilraum, field of action, gambling den)
Thesis XVII
• Film achieves goal of dadaism:
• Tactile, percussive constant change and loss of aura
Thesis V
• Art’s origins in cult and religious ritual
• But techno repro experience is based on politics!
Thesis VI
• History of Art infuses humans into the representation…
• Techno Repro takes them out, leaves room-for-play, interplay between nature and culture
• First mention of film: Trains apperception to deal with a vast apparatus… FN 11.
Thesis VII
• Face value, approval, cult value finds its last refuge in early photography
• As humans fades from focus, exhibition value becomes total, context is total, captions become obligatory
Thesis VIII
• State of technology compelled Greeks to give eternal values to art (because statues and bronzes)
• We lie on opposite pole with film… focus on editing and change, room for improvement in every shot
• Radical renunciation of eternal values
Thesis XVIII
• Mass produces different kind of participation
• The disreputable character of entertainment is flipside of devotion
• The distracted masses absorb the art into themselves… in becoming a mass, but also litterally in the play of light, lichtspeil
Thesis XIX
• HOWEVER (one last proviso)…
• Spectre of fascism shows that granting people expression without rights, leaving property relations intact, merely aestheticizes the political, leads to war.
• In this realm, only war sets mass goals while leaving property relations intact
• On the one hand, an essentially contemporary theory of ComCult, in 1935!
• Empirically grounded, historicized, playful reading of media in culture