1. Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of is Technical Reproducibility Lecture, Popular Culture & Medieforskningens klassikere

2. Immediate context Written in 1936; impending World War II
Published in the anthology "Illuminations", mostly on literature
Could be considered part of Benjamin's work as an historian of ideas (the experience of urbanity)and as an art critic/historian

3. The Great Divide
Modernity produces a mass-produced/ distributed/consumed popular culture on the offensive
A high culture rises out of the educated middle classes and bohemia
High culture born through strategies of exclusion, but torn in its relation to popular culture

4. Modernism I High culture's criticism of conventions of reality
Expression of
alienation
Magritte: "This
is not a pipe"

5. Modernism II Modernism as the construction of an alternative reality
Modernism as retreat
Mondrian: "Composition"

6. The avant-garde T The destruction of "art" Reintegration into
(everyday) life
Duchamp: "Fountain"

7. Benjamin on aura
"... the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be” (p ).
Example: the contour of a mountain range or branch; something that vanishes upon closer inspection
A way of characterising the characteristic experience (the here-and-now) of art

8. Aura's historical development
Aura is historically accumulated, e.g. Mona Lisa
In traditional society: ritual & cult use value
In modern society: profane cult of beauty, art for art's sake

9. How reproducibility changes the experience of art
Art history is a development toward more and more extended reproducibility, ending in original-less media such as photography and film
As reproducibility becomes mechanised it removes art from craft and craft-based tradition
New reproducible media promote immediacy and closeness in relation to the representation

10. Sense experience as historically determined
Modern technologies of reproduction promote immediate and uniform sense experiences; history and distance recede
This means the freeing up of culture from an art context and its inclusion in everyday life and the political realm
The change in sense experience of culture is symptomatic of a broader tendency in society: reproduction means a break with tradition

11. The revolutionary potential of film
Film perceives new worlds, penetrates and inquires
While art demands that the viewer come to its place, photo and (in a sense) film comes to where people are
Film furthers a (potentially) progressive mix of enjoyment and inquisition with the audience
Film breaks down the barriers between the professional and the participant

12. The regressive potential of film/photo
Films/photos reconstruct aura as “stardom” and “personality”
Film/photo emphasise the dreaminess and unreality of film and photo to re-build quasi-religious cult value for a new time
Attempts at reintroducing personality aura tie in with a more general aestheticisation of politics, which culminates in war

13. The Adorno/Benjamin debates
Central versus peripheral in the Frankfurt School
Common heritage in Marxism
Agreement on a critical stance toward commodification, and on the key role of cultural industries
Strong mutual influence on the conceptual level: “fragment”, “aura”
Disagreement on the role of technology
Disagreement on the role of art