Benjamin’s essay written in 1937 shows the trepidation felt towards the onset of new and complex technology and its implications on the art world and more so on arts reception or absorption by its audience.
The camera is shown as the instigator for this new relationship between art and its viewer. Photography had begun to influence the art world more and more, and the arrival of film further complicated this relationship. Benjamin shows that how relate to the artist or actor is dislocated with the interjection of the camera. This technical mediation of reality complicates the audience’s relation to how the artists subject is portrayed or how the actor portrays his character. He shows that the camera allows image production that shows unconscious ways of seeing, and that the images produced are not done as consciously as those of a painter. This mechanical reproductability of reality through an image eliminates the aura: “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” (I understand the aura as the essence or an art works unique existence at the hand of the artist).
Although I see valid and interesting comments in Benjamin’s essay, it is hard, on a personal level, to fully understand the social context in which it was written. Photography, film and the camera have become so saturated into our daily life that it is hard to understand the somewhat terrified stance that Benjamin seemed to take. I see the camera as a tool for us now, a way to heighten how a director or artist can control the way their audience sees. Although in instances such as photojournalism, this greater ability of control can skew or manipulate reality in a negative way (as seen in Campbell’s “Horrific Blindness” text), in the realm of the art world it can be welcomed as a way to further our artistic intentions. This can be said of film in the same way, the director now has an unparalleled ability to tell his story to the receiving audience.
Working within the post-modern aesthetic, it is more valid to increase this displacement of reality to a more constructed space and allow ourselves to control reality for our artistic intents. Michael Kohler wrote of the basic aesthetics of modern photography in a recent essay and described the aesthetic in the following way: “The creative achievement of the photo artist is measured according to his ability to undermine the traditional claim of the camera image to “truth”, “objectivity” and “realism” – and to give it the character of an “autonomous” pictorial object instead.” (p16).
It seems that we have now accepted the infiltration of mechanical reproduction into the art world and are constructing strategies to utilise this technology for the purpose of innovation and progress.
Kohler, Michael. “Arranged, Constructed and Staged”. Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography. New York: Edition Stemmle. 1995: 15-20.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Reprinted in Durham, M.G. & Kellner D. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell. 2001: 48-70.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Ethnoscape and Cultural Homogenization
Arun Appadurai describes the current situation of our world in his essay “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, and uses several new terms in his description. The most interesting I found were the concepts of the ‘ethnoscape’ and the ‘imagined world’.
He describes the ‘ethnoscape’ as “the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants … and other moving groups.”(33) He describes the world also as ‘imagined’ in our ways of thinking in particular realms, as media and contemporary (and largely commercial) sources become such an integral tool to our education. In contemplating these two terms together I can see how ethnicity can become part of this ‘imagined world’.
By this I mean that with the increase of moving persons, culture or ethnic identity can become displaced and harder to readily understand by someone that has grown up in a relocated environment. When a family has moved from their place of cultural origin they take their ethnic traditions with them but these traditions are, over time and generations, molded and reinterpreted in their new habitat. As this happens, the younger displaced members of a culture can look to media sources such as movies and magazines to relive their historical past and locate their ethnic identity, as this can be the only place they can experience their culture besides their domestic setting. That is, if a culture or ethnicity has been developed in a displaced community through generational adaptation, stereotypical images of a culture can take hold and these ‘imagined’ cultures can become a source for ethnic identity.
Appadurai sees this as a challenge faced by most people in the modern world, and the ‘imagined’ culture a phenomena not too vastly unreasonable: “how do small groups, especially families … deal with these new global realities as they seek to reproduce themselves and, in doing so, by accident reproduce cultural forms themselves?”(43)
Although this outlook can seem bleak for our cultural identity, as it conjures images and thoughts of an almost a uniformic version of our ethnic diversity, the argument can be made that at least it seems our cultural identities will and can remain intact, even though the form might not stay the same as in our ancestral history. “This does not mean that they will be static entities. There will be an ongoing, dynamic transformation through dialogue and encounter”. A recent essay by Michael Amaladoss “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” from which this point was made further argued that cultures must survive the onslaught of contemporary culture as “people construct their identities through their cultures, they will defend them, even violently if necessary… Cultural diversities, as expressions of divine and human freedom and creativity, will have to be protected and defended.”
Amaladoss, Michael. “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” August 2008. http://www.sedos.org/english/amaladoss2.html
Appadurai, Arun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. 1996:22-47.
He describes the ‘ethnoscape’ as “the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants … and other moving groups.”(33) He describes the world also as ‘imagined’ in our ways of thinking in particular realms, as media and contemporary (and largely commercial) sources become such an integral tool to our education. In contemplating these two terms together I can see how ethnicity can become part of this ‘imagined world’.
By this I mean that with the increase of moving persons, culture or ethnic identity can become displaced and harder to readily understand by someone that has grown up in a relocated environment. When a family has moved from their place of cultural origin they take their ethnic traditions with them but these traditions are, over time and generations, molded and reinterpreted in their new habitat. As this happens, the younger displaced members of a culture can look to media sources such as movies and magazines to relive their historical past and locate their ethnic identity, as this can be the only place they can experience their culture besides their domestic setting. That is, if a culture or ethnicity has been developed in a displaced community through generational adaptation, stereotypical images of a culture can take hold and these ‘imagined’ cultures can become a source for ethnic identity.
Appadurai sees this as a challenge faced by most people in the modern world, and the ‘imagined’ culture a phenomena not too vastly unreasonable: “how do small groups, especially families … deal with these new global realities as they seek to reproduce themselves and, in doing so, by accident reproduce cultural forms themselves?”(43)
Although this outlook can seem bleak for our cultural identity, as it conjures images and thoughts of an almost a uniformic version of our ethnic diversity, the argument can be made that at least it seems our cultural identities will and can remain intact, even though the form might not stay the same as in our ancestral history. “This does not mean that they will be static entities. There will be an ongoing, dynamic transformation through dialogue and encounter”. A recent essay by Michael Amaladoss “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” from which this point was made further argued that cultures must survive the onslaught of contemporary culture as “people construct their identities through their cultures, they will defend them, even violently if necessary… Cultural diversities, as expressions of divine and human freedom and creativity, will have to be protected and defended.”
Amaladoss, Michael. “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” August 2008. http://www.sedos.org/english/amaladoss2.html
Appadurai, Arun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. 1996:22-47.
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