1. Bourriaud writes of the way art today uses the 'precariousness' of everything to find its own, new strength p 84. This echoes the Buddhist principle of Sunyata, or basically transience:
"Śūnyatā signifies that everything one encounters in life is empty of absolute identity, permanence, or an in-dwelling 'self'. This is because everything is inter-related and mutually dependent - never wholly self-sufficient or independent. All things are in a state of constant flux where energy and information are forever flowing throughout the natural world giving rise to and themselves undergoing major transformations with the passage of time." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81)
2. I had the chance to see the 'Tate Thames Dig', 1999, by Mark Dion, that Bourriaud refers to on page 89,and it was a fascinating world. The drawers full of teeth, and drawers full of bones, the drawers full of shards of glass and ceramics- its quantity of artifacts and the scientific-style of displaying those artifacts gave me as a viewer, a sense of context in humanity that I hadn't gotten in the Natural History Museum. In this way, building a strength on the transience of things, the piece does support Bourriaud's theory of the 'precarious' aesthetic.
3.Bourriaud describes the art of Abraham Poincheval and Laurent Tixador, wherein they ‘place themselves in physical and mental danger’ p109. How does their art differ from an episode of Survivor? And why do privileged people in no real danger place themselves in real danger, while other people would do anything to get themselves out of danger and can’t? Perhaps the 'extreme adventure' art of Poincheval and Tixador does not differ much from the television show Survivor, which capitalizes on the boredom or desire to escape of its viewers. I suppose people pursue this style of art, which is perhaps needlessly, potentially harmful, because of the privelege of not actually being in too much danger.
4.Maybe this is a shallow reflection, but in response to this reading I keep thinking of how right Bourriaud is about our concern now with linking time and space, and how his theory relates to the television series, Caprica. A sci-fi show based on telling the pre-story to Battle Star Gallactica, Caprica takes place in the future, with a 'real' world story running parallel to a virtual world story, wherein the same characters have avatars that function in an entirely virtual city. Having grown up on The Dukes of Hazard and The Love Boat, a story like this, with its interconnected drama and fast paced referrals to religion, time, space, cultures and technology is a pedestrian example of how even in the non-art world of prime time T.V. we deal with the 'temporal bifurcations' of which Bourriaud speaks.
5. I am hung up on the poetic emphasis of translation. the quote 'I feel a closeness to all meaningful/meaningless gaps' (Anri Sala) creates a pause itself. I wonder if the transience of things these days has given rise to a question we haven't had to ask before, something like, if nothing is really there, then are the nothingness (the meaningful/meaningless gaps) more real to us?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Images from Bourriaud's Radicant, p 79-140
http://www.actnow.com.au/Opinion/Australian_Indigenous_art_at_risk.aspx
Aboriginal Art, artist unknown
http://www.recirca.com/reviews/2005/franzackermann/fa.shtml
Franz Ackermann: untitled (mental map: values of the west), (Faceland III) , 2003, mixed media on paper, 28 x 29.6 cm: courtesy IMMA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/jun/23/classified-tate-britain-contemporary-art?picture=349244688
Mark Dion, Tate Thames Dig, 1999
http://www.artwurl.org/interviews/INT051.html
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, from Landmark (footprints)
(2001)
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/bjorgulfsson/bjorgulfsson8-23-06_detail.asp?picnum=1
Jason Rhoades,Black Pussy Soiree Cabaret Macramé in Los Angeles, 2006
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424622535/424301160/raining-cats-and-dogs.html
Robert Filliou, Raining Cats and Dogs, 1964-69
http://greenlanddesign.org/coleg/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/schwitters2.jpg
Kurt Schwitters, Merz Pictures, 1921. montage on board.
