Language of Immediacy: Authenticity as a Premise in Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility

Zeller, Christoph

doi:10.1353/mon.2012.0015

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Quoting Valéry’s words, Walter Benjamin (1969: 218) in his artwork essay claims that it took ‘more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in conditions of production’. Unquestionably, the change to what Benjamin refers is the invention of new ways of communication, like photography, that ‘challenged prior modes of perception’, and especially film, which ‘changed reality’ (Zeller, 2012: 75). Even though Benjamin acknowledges the dangers of these drastic changes regarding the aestheticization of war and politics, his approach to technology and technological reproducibility was constructive and optimistic.…”

Section: Locative Media In the Age Of Digital Reproducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In early to mid-19th Century, museums across the world started to manufacture copies of monuments made of plaster and poured into casts to exhibit them out of their contexts (Lending, 2018). However, the ability to mechanically reproduce works of art accurately in the early 20th Century, ‘had reached a level that made it virtually impossible to distinguish between the original and its copy’ (Groys, 2003; as cited in Zeller, 2012: 71). According to Benjamin, speed and acceleration were two main characteristics that differ mechanical reproduction from the manual reproduction, underlining the difference between reproducibility by hand and by technology in terms of authenticity .…”

Section: Locative Media In the Age Of Digital Reproducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

İnan

Yılmaz

2023

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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This research delves into the digital reproductions of a specific monument in locative media employing Walter Benjamin’s conceptual framework presented in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’. The monument in question, namely, the recently reconstructed and rescaled Atatürk, His Mother and Women’s Right Monument in İzmir, Turkey serves as an exemplary case for examining the reproducibility of monuments within both physical and digital environments. Its significance lies not only in the ongoing political and scholarly debate revolving around the decision of local municipality to undertake its reconstruction, but also in its growing popularity in social media as a consequence of this debate. The analyses of digital reproductions of the monument in the paper are twofold: The first gives insights into the effects of digital reproductions on the aura and authenticity of the monument in locative media. The second focuses on how the local municipality and individual users instrumentalize these productions to perform official and mundane rituals and aestheticize not only their own political agendas but also their everyday life.

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Section: Locative Media In the Age Of Digital Reproducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Locative Media In the Age Of Digital Reproducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

İnan

Yılmaz

2023

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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“…Otherssuggestthatauthenticityisnotsocomplicated,especiallywhenunderstooddirectlythrough Benjamin'slens. Zeller(2012)positsthattheaura,whichis"anotionofaestheticexperience,"is "theutopianconceptofauthenticity"(p.75).Inthissense,theauraandauthenticityareinextricably linked,andbothareopposedtotheinherentlydystopianadventoftechnologicaladvancement.…”

Section: Authenticity In Materials Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Reincarnation of the Aura

Bigliardi

2017

International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric

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In 1935, Walter Benjamin introduced the aura as the abstract conceptualization of uniqueness, authenticity, and singularity that encompasses an original art object. With the advent of technological reproducibility, Benjamin posits that the aura of an object deteriorates when the original is reproduced through the manufacture of copies. Employing this concept of the aura, I outline the proliferation of plaster casts of sculptures in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, placing contextual emphasis on the cultural and prestige value of originals and copies. Theories of authenticity in both art history and material culture are used to examine the nature of the aura and to consider how the aura transforms when an original object is lost from the material record. Through an object biography of a 15th-century sculpture by Francesco Laurana, I propose that the aura does not disappear upon the loss of the original, but is reincarnated in the authentic reproduction.

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Word Creatures

Tomko¹

2018

New German Critique

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Language of Immediacy: Authenticity as a Premise in Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility

Cited by 4 publications

References 11 publications

Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

The Reincarnation of the Aura

Word Creatures

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