Page 33 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 33
benjamin‘s aspect
autonomous. “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psy-
choanalysis to unconscious impulses” (Ibid.: p. 237).
Entering mass perception, the new forms of aesthetic praxis overturn
the whole functioning of the arts in the social imaginary. Although dis-
cussing the problems of the form of the aesthetic objects, the products of
“technological” arts included, may still be a “noble” task of aesthetic theo-
ry, there is no doubt that Benjamin’s observations assert that the aesthetic
production interferes with the reproduction of the society in a much more
decisive way than anybody has ever imagined or dreamt before the emer-
gence of the mechanical reproduction. (Maybe today we could widen the
number of synonymous adjectives, beside “mechanical,” i.e. “electronical-
ly”, “multimediatically” and so on.) In the industrial age, the recognition
of the form became in a broad sense simply functional, and everybody has
been trained to recognize forms automatically by being exposed to almost
continuous and often unwanted influence of images, sounds, signs and de-
signs. There is no way to sell new “contents” in approved forms. The public
– or the consumers – must be shocked into perceiving the difference, which
is nothing else but the form.
Meanwhile the “subjectivity” turns into a set of “looks,” prescribed by
the “artists” in the cosmetic make-up and fashion industries. Declining to
be “formed” by them, or at the same time not to be affected by images and
sounds, now even pouring down from the sky, always neatly packed into
an appropriate form, means only acquiring a different form. However, fol-
lowing this path would bring us to another intellectual account from the
1980s of the world foreseen by Benjamin, namely to Christopher Lasch‘s
Culture of Narcissism and his deciphering the world of forms as a “form of
existence.”
31
autonomous. “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psy-
choanalysis to unconscious impulses” (Ibid.: p. 237).
Entering mass perception, the new forms of aesthetic praxis overturn
the whole functioning of the arts in the social imaginary. Although dis-
cussing the problems of the form of the aesthetic objects, the products of
“technological” arts included, may still be a “noble” task of aesthetic theo-
ry, there is no doubt that Benjamin’s observations assert that the aesthetic
production interferes with the reproduction of the society in a much more
decisive way than anybody has ever imagined or dreamt before the emer-
gence of the mechanical reproduction. (Maybe today we could widen the
number of synonymous adjectives, beside “mechanical,” i.e. “electronical-
ly”, “multimediatically” and so on.) In the industrial age, the recognition
of the form became in a broad sense simply functional, and everybody has
been trained to recognize forms automatically by being exposed to almost
continuous and often unwanted influence of images, sounds, signs and de-
signs. There is no way to sell new “contents” in approved forms. The public
– or the consumers – must be shocked into perceiving the difference, which
is nothing else but the form.
Meanwhile the “subjectivity” turns into a set of “looks,” prescribed by
the “artists” in the cosmetic make-up and fashion industries. Declining to
be “formed” by them, or at the same time not to be affected by images and
sounds, now even pouring down from the sky, always neatly packed into
an appropriate form, means only acquiring a different form. However, fol-
lowing this path would bring us to another intellectual account from the
1980s of the world foreseen by Benjamin, namely to Christopher Lasch‘s
Culture of Narcissism and his deciphering the world of forms as a “form of
existence.”
31