Image Souce
Haim Stienbach, Shelf with Ajax, 1980
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Images Relating to Bourriaud's Radicant, p 11-78
image source
Julie Mehretu,"Dispersion" 2002 collection Nicolas and Jeanne Greenberg, New York
image source
Tsuyoshi Ozawai "Giblets hotpot/Fukuoka" (from ‘Vegetable weapon’ series) 2002
image source
Chris Ofili, "Afrodizzia (2nd version)", 1996. Victoria Miro Gallery
image source
Kim Sooja "Bottari Truck", 2000. Used clothes and bed covers, Rodin gallery, Seoul. Courtesy Samsung Museum, Seoul. Photo by Kim Hyun Soo.
image source
Barthelemy Toguo, "Purification XXIII." Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery
Altermodern Radicantity: 5 responses to The Radicant p11-78
1.On page 17, Bourriaud begins to define what he sees as the next step for art for everyone in the world. He says " today there remains the task..of inventing modes of thought and artistic practices that would this time be directly informed by Africa, Latin America, or Asia and would integrate ways of thinking and acting current in, say Nunavut, Lagos, or Bulgaria. This time around, to have an impact, African tradition won't have to influence new Dadaists in a furture Zurich, nor will Japanese print art have to rely on inspiring tomorrow's Manets. Today's artists, whatever latitiudes they live in, have the task of envisaging what would be the first truly worldwide culture.'
He begins by representing the unspoken for groups of previous movements, then proceeds to again speak for them, and all artists, by giving them a prescribed task, the task of 'envisaging what would be the first truly worldwide culture.' Why do artists have to do that? Is the role of artist to figure out what a culture needs, or what theorists or critics want to see, and then to make it? Isn't it more mysterious than that? More interesting, more creative?
My answer is art making is more interesting and creative than answering a prescribed need. As humans we all seek to communicate what we think is important, to grow it, to make it more. Everything is trying hard to stay alive, even ideas, even Nicolas Bourraud's ideas. He is a brilliant observer, theorist and critic and he has ideas about what needs to happen. Another approach would be to watch where things lead, to observe, to aknowlege that we don't know where art is going but to observe what is emerging. Art, after all, isn't life or death. We can afford to let it be what it is, because it will anyway.
Bourraud writes a great deal about the impending globalization. If that is the case, impending globalization, then why the worry about finding an art that communicates it? Left to its own device, won't art reflect its world just fine?
2. Why did Bourriaud choose the image of a plant if he is rather against the root? Why not choose a spider, that makes a web? On page 21 he states 'it's roots that make individuals suffer; in our globalized world, they persist like phantom limbs after amputation, causing pain impossible to treat, since they affect something that no longer exists.' Bourriaud's experience of the root is a valid one, but perhaps there is more than suffering to a root? Ideas such as grounding and nourishment? The radicant picks up and puts down roots as it goes, and I have moved enough times to think that sounds like more suffering than staying put, or detatching once and for all. In terms of metaphor, this continual wandering may be closer to the present day experience, what with travel, television and the internet, but I also believe people can be fond of their roots. Visiting a place is not the same as putting roots there.
3.“Postmodern multiculturalism has failed to invent an alternative to modernist universalism.” p 35 Was it trying to invent or describe something? Or was it just at one stage in the game of noticing things needed to change or were changing?
I don't know enough about postmodernism to answer my own question. But it is almost the same as my first question,if it were trying to invent a new way of being; that is, Is the job of art criticism or theory to name a movement or shape it? Or is that just a manifesto? Are manifestos effective? Or do they just preach to the choir?
4.My favorite observation: “The anticolonial model, which permeates cultural studies and discourses on art, undermines the foundations of modernism without, however, replacing them with anything other than that very gesture of hollowing it out; that is to say, with emptiness.” P. 35
This is a helpful observation that provides good information. I think Bourriaud should leave it there. Let the artists come up with a new model themselves, the way people do.
