Michael Szpakowski
Since the beginning
Works in Harlow United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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DISCUSSION

Re: notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura


Couple of things:
I think when Benjamin talked about aesthetics &
fascism he was doing something very simple - warning
us not to forget real life, not to be too insular, to
be too delighted with the *formally attractive &
seductive* - I can imagine the Nuremburg rallies were
immensely exciting events to be at, carefully
choreographed by people who were *evil* but *not at
all stupid* & in addition understood a thing or two
about art.
I remember having a great night out a few years back
at the son et lumiere show at Stone Mountain near
Atlanta -exhilaratingly atmospheric, especially as
we'd just climbed the mountain (wonderful!) & then
caught the last cable car down to catch the show
but..also..profoundly disquieting.. not because it
sought to *justify* slavery/confederacy but because it
sought to *neutralize* them in spectacle..
As for Benjamin's Marxism ..well..it's a very odd
species of Marxism.. Adorno was able to pick formal
holes in it with ease.. *but* of course when it came
to the test of supporting student anti racist, anti
war activism in the 60's Adorno failed it miserably.
I do not believe Benjamin, bookish, naive, unlucky in
life & love, would have failed such a test.
For me, politically, Benjamin was in general *deeply
confused* in one, the formal, sense. *But* there is
something about him, a deep humanity, which resonates
with the humanism of an untainted ( by Stalinism,
academicism, sometimes -eg Althusser- one and the smae
thing, always related) Marxism. In this combination of
confusion and humanity he resembles Brecht, with whom
he had a strange & tense friendship..
I feel there are two ways of rescuing *positions* from
Benjamin -one is a retreat into the academicism of the
disappointed & ageing generation of 68, whose retreat
from engagement with life continues to poison
philosophy, critical theory &c -the other is to read
him as *literature* in which somehow ( in the same way
as Proust, or Melville or Joyce) some kind of truth is
embedded.
Read the essay on Kafka & tell me you're not
exhilarated..*then* precis it for me :)
best
michael

--- Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> wrote:

