Returning to Benjamin

by Victor Burgin

In the mid-1930s, Walter Benjamin posed the question of the relation of art to the dominant representational technology of his photography and film. To return to the artwork essay today in the spirit in which it was written is to ask the same question in respect of the hegemonic representational technology of our own the digital. Benjamin found that the medium of photography and film had dissolved the auratic quality of art. Digital technology has dissolved the very category of ‘medium’ itself.’ Walter Benjamin’s essay of cultural criticism ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ has become a ‘classic’ text, one which resonated through the twentieth century and beyond. In this succinct and pointed new essay, the artist and writer Victor Burgin rereads Benjamin’s 1935 text, to elaborate a new argument contending that the camera today is profoundly imbricated in that which is not visible.

40 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2022

Reviews

[Silvia Zuleta Romano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro que te hace pensar pero no te dice qué pensar. Un diálogo con el mítico ensayo de Benjamin a propósito de la relación de la tecnología y el arte. Muchas ideas interesantes, me quedo con la idea de que el lenguaje es una especie de tecnología que nos modifica y nos afecta. La máquina nos imita y nosotros imitamos a la máquina. Somos también el medio. Somos distintos cuando escribimos, cuando hablamos, cuando nos ven la cara, cuando nos escudamos detrás de una imagen pixelada. Y eso determina nuestro discurso o incluso la forma en que creamos. La edición de este libro es impecable. Pequeños ensayos en letra pequeña para llevar a todos lados.