Bourriaud also says "and in that tireless deconstruction of the Western white male voice, we scarcely hear anything anymore but the soft voice of an aimless negativity."p 36
I say, so what? Maybe we’re not over it yet. And maybe it’s all to easy to say it’s a ‘tireless deconstruction’ when you yourself are a white male. "Are there many blacks or women feeling tired of it?
5.Bourriaud talks about Julie Mehretu by saying "Faced with a reality that cannot be grasped by representational pictorial means, the abstract, diagrammatic, statistical, and infographic lexica allows us to cause the furtive forms of command and the structure of our political reality to appear." He later writes "To take abstraction, which has become an ideological instrument, and draw it onto the side of singularity in this way is a plastic operation that possesses a powerful political potential. If the codes of the dominant representation of the world are based in abstraction, that is because abstraction is the very language of inevitability." p 59. I am reading this to mean, she uses marks and symbols that are common to charts and maps that are made to explain certain things. She, however, uses them to create or explain her situation, her interior city. I find Mehretu's work very powerful, but is what makes it fit in with Bourriaud's ideas of flexibility, mobility, rootlessness and connection the fact that she uses those symbols or types of marks in some of her work? Once again, I wonder if he finds any value in a painting or print of Mehretu's that doesn't use those symbols? I guess it is pretty indefinable, what makes something Altermodern, or at least it takes a book to define it. I also don't understand how abstraction is the 'very language of inevitability' or how Mehretu's work has 'powerful political potential.'
He begins by representing the unspoken for groups of previous movements, then proceeds to again speak for them, and all artists, by giving them a prescribed task, the task of 'envisaging what would be the first truly worldwide culture.' Why do artists have to do that? Is the role of artist to figure out what a culture needs, or what theorists or critics want to see, and then to make it? Isn't it more mysterious than that? More interesting, more creative?
My answer is art making is more interesting and creative than answering a prescribed need. As humans we all seek to communicate what we think is important, to grow it, to make it more. Everything is trying hard to stay alive, even ideas, even Nicolas Bourraud's ideas. He is a brilliant observer, theorist and critic and he has ideas about what needs to happen. Another approach would be to watch where things lead, to observe, to aknowlege that we don't know where art is going but to observe what is emerging. Art, after all, isn't life or death. We can afford to let it be what it is, because it will anyway.
Bourraud writes a great deal about the impending globalization. If that is the case, impending globalization, then why the worry about finding an art that communicates it? Left to its own device, won't art reflect its world just fine?
2. Why did Bourriaud choose the image of a plant if he is rather against the root? Why not choose a spider, that makes a web? On page 21 he states 'it's roots that make individuals suffer; in our globalized world, they persist like phantom limbs after amputation, causing pain impossible to treat, since they affect something that no longer exists.' Bourriaud's experience of the root is a valid one, but perhaps there is more than suffering to a root? Ideas such as grounding and nourishment? The radicant picks up and puts down roots as it goes, and I have moved enough times to think that sounds like more suffering than staying put, or detatching once and for all. In terms of metaphor, this continual wandering may be closer to the present day experience, what with travel, television and the internet, but I also believe people can be fond of their roots. Visiting a place is not the same as putting roots there.
3.“Postmodern multiculturalism has failed to invent an alternative to modernist universalism.” p 35 Was it trying to invent or describe something? Or was it just at one stage in the game of noticing things needed to change or were changing?
I don't know enough about postmodernism to answer my own question. But it is almost the same as my first question,if it were trying to invent a new way of being; that is, Is the job of art criticism or theory to name a movement or shape it? Or is that just a manifesto? Are manifestos effective? Or do they just preach to the choir?
4.My favorite observation: “The anticolonial model, which permeates cultural studies and discourses on art, undermines the foundations of modernism without, however, replacing them with anything other than that very gesture of hollowing it out; that is to say, with emptiness.” P. 35
This is a helpful observation that provides good information. I think Bourriaud should leave it there. Let the artists come up with a new model themselves, the way people do.