> Hi Marisa (and all),
>
> It is interesting how historical context can so
> color a theorists
> writing. Here's a classic irony: Greenberg once
> associated kitsch
> with the academy. He likened Beaux Arts academic
> aesthetic-by-numbers to what would now be the
> equivalent of a faux
> Roman columnar bird bath at Home Depot. The irony
> is, after the rise
> and fall of Greenberg, the academy is now back to
> liking kitsch, but
> the context is totally changed from 1939.
>
> I'm starting my MFA this summer, so I'm trying to
> think more like an
> artist and less like a critic. My notes on aura
> were written from
> the perspective of my own artmaking. My art doesn't
> want to be
> overtly political. As such, I'm less concerned with
> whether Benjamin
> himself was glad at the loss of aura or sad about
> it. It seems he
> was more ambivalent toward it than you are reading,
> Marisa, but I've
> not read enough of him to argue this convincingly.
>
> Benjamin was there at ground zero to realize that
> industrailized
> media was changing something about the art object,
> and he was able to
> give this "something" a name -- aura. I'm guessing
> most folks read
> (or are assigned to read) "the work of art in the
> age of mechanical
> reproduction" less because of Benjamin's particular
> marxian
> perspective, and more because he was historically
> one of the first
> theorists to put his finger on this shift regarding
> the art object
> (although Duchamp was already exploiting the shift
> two decades
> earlier).
>
> But what was once liberating for Benjamin in 1936
> (democratization of
> the formerly aestheticized object) has led to
> certain artistic
> vacuums today that are hardly exciting. Without
> lamenting the loss
> of "aesthetic" (lest I rouse the rote response of
> "who's aesthetic"),
> some forms of contemporary art, liberated from the
> "bonds" of the
> spiritual and mystical, have lost something. I'd
> like to call that
> something awe and wonder. Benjamin's "aura" is not
> perfectly
> synonamous with what I'm talking about, but it seems
> related. Note
> the difference between incarnation and reification:
> with incarnation,
> spirit enters body and the two are enmeshed but
> still distinct; with
> reification, an idea becomes an object. (Perhaps)
> Benjamin merely
> sees the unique art object in terms of marxist
> commodity. I see the
> unique art object from a more incarnational
> perspective -- a physical
> body "wherein" something spiritual resides.
>
> Michael S. implies that Benjamin was wrong to
> associate the aura so
> strongly with an object's singularity, and maybe
> this is so. But I'm
> enough of a graphic design historian to get all
> sexed up about a
> potential visit to the library of congress rare book
> reading room
> where I'll be able to leaf through one one of the
> few extant copies
> of William Morris' Kelmscott Press Chaucer. And I
> didn't spend an
> hour in Sao Paulo looking at Bosch's "Temptation of
> St. Anthony"
> triptych simply because of the subject matter and
> the brushwork. I'm
> willing to concede that the "aura" is not housed
> exclusively in the
> object's singularity, but some of it definitely
> accumulates there
> given enough time under the bridge. Assuming
> Hirst's sheep doesn't
> rot, and barring another Satchi fire, even that dumb
> thing will have
> accumulated some aura in 200 years.
>
> Anyway, maybe "aura" is too entrenched in a
> frankfurt school
> historical context for me to take it and use it to
> mean "awe and
> wonder." I'm testing out the implications of such a
> reappropriation.
> As an artist, I'm personally more interested in
> "where" such an
> "aura" might be tactically relocated, now that
> there's not an art
> object any"where." Call it a subjective inquiry
> into non-objective
> incarnation.
>
> ++++++++++++++
>
> [Warning: I am about to use the terms "good" and
> "bad" quite freely.]
>
> Regarding the connection Benjamin draws between
> aesthtics and fascist
> control, even that connection is colored by the era
