Page 116 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 116
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
any ideological appropriation, in some previously un-imagined medium of
moving pictures?
In the Age of Digital Montage-collage
The principle of montage in pluralist settings in today’s world of interplay
between constructed realities operates not just through artistic practices,
but also through a whole complex of various communication, informa-
tion, and presentations. “We recognize in montage this essential difference
born from the principle of disappearance / appearance due to intermit-
tence by the power of cutting to remove, eliminate and convoke, make oc-
cur” (Faucon, 2013: p. 47). Here I am referring to the “principle” because
cutting and gluing pieces of film or magnetic tape is increasingly a thing
of the past as with new technologies the notion of montage becomes much
broader because interventions within single frames are possible in a man-
ner in which traditional filmmakers could only dream about. Therefore,
the case of Berlin Alexanderplatz could be taken as one of the early indic-
ative appropriations of the practice of montage by the novelistic form and
even more, as I have pointed out, as an introduction of the power of mon-
tage as de-montage. This, then, brings me back to Benjamin and his other
immensely influential conceptualization of the culture of mass reproduc-
tion, which sheds some light on his view on Döblin – but also offers a para-
digm for thinking about yet another change concerning the notion of per-
ception within the framework of mass culture. In his book Digital Baroque,
Timothy Murray suggests that “new media provides performance with an
energy and excitement perhaps unparalleled since the advent of silent cin-
ema. Spectators faced with the morphing shapes of holographic form and
virtual reality are confronted with an artistic spectacle strangely similar in
effect to that of the silent cinematic image described in 1927 by Antonin Ar-
taud” (Murray, 2008: p. 36). This gives Murray a pretext to suggest a new
understanding of an increasingly important feature of contemporary art.
Changes of modes of production within industrial civilization, which de-
cidedly determined social and economic spaces, exposed a new relevance
of the processes of producing an artwork. They propelled a range of differ-
ent approaches to the reflexive impacts of representation (in a performance
or in a literary work) of interactions between perception and objects gen-
erated in aesthetic practice. Digital technology is currently a last result in
a whole history of the process, which started by combining science, indus-
try, the capitalist economy, and various criticisms of signifying practices.
114
any ideological appropriation, in some previously un-imagined medium of
moving pictures?
In the Age of Digital Montage-collage
The principle of montage in pluralist settings in today’s world of interplay
between constructed realities operates not just through artistic practices,
but also through a whole complex of various communication, informa-
tion, and presentations. “We recognize in montage this essential difference
born from the principle of disappearance / appearance due to intermit-
tence by the power of cutting to remove, eliminate and convoke, make oc-
cur” (Faucon, 2013: p. 47). Here I am referring to the “principle” because
cutting and gluing pieces of film or magnetic tape is increasingly a thing
of the past as with new technologies the notion of montage becomes much
broader because interventions within single frames are possible in a man-
ner in which traditional filmmakers could only dream about. Therefore,
the case of Berlin Alexanderplatz could be taken as one of the early indic-
ative appropriations of the practice of montage by the novelistic form and
even more, as I have pointed out, as an introduction of the power of mon-
tage as de-montage. This, then, brings me back to Benjamin and his other
immensely influential conceptualization of the culture of mass reproduc-
tion, which sheds some light on his view on Döblin – but also offers a para-
digm for thinking about yet another change concerning the notion of per-
ception within the framework of mass culture. In his book Digital Baroque,
Timothy Murray suggests that “new media provides performance with an
energy and excitement perhaps unparalleled since the advent of silent cin-
ema. Spectators faced with the morphing shapes of holographic form and
virtual reality are confronted with an artistic spectacle strangely similar in
effect to that of the silent cinematic image described in 1927 by Antonin Ar-
taud” (Murray, 2008: p. 36). This gives Murray a pretext to suggest a new
understanding of an increasingly important feature of contemporary art.
Changes of modes of production within industrial civilization, which de-
cidedly determined social and economic spaces, exposed a new relevance
of the processes of producing an artwork. They propelled a range of differ-
ent approaches to the reflexive impacts of representation (in a performance
or in a literary work) of interactions between perception and objects gen-
erated in aesthetic practice. Digital technology is currently a last result in
a whole history of the process, which started by combining science, indus-
try, the capitalist economy, and various criticisms of signifying practices.
114