Bourriaud also says "and in that tireless deconstruction of the Western white male voice, we scarcely hear anything anymore but the soft voice of an aimless negativity."p 36
I say, so what? Maybe we’re not over it yet. And maybe it’s all to easy to say it’s a ‘tireless deconstruction’ when you yourself are a white male. "Are there many blacks or women feeling tired of it?
5.Bourriaud talks about Julie Mehretu by saying "Faced with a reality that cannot be grasped by representational pictorial means, the abstract, diagrammatic, statistical, and infographic lexica allows us to cause the furtive forms of command and the structure of our political reality to appear." He later writes "To take abstraction, which has become an ideological instrument, and draw it onto the side of singularity in this way is a plastic operation that possesses a powerful political potential. If the codes of the dominant representation of the world are based in abstraction, that is because abstraction is the very language of inevitability." p 59. I am reading this to mean, she uses marks and symbols that are common to charts and maps that are made to explain certain things. She, however, uses them to create or explain her situation, her interior city. I find Mehretu's work very powerful, but is what makes it fit in with Bourriaud's ideas of flexibility, mobility, rootlessness and connection the fact that she uses those symbols or types of marks in some of her work? Once again, I wonder if he finds any value in a painting or print of Mehretu's that doesn't use those symbols? I guess it is pretty indefinable, what makes something Altermodern, or at least it takes a book to define it. I also don't understand how abstraction is the 'very language of inevitability' or how Mehretu's work has 'powerful political potential.'
Sunday, February 14, 2010
5 Questions/Insights/Responses to Nicolas Bourriaud's Postproduction
1.My initial and pervading question throughout this work concerns the selection of artists Bourriaud chose to represent the 'important' artists of today. The author's interest in investigating a new form of art possible only in today's world of surplus imagery is clear, but in his investigation of this unfolding art form and its possibilities, the vast majority of artists still creating old fashioned art out of more 'raw' art materials (clay, paint, paper, etc.) seem to be irrelevant. I wonder if Bourriaud overlooks humanity's basic and recurrent need, throughout all cultures and histories, to have an object/symbol describing the internal experiences of being a person, and the fact that a piece of art can still function in that way quite well, even using traditional materials, alongside Postproduction art that is reflecting a broader, more collective experience.
2."When artists find material in objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, the work of art takes on a script-like value: 'when screenplays become form,' in a sense. "
In an attempt to understand Bourriaud's metaphor of 'screenplay' as art, I explain to myself what a screenplay is and does, and what it means when it is the thing presented itself, and not the movie it is written to create. A screenplay, or a script, is the thing not meant to be seen. It has the hidden information a filmmaker, actor, director, camera person and crew, set designer, everyone, needs to create an illusion. In itself it demystifies that illusion. Reading a screenplay puts you on equal footing with the creators of the illusion and is an entirely different experience than being presented with the final film to view. I wonder if being an artist puts one unavoidably in the role of presenter, even if what one is presenting is a 'screenplay.' It seems the role of presenter, influencer, censor and manipulator is unavoidable regardless of what one is presenting. I appreciate the attempt to engage an audience on a more equal level, however it seems some inequality is built in to the role of artist. In the end, there are people choosing to 'make' art, and people who come to see or experience it.
3.In response to Bourriaud's investigation of the equality of consumption and production, or perhaps the simultaneity of those processes, I am struck by the value of that investigation, as an artist and as a citizen of today's world. It is an interesting perspective to pose at all levels of consumption; What am I producing by consuming this product? For example, when I go to the store to buy jeans, I identify myself easily with the role of consumer. I get new jeans. In terms of the responsibility for my role in the consumption/production continuum, there is great value in considering what I am producing by this consumption. Where are the jeans being made? Who is making them, and how am I affecting their life? The community? There has been great damage done, for instance, in Tehuacán, Mexico where jeans are produced, on the water supply. It seems toxic dyes and bleaches are left to run off into the surrounding grounds, explained more in this environmental link.