> in which he
> lived. In this, Benjamin and Greenberg have
> something in common -- a
> reaction against a Nazi-sanctioned, state-approved
> art. The irony is
> that something like Hirst's sheep -- a work that
> Benjamin, Greenberg,
> and Hitler could all have agreed to dislike
> (although for radically
> different reasons) -- is now state-approved art.
> What can we infer
> from this? Correct politics don't always lead to
> good art.
> Intelligent art criticism doesn't always lead to
> good art. Why?
> Because there is more to art (and life) that
> intelligent criticism
> and correct politics.
>
> There is a Sex Pistols documentary called "The great
> rock 'n' roll
> swindle" which is itself a Malcolm McLaren swindle.
> I'll call the
> following proposition "The great dialectic swindle":
>
> Nobody wants to get duped. Heaven freaking forbid
> you get duped.
> All ideologies are suspected as tools to control the
> minds of the
> proletariat/disenfranchised/duped to keep them from
> rising up,
> claiming their due, and getting unduped. Thus the
> goal is to ever
> suspect and critique -- proving yourself
> intelligent, free, radical,
> enlightened, and above all, not duped. To quote T.
> Rex, "You won't
> fool the children of the revolution!" Of course,
> the only ones able
> to recognize that you are not duped are the few free
> souls also not
> duped. Anyone unable to recognize your lack of
> dupedness must
> themselves be duped. (They may have read Derrida,
> but they didn't
> read him in French.)
>
> I propose that this inordinate fear of being duped
> is one of the
> biggest dupes of all. If the human soul exists, if
> a spiritual realm
> exists, if God exists, if certain objective truths
> exist, if certain
> universal aspects of human nature exist apart from
> historical
> materialism -- then those who suspect such things as
> being "duping
> constructs" are getting meta-duped. This is indeed
> a thorny,
> catch-22 mindfuck -- to suspect as duping constructs
> the very things
> that could free you, all the while being duped by
> the very
> safeguards you think are keeping you from being
> duped.
>
> (Couldn't my own suspicion of the meta-dupe be an
> even bigger
> meta-meta-dupe? So says Derrida in French.)
>
> peace,
> curt
>
>
>
>
> At 7:51 AM -0700 5/29/06, Marisa Olson wrote:
> >Hey, guys. This thread is interesting. My two
> cents...
> >
> >I don't really think that the loss of the aura is
> such a bad thing--or
> >something that Benjamin necessarily laments. I read
> the aura as 'stuff
> >that gets in the way' (ie perceived phenom of a
> distance), or
> >moreover, as the immaterial (but weighty) presence
> of history,
> >hegemony, and aesthetics.
> >
> >I think that, in Benjamin's discussion of property
> systems, and
> >particularly in his citation of Marinetti's
> futurist proclamation that
> >"war is beautiful," that he's call for us to
> relieve ourselves of
> >aesthetic models that impose certain negative
> relationships between
> >works and individuals. I believe he's saying that
> these same models
> >inscribe our subjectivity--as traced by our models
> of consumption--as
> >victims of the property/fascist system(s) that have
> beget our
> >aesthetic systems. In this vain, "war is beautiful"
> is not such a
> >confusing statement. A fascist system begets an
> aesthetic system that
> >says X, Y, and Z equal beauty; ergo war equals
> beauty. It's a way of
> >seeing how violent the aesthetic "regime" (to
> perhaps overdo it a bit)
> >has become...
> >
> >Anyway, I'm travelling and don't have the book with
> me so I can't
> >offer any relevant quotes, but it's something I've
> also been thinking
> >about lately, so I wanted to chime in.
> >
> >Best,
> >Marisa
> >
>
> +
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> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
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> +
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> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

