Ziarek Krzysztof ââåthe Work of Art in the Age of Its Electronic Mutability

Walter Benjamin and Art

past Andrew Benjamin, Ed.
Continuum, London, 2005
272 pp. Newspaper, $24.95
ISBN: 0-8264-6730-X.

Reviewed past Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, University Heart MI 48710 USA

mosher@svsu.edu

In the uncredited cover photograph, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) appears with optics downcast, the emblem of pensiveness, the saturnine sage pondering culture. This expect might correspond, were he live in 2005, his own mixed feelings towards the concerted analysis past scholars these days of the single essay from the 1930s "The Work of Fine art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Though challenge to be the start collection of essays analyzing its importance, Walter Benjamin and Art was preceded by Gumbrecht and Marrinan's 2003 Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age. Role of Continuum'due south Walter Benjamin Studies series, the authors that Andrew Benjamin of Warwick Academy has collected in this volume discuss the before Benjamin'due south seminal essay either as a work of philosophy, amidst artworks and compages and commodities and poems, or in lite of technological advances.

Among the philosophers, Joanna Hodge locates Benjamin'due south pessimistic philosophy amongst Goethe, Kant and the 1920s work of Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig. Beatrice Hanssen, author of the 1998 Walter Benjamin'south Other History contrasts his aesthetics with those of Martin Heidegger, who was romantically deluded, professionally compensated and morally compromised by Naziism. Arne Melberg's potent essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Ontological Speculation" revisits Benjamin'south essay in the context of various 1930s ontologies of singular works and art itself. Melberg notes how several philosophers' negative theologies contrast with the pragmatic modernism of Benjamin's "Naples", a piece he wrote in collaboration with his lover Asja Lacis.

Can imagery exist trusted? Rebecca Comay resurrects the bliderverboten, iconoclastic strictures calling for the destruction of unreliable images. The trope fueled Benjamin'southward metaphysical debate with the Theodor Adorno, who thought his unconventional Marxist colleague seduced by the visual realm. Howard Eiland elucidates the concept of distraction and how commodities distract the urban world. Other essays map Benjamin's "techtonic unconscious" of arcades and his subjective reading of photographs by Hill, Atget and Sander. The memorable, literate "Aura, Even so" by Robert Kaufman locates that celebrated aspect of visual fine art that Benjamin noted in the work of California poet Norma Cole. The Language Poets that influenced her translations of French poetry are juxtaposed by Kaufman with the influences of Shelley and Baudelaire upon Berhold Brecht. Cole has collaborated with poet Robert Duncan, painter Stanley Whitney and collagist Jess, dialogues comparable to Benjamin's with his friend Brecht.

In 2005, perhaps, information technology is the techies who best know and drive the mechanics of Benjaminist theoretical machinery. In an essay reminiscent of Jonathan Sterne'southward work on audio reproduction, Rajeev Due south. Patke writes on the affect of gramophone records of Hindustani music and in early twentieth century Bharat. This reviewer likes to wonder if grim Walter would trip the light fantastic to the Bhangra music and Bollywood picture show soundtracks pulsing this evening in Delhi, Dacca, and London clubs. Saul Ostrow finds hope in recent artworks––just non Warhol'due south photo silkscreens, Mimimalism, or the postmodernist recycling of forms that rapidly reify into fetishized commodities and discourse that supports the status quo. It was in the Fluxus actions and Allen Kaprow'south Happenings, where everyday unmediated experience refused to become "art art", and came closest to Guy Debord's Situationist platonic for fine art: "rehearsing revolution". Kryzysztof Ziarek'southward "The Piece of work of Art in the Age of Its Electronic Mutability" uses Seiko Mikami's virtual spider and Eduardo Kac'southward "Genesis" as a contemporary politicizing of art––the communist project Benjamin lauded––in the healthy spirit of radical Dadaist gestures. The audience helps shape new web-enabled artworks proves the art to be open ended, mutable, and emergent, and to cause u.s. to rethink collectivity. Walter Benjamin and Fine art sails with both philosophers and artists of innovative reproducibility on board. Karl Marx's stated it, Walter Benjamin approved it: the philosophers' goal is to interpret the globe, while ours is to alter information technology.

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Source: https://leonardo.info/reviews_archive/july2005/walter_mosher.html