Considering more deeply what is being produced by this consumption has great effect on future choices and allows us to live more consciously.
4.In response to Bourriaud's statement " Just as through psychoanalysis our unconscious tries, as best it can, to escape the presumed fatality of the familial narrative, art brings collective scenarios to consciousness and offers us other pathways through reality, with the help of forms themselves, which make these imposed narratives material." I am reminded of the art of Harrell Fletcher , The Problem of Possible Redemption, 2004 Whitney Biennial. In this piece Fletcher has seniors from a senior center in Conneticut reading lines from James Joyce's Ulysses. The use of an existing narrative retold by a lost segment of society makes relevant the universal theme of mortality in a way that is cogent with Bourriauds ideas. The video, entitled The Problem of Possible Redemption, can be found on Fletcher's website.
5. Bourriad quotes Uam Gillick as saying "We are all caught within the scenario play of late capitalism" when describing how we are all affected by the 'narratives' of our time. This called to mind a passage of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", wherein she describes the effect of the 'spirit of the age' upon those living in it. She writes " Such is the indomitable nature of the spirit of the age, however, that it batters down anyone who tries to make stand against it far more effectually than those who bend its own way (244.)" and "For it is probable that the human spirit has its place in time assigned to it; some are born of this age, some of that (244)." Orlando goes on to experience an age that is 'antipathetic' to her. I wonder if the same can be said of artists whose works are not cogent with the Postproduction aesthetic.
2."When artists find material in objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, the work of art takes on a script-like value: 'when screenplays become form,' in a sense. "
In an attempt to understand Bourriaud's metaphor of 'screenplay' as art, I explain to myself what a screenplay is and does, and what it means when it is the thing presented itself, and not the movie it is written to create. A screenplay, or a script, is the thing not meant to be seen. It has the hidden information a filmmaker, actor, director, camera person and crew, set designer, everyone, needs to create an illusion. In itself it demystifies that illusion. Reading a screenplay puts you on equal footing with the creators of the illusion and is an entirely different experience than being presented with the final film to view. I wonder if being an artist puts one unavoidably in the role of presenter, even if what one is presenting is a 'screenplay.' It seems the role of presenter, influencer, censor and manipulator is unavoidable regardless of what one is presenting. I appreciate the attempt to engage an audience on a more equal level, however it seems some inequality is built in to the role of artist. In the end, there are people choosing to 'make' art, and people who come to see or experience it.
3.In response to Bourriaud's investigation of the equality of consumption and production, or perhaps the simultaneity of those processes, I am struck by the value of that investigation, as an artist and as a citizen of today's world. It is an interesting perspective to pose at all levels of consumption; What am I producing by consuming this product? For example, when I go to the store to buy jeans, I identify myself easily with the role of consumer. I get new jeans. In terms of the responsibility for my role in the consumption/production continuum, there is great value in considering what I am producing by this consumption. Where are the jeans being made? Who is making them, and how am I affecting their life? The community? There has been great damage done, for instance, in Tehuacán, Mexico where jeans are produced, on the water supply. It seems toxic dyes and bleaches are left to run off into the surrounding grounds, explained more in this environmental link.
Considering more deeply what is being produced by this consumption has great effect on future choices and allows us to live more consciously.
4.In response to Bourriaud's statement " Just as through psychoanalysis our unconscious tries, as best it can, to escape the presumed fatality of the familial narrative, art brings collective scenarios to consciousness and offers us other pathways through reality, with the help of forms themselves, which make these imposed narratives material." I am reminded of the art of Harrell Fletcher , The Problem of Possible Redemption, 2004 Whitney Biennial. In this piece Fletcher has seniors from a senior center in Conneticut reading lines from James Joyce's Ulysses. The use of an existing narrative retold by a lost segment of society makes relevant the universal theme of mortality in a way that is cogent with Bourriauds ideas. The video, entitled The Problem of Possible Redemption, can be found on Fletcher's website.