DISCUSSION

Re: notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura


HI Curt
I *love* Benjamin, but I do think he is best read as a
species of poet rather than as a exponent of logical
argument, which stuff is frankly fairly thin on the
ground in his oeuvre.
A lot of the time he was just plain *wrong* factually,
but *right* poetically & I think this was the case re
the question of "aura".
The sense of rightness, of the sublime &c, put it how
you will, actually seems to me to be independent of
epoch or medium. So, for me,
Kentridge, Tarkovsky, Nauman <multiples>, just scream
"AURA, AURA, AURA!" whereas Vettriano, Hirst <
physical, one of a kind> kind of whisper "DUD,
COMMERCE, DUMBING DOWN, FLATTERY, DUD."
best
michael

--- Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> wrote:

> Walter Benjamin says that people used to attach an
> "aura" (roughly,
> sense of awe) to the scarce, original unique,
> physical art object.
> Benjamin observes that since everything is now
> infinitely
> reproducible, we've lost this aura.
>
> As an artist not making one-of-a-kind objects, where
> can I relocate
> the aura? To answer ,"In the network" is like
> answering "in the
> air," or "in time," or "in existence." I need a
> more specific,
> behavioral/tactical description of this new locus of
> awe and aura.
>
> Designer Clement Mok says designers should describe
> their practice
> not in terms of media deliverables ("I make
> websites"), but as
> doctors and lawyers do, in terms of services
> performed and results
> achieved. A doctor doesn't say, "I make incisions."
> A lawyer
> doesn't say, "I generate paperwork." This seems
> like a better way
> for a "new media artist" to describe her art.
> (Note: Even the term
> "new media artist" describes her in terms of media
> deliverables.)
> She shouldn't say, "I make net art." Better to say,
> "I cause x to
> happen. I orchestrate x. I'm investigating x."
> Thus in describing
> "where" I relocate the aura, I should avoid saying,
> "It's in the
> podcast, weblog, RSS feed, wearable mobile computing
> device, etc."
>
> As an artist, my self-imposed mandate is to increase
> a more lively
> dialogue with the Sundry Essences of Wonder. If
> wonder is akin to
> awe is akin to aura, I'd better figure out where to
> relocate the aura.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> There are four places I can house the aura that seem
> interesting:
>
> 1.
> In the destabilized/variable event/object.
> Generative software makes
> this possible. My bubblegum cards are a personal
> example (
>
http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/
> ) Cage
> and Kaprow are precedences. The aura is embedded in
> the chance and
> variability that the artist invites into the
> destabilized/variable
> performance.
>
> 2.
> In the perpetually enacted and iterated
> act/stance/position. My
> ongoing [remix] series of posts to rhizome RAW are a
> personal
> example. Ray Johnson's life/death and mail art,
> Joseph Beuys
> pedagogy, and D.J. Spooky's perpetual remix as
> talisman are
> precedences. Even Howard Finster, Daniel Johnston,
> and Henry Darger
> qualify, albeit in a less consciously tactical
> capacity --
> prodigiously outputting without thought of object
> uniqueness/scarcity/worth/market value. The act of
> perpetual
> creation is the art, and the output is (to greater
> or lesser degrees)
> incidental ephemera. William Blake almost
> qualifies. The stream is
> perpetual; it becomes the new "event object;" and in
> this stream the
> aura is embedded. Note: This approach takes lots of
> energy.
>
> 3.
> In the boundaries of context. Our Deep/Young
> Ethereal Archive (
> http://deepyoung.org ) is a personal example.
> Precedences and
> co-examples are:
> http://www.mjt.org/ ,
>
http://www.grographics.com/theysaysmall/small/RotherhitheUniversity/
> ,
> http://www.museum-ordure.org.uk/ .
>
http://www.thatwordwhichmeanssmugglingacrossbordersincorporated.com/
>
> , http://www.dearauntnettie.com/gallery/ .
> This approach necessarily involves disorientation
> and re-orientation.
> The contextual frame is soft, and the aura is
> embedded into this soft
> frame. Keeping this frame soft is a delicate
> matter. It requires a
> heightened, sometimes schizophrenic sense of
> performative awareness
> (cf: Ray Johnson, David Wilson). It may require the
> artist to
> alienate "real" art institutions wishing to fit the
> art into their
> frame. As the artist of such work, I can't overtly
> foreground the
> soft contextual frame as my intended locus of aura.
> If I do, the
> soft frame I'm working so hard to construct and keep
> soft immediately
> solidifies and is in turn meta-framed by a much more
> solid, didactic,
> "artist statement" frame; and the aura flies away.
> Note: Warhol well
> understood that an object's scarcity was a silly
> contemporary place
> for the aura to go. Instead, he ingeniously
> embedded the aura in the
> foregrounded concept of the object's scarcity. His
> deep awareness of
> this ironic relationship may explain why his art
> objects now sell for
> so much. (cf: http://www.dream-dollars.com/ ).
>
> 4.
> In human relationships. Personal examples might be
> http://www.lab404.com/data/ and
> http://www.playdamage.org/quilt/ .
> Co-examples might be
> http://learningtoloveyoumore.com ,
> http://www.foundmagazine.com/ , and some of Jillian
> McDonald's
> performance pieces (
> http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/performance.html
> ). You could describe this as "network" art, but
> compare it to Alex
> Galloway's Carnivore, which is also network art, and
> you realize
> "network" is too broad a term. This human
> relationship art is not
> about the network as an abstract monolithic cultural
> entity. It is
> about humans who happen to be interacting with each
> other via
> networks. The aura is embedded not in the network,
> but in the human
> relationships that the art invites. As with locus
> #1 (In the
> destabilized/variable event/object), this locus
> necessarily involves
> chance, because human relationships necessarily
> involve chance.
>
> These four places for housing the aura are not
> mutually exclusive.
> Conceivably, a single artwork could house the aura
> in all four
> places. This warrants further artistic
> investigation.
>
> curt
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
> out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>


DISCUSSION

Re: MANIK'S number


And it's a rich & extraordinary body of work.
The blog format suits it well:though it *was* a real
pleasure to have the images pop into one's inbox, like
episodes of a serialised novel, the project also gains
from being able to see everything together too.
Absolutely great.
michael

--- manik <manik@ptt.yu> wrote:

>
> Hi manik vauda marija,
>
> Congratulations! your artwork has been successfully
> added to the Rhizome ArtBase:
>
> RHIZOME-TWICE IN TIME
>
> Here is the URL where it can be found.
>
> http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?37992
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marisa S. Olson
> Rhizome.org
>
>
>

DISCUSSION