Page 206 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 206
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
er persuasively argued, such a “world” actually never existed. What could
be clearly elaborated from Benjamin‘s “perception of perception” is a fun-
damentally rearranged constitutive position of any artistic praxis and the
big impact of this praxis on the praxis of the social reproduction. Undoubt-
edly, from Benjamin’s time these rearrangements only intensified. The age
of the increasing role of technology brought about very complex changes of
the functioning of minds on a massive scale. Simultaneously entering the
mass perception, new forms of aesthetic praxis overturned the whole func-
tioning of the arts in the social imaginary. Of course, it is possible to elab-
orate extensively on the structure of these interdependent practices, and on
their complex transformations especially through the period of the second
half of the 20th Century. Such elaborations exist in various fields, such as
film and media studies, cultural studies and so on. However, I only want to
make the point that Benjamin himself marked a moment, in which the big
cumulative restructuring of society and the changes in people’s minds be-
came apparent, and he could more or less guess about the “prognostic val-
ue” of his discovery
As opposed to printed materials of previous centuries, the representa-
tions of global culture are devising a visual field where, above all, the mov-
ing images are decidedly determining a range of modes of perception.
Today’s media, the digital interactive ones included, are representing a
changed and changing reality marked by an expansion of culture, which
is driven by the strong artistic production. Museums and galleries, among
other “traditional” institutions, are turning into laboratories of a contin-
uous production of variations of meanings and interpretations, some-
times broadening the public’s view on culture and sometimes confining
it to some mystified canonical signification of whatever they are present-
ing. However, these institutions are no more (if they ever were) “neutral”
places of exhibitions of works of art, but they are, as Mieke Bal would say,
agents of exposures, not so much of artists and their work as such; much
more however, of how they expose someone’s conceptualised view of art or
cultural goods. Artists “outside” these institutions became an extinct spe-
cies. In the view of this institutionalised world, culture is actually the re-
ality. Of course, there are many sophisticated and critical reflections upon
this culture, such as Jameson’s theory of reification or explanatory attempts
by many authors, who make use of the notion of the simulacrum. All these
reflections help us to come to terms with the complexities of social reali-
ty, which is highly saturated with multiple images, representations, and all
204
er persuasively argued, such a “world” actually never existed. What could
be clearly elaborated from Benjamin‘s “perception of perception” is a fun-
damentally rearranged constitutive position of any artistic praxis and the
big impact of this praxis on the praxis of the social reproduction. Undoubt-
edly, from Benjamin’s time these rearrangements only intensified. The age
of the increasing role of technology brought about very complex changes of
the functioning of minds on a massive scale. Simultaneously entering the
mass perception, new forms of aesthetic praxis overturned the whole func-
tioning of the arts in the social imaginary. Of course, it is possible to elab-
orate extensively on the structure of these interdependent practices, and on
their complex transformations especially through the period of the second
half of the 20th Century. Such elaborations exist in various fields, such as
film and media studies, cultural studies and so on. However, I only want to
make the point that Benjamin himself marked a moment, in which the big
cumulative restructuring of society and the changes in people’s minds be-
came apparent, and he could more or less guess about the “prognostic val-
ue” of his discovery
As opposed to printed materials of previous centuries, the representa-
tions of global culture are devising a visual field where, above all, the mov-
ing images are decidedly determining a range of modes of perception.
Today’s media, the digital interactive ones included, are representing a
changed and changing reality marked by an expansion of culture, which
is driven by the strong artistic production. Museums and galleries, among
other “traditional” institutions, are turning into laboratories of a contin-
uous production of variations of meanings and interpretations, some-
times broadening the public’s view on culture and sometimes confining
it to some mystified canonical signification of whatever they are present-
ing. However, these institutions are no more (if they ever were) “neutral”
places of exhibitions of works of art, but they are, as Mieke Bal would say,
agents of exposures, not so much of artists and their work as such; much
more however, of how they expose someone’s conceptualised view of art or
cultural goods. Artists “outside” these institutions became an extinct spe-
cies. In the view of this institutionalised world, culture is actually the re-
ality. Of course, there are many sophisticated and critical reflections upon
this culture, such as Jameson’s theory of reification or explanatory attempts
by many authors, who make use of the notion of the simulacrum. All these
reflections help us to come to terms with the complexities of social reali-
ty, which is highly saturated with multiple images, representations, and all
204