5. Bourriad quotes Uam Gillick as saying "We are all caught within the scenario play of late capitalism" when describing how we are all affected by the 'narratives' of our time. This called to mind a passage of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", wherein she describes the effect of the 'spirit of the age' upon those living in it. She writes " Such is the indomitable nature of the spirit of the age, however, that it batters down anyone who tries to make stand against it far more effectually than those who bend its own way (244.)" and "For it is probable that the human spirit has its place in time assigned to it; some are born of this age, some of that (244)." Orlando goes on to experience an age that is 'antipathetic' to her. I wonder if the same can be said of artists whose works are not cogent with the Postproduction aesthetic.
Images Related to Bourriaud's Post Production
http://businessclassnyc.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/bild.jpg
Vanessa Beecroft "vb55" 2005
Some sounds from DJ Mark the 45 King
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/04/03/images/rirkritTiravanija.jpg
Rirkrit Tiravanija "Untitled" 2002
http://www.airdeparis.com/dejanov/88bis.jpg
Swetlana Heger, Plamen Dejanov "Still Life (Plenty of Objects of Desire" 1997
http://www.nomart.co.jp/artincaso/2002/galleryImg/C1_5_L.jpg
Navin Rawanchaikul "Fly with me to another world", 2000
http://www.artpublic.ch/artists/wang-du/images/wang-du3_thumbnail.jpg
Wang Du, "Les deux otages de Jolo", 2000
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Images referred to in Anton Vidokle essay in October 130
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07autumn/images/berndes_fig1.jpg
El Lissitsky "Prounenraum" 1923 (reconstructed, 1971)
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/poemofthemonth/images/oiticca_grandnucleas.jpg
Helio Oiticia "Grand Nucleas" 1960-66
Non Ritual Art
1.Walter Benjamin writes that an 'Aura' is:
'that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction', like the shadow of natural things one finds oneself sitting under on a bright day, a thing's 'uniqueness' and that it is tied to a thing's presence.
He writes as though he is tired of what he calls a piece of art's 'aura.' It appears to be connected to a thing's untouchableness, it's specialness, it's power as an object. The further we move away from the creation of 'ritual' art objects, objects thought to hold unexplainable powers, the more they lose their 'aura' of specialness. Benjamin also seems to link 'aura' with a certain fear of an object, fear of its power or perhaps its preciousness. He seems to want to reduce art objects to mere objects, to take them off of the pedestal, as it were.
2. Benjamin could not overemphasis the effect of photography, film and reproduction on how a viewer perceives art. He states "Everyday the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction." as though these reproductions themselves brought about an appetite to see more and closer. With film, he sees the lack of the actual actor on stage as somehow releasing the audience to any personal obligation to the actor, freeing the audience to become critics. He goes further to describe the audience's position as viewing what the camera views, as making the audience become the actual camera.
On the whole, Benjamin describes how art has become more accessible and less hierarchical, as film and photography can be viewed by so many at once. To the audience,the art has become demystified.
3. Benjamin wrote "An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual." This sentence reflects Benjamin's, and the modern theorist's, dislike of privilege and hierarchy. Benjamin believed that art had preserved its association with the ritual by maintaining its role as a ritual object. As such, art had an 'aura,' a magical mystique, fear inducing and only to be handled by a limited number of people who could handle it. By making art accessible and removing the hand of the artist, Benjamin believed mechanical reproductions took art out of that sacred space and into the hands of the 'masses' in a multitude of unexpected environments.
4.This blog is changing the face of art today. Well, it could anyway. And some blogs do for a number of the same reasons Benjamin mentioned. The Internet, and Blogging are egalitarian, open to all, each voice speaking at the same volume. And they speak internationally, so it is a wider conversation. In a sense this is reproductive, as I am typing in one space, and someone is opening this page and reading it in another.
