lalala Manel’s Reviews > The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction > Status Update

“The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its repro-duction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction.” — The contemporary shortening and eventual (?) abolition of the space of representation, the safe distance between signifier and signified, distance which is also the basis for art, especially for literature as the Russian formalists well knew (bem sabiam🤣)

Distance can be opressive, it is part and parcel of the borgeious ideology and epa para

Aka The masses as the voyeur intent on abolishing the distance of representation so that symbolic organisation and, consequently, exploitation, be abolished!!!!!!!!!!🙈🙈

AKA THE MASSES AS THE PERVERSE VOYUER INTENT ON ABOLISHING THE DISTANCE OF REPRESENTATION SO THAT SYMBOLIC ORGANISATION AND, CONSEQUENTLY, EXPLOITATION, BE ABOLISHED (whatch out, capital will find a way to work around, it already has)

And watch out, that’s the space of desire, for Lacan, but not for deleuze

OK A TRANSCENDENTAL EXPERIENCE COMES FROM LACK AND THE SYMBOLIC SPACE/DISTANCE OF REPRESENTATION, MAKES SENSE BECAUSE WITHOUT SUCH A SPACE/DISTANCE TRANSCENDENCE WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE AS THERE IS NOTHING TO TRANSCEND.

“Even more revealing is the comparison of these circumstances, which differ so much from those of the theater, with the situation in painting. Here the question is: How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs.
In short, in contrast to the magician - who is still hidden in the medical practitioner - the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him.
Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tre mendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.”

Lembrar e estudar pra teste literatura francesa contemporânea: “One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form.
The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial - and literary - means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.
Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry beyond its goal. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the
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film in favor of higher ambitions - though of course it was not conscious of such intentions as here described. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are "word salad" containing obscenities and every imaginable waste produet of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of produc-tion. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct. Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scan-dal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public.
From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballis-tics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: "I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images." The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change.
This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.
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“The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process.
Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property rela-tions; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.”- What if not fascism, but Western Liberalism (or whatever it’s all the same ), identity politics virtue signaling post managerial class

“"Fiat ars - pereat mundus", says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "lart pour l'art." Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olym-pian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.”- To defend melancholicly the old ritualistic dimension of art, or to rejoice and embrace its serial and non sensiqual nature, its immediacy and destruction of the distance of representation, its perverse search for the abolition of symbolic meanings, art pour l’art, or the leftist response of insuflar art with politics, politicizing art and thereby making it represent something again, have an external referent and even a transcendental sentimental dimension, fight for the poor operários 🥲🥲