Also, in the historical world of printmaking, digital printing is still suspect. Just a few years ago at a large print conference I saw a panel discussing the ramifications of digital printing on Printmaking. Printmaking is going from (or can, if the printer chooses) elbow grease, stone wood and metal, to no-sweat, typing on a keyboard, loading paper into a printer. Lithography was one of the first industries to unionize in France, in the early 1900's, it was a working man's endeavor. This is changing due to the reproductive process of digital printing.
“Fiat ars – pereat mundus" Let art be created-Let the world perish"
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/images/directors/05/37/borinage.jpg
Scene from Joris Iven's documentary Borinage, 1934, about a miner's strike in Belgium.
http://www.achievement.org/achievers/deh0/large/deh0-014.jpg
Mickey Rooney as Puck and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of Midsummer Night's Dream
http://igotclubfoot.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/eugene_atget_ruedeseine1934.jpg
Eugene Atget, Rue De Siene, 1934
Referred to in Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" 1936.
'that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction', like the shadow of natural things one finds oneself sitting under on a bright day, a thing's 'uniqueness' and that it is tied to a thing's presence.
He writes as though he is tired of what he calls a piece of art's 'aura.' It appears to be connected to a thing's untouchableness, it's specialness, it's power as an object. The further we move away from the creation of 'ritual' art objects, objects thought to hold unexplainable powers, the more they lose their 'aura' of specialness. Benjamin also seems to link 'aura' with a certain fear of an object, fear of its power or perhaps its preciousness. He seems to want to reduce art objects to mere objects, to take them off of the pedestal, as it were.
2. Benjamin could not overemphasis the effect of photography, film and reproduction on how a viewer perceives art. He states "Everyday the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction." as though these reproductions themselves brought about an appetite to see more and closer. With film, he sees the lack of the actual actor on stage as somehow releasing the audience to any personal obligation to the actor, freeing the audience to become critics. He goes further to describe the audience's position as viewing what the camera views, as making the audience become the actual camera.
On the whole, Benjamin describes how art has become more accessible and less hierarchical, as film and photography can be viewed by so many at once. To the audience,the art has become demystified.
3. Benjamin wrote "An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual." This sentence reflects Benjamin's, and the modern theorist's, dislike of privilege and hierarchy. Benjamin believed that art had preserved its association with the ritual by maintaining its role as a ritual object. As such, art had an 'aura,' a magical mystique, fear inducing and only to be handled by a limited number of people who could handle it. By making art accessible and removing the hand of the artist, Benjamin believed mechanical reproductions took art out of that sacred space and into the hands of the 'masses' in a multitude of unexpected environments.
4.This blog is changing the face of art today. Well, it could anyway. And some blogs do for a number of the same reasons Benjamin mentioned. The Internet, and Blogging are egalitarian, open to all, each voice speaking at the same volume. And they speak internationally, so it is a wider conversation. In a sense this is reproductive, as I am typing in one space, and someone is opening this page and reading it in another.
Also, in the historical world of printmaking, digital printing is still suspect. Just a few years ago at a large print conference I saw a panel discussing the ramifications of digital printing on Printmaking. Printmaking is going from (or can, if the printer chooses) elbow grease, stone wood and metal, to no-sweat, typing on a keyboard, loading paper into a printer. Lithography was one of the first industries to unionize in France, in the early 1900's, it was a working man's endeavor. This is changing due to the reproductive process of digital printing.
“Fiat ars – pereat mundus" Let art be created-Let the world perish"
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/images/directors/05/37/borinage.jpg
Scene from Joris Iven's documentary Borinage, 1934, about a miner's strike in Belgium.
http://www.achievement.org/achievers/deh0/large/deh0-014.jpg
Mickey Rooney as Puck and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of Midsummer Night's Dream
http://igotclubfoot.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/eugene_atget_ruedeseine1934.jpg
Eugene Atget, Rue De Siene, 1934
Referred to in Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" 1936.
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