What kind of comments are you looking for KatieNewman? Have you read it and thus want to discuss it, or do you just want to know what it's talking about?

No, I've read it. I'd like to discuss.

sorry. i am arranging my library right now..

Ok, so what maybe you want to tell us a little more about what you want to discuss in this text.
All I can say is that it's a very important text for the philosophy of cinema and images in general, because it is probably the only direction that has been found in the twentieth century towards a definition of the ethical position of the producers of images. Everybody interested in photography, cinema, or any field that's related to image production should read it.
But maybe there is something more specific that you would like to talk about?

Sorry about the vague-ity. Ok, how about the article as it relates to architecture. What do I mean? Sure, there's the image and cinema stuff. But when you think of his theories on an object's "aura", what does that mean to prototypical design, or development housing? What about preservationism?

Better?

Benjamin transferred the Hiedeggerian and Sartreian sense of human authenticity to the art object through the notion that a "work" makes its possibilities its own by relating them to its individualized situation. For Benjamin, when the art object makes its individual existence its own it generates a quality that Benjamin describes as an aura. This condition presuposes the concept of a unique original. If you want to try to "translate" this into "architecture" you can try to make an argument via the Postmodern line of thought that philosophically and technically questions the concept of the "original", thus making the distiction between the authentic and the fake unclear, but I think that the attempt to "translate" a text such as this into architectural practice is problematic.

thanks for the short but good explaination.
as for the "problematic", Mr. Venturi's work directly deals with this issue and Duchamp's work ignited the art world with it.

I think it unwise to include Sartre within this argument as his first works were published in 1939 and Benjamin dead in 1940. How could Benjamin transfer anything Sartreian?

OA: Sorry, I wasn't clear. There have been many whose work directly deals with authenticity, origin, aura, etc. What I meant to say is that attempting to "translate" Benjamin's text into architectural practice (ie. "preservation" or "tract-housing") is problematic.

John: Very true. It's the end of a very long week and my writing is not as precise, nor rigorous as it once was. What I meant is that there is a line of thought through Heidegger and Sartre that deals with what it is to be authentic. And that Benjamin extended this line of thought to the art object. Not necessarily that Benjamin read H & S and then "translated" that into his work. As you say, it would be very difficult for Benjamin to do this with Sartre.

Back to work.

i think i a discussion about Walter Benjamin becomes very relevant and applicable to the topic of architecture when you are focussing on urban situations like Berlin. That's a city that identifies itself with its history while its architecture is its reconstructions. So here, the idea of 'aura' for architecture is ensuing that the original context of an edifice may be lost once its use and context is remade over and over. Are we building on top of the old because of its original context or because we want a new one?

And yes of course Benjamin's text can also apply to postmodern thought about referencing back to tradition but doing so with a type of mocking or retranslation such that postmodernism takes the aura of the old and reproduces it into something new. But does the new produce a new and original aura with this new translation or does it take on the old that it has referred to?

Benjamin's idea can be a springboard for really interesting ideas about architecture...

with no offence directed at any..

just to be a bit 'subversive'..de modé...a discussion that blandly advances a self-defeatingly generic topic (Work of Art...in 'in absolutum') is bound to result in banal chewing-the-cud responses.
ooops...
regardless...
it is even annoying when someone frames it this way..
'so..what is the relationshit between architecture and music'
'so...what is the relationshit between architecture and engineering'
'so...how can we bridge this to architecture'

firstly..it enslaves you to Architecture..and that is just blah. Architecture should not be loved for itself...that is the first step to rabid symbolism and stubborn one-liner hermeneutics. I once had a tutor who was like that..he pissed me off..I do not like watching people masturbate over the quality of toplighting or the texture of baked red bricks.
secondly..I find myself insisting at this point(at least to myself)..that Architecture (at least for an architect, and not a art history's bird's view (though I hear that has been pronounced dead for some time now (I guess that parallels the predicament of Fukuyama's history) ...but then again, announcing the death or the crisis of(in) something is a way of resurrecting it...very Christian....so implicitly Nietzche was very Christian, the same way Spinoza was very Jewish)) is so slippery that it is eventually just boring to concern oneself with. Let there be architectures...pieces that, through seen whichever context, are not units in a grand project of pretentious and smug wholesomeness. Pieces that can be dismissed as easily as they can be recalled. This was the promise Koolhaas did not deliver..

Paradoxically, whilst the retroactive agenda of Koolhaas inherently dismisses the previous megalomaniac mythmaking of those who saw themselves or were seen as the inheritors of structuralism within the profession..it falls from grace when it tries to form itself into a movement of sorts...it results in just another megalomaniac mythmaking through noisy 'objectivism', overt cleverness in a marriage of space and finance, data/input/flows and such devices that try to cocoon Architecture within a semblance of objectivity .. .. myths that falls victim to the same facist smugness as 'play of light'.'sensuality of texture', 'boundary conditions', 'decon' 'critical'..etc
It is on par with deconstructivism in that whilst it renounces the stultifying absolutism of Architecture (within its own rhetoric...) like the Hydra monster, it grows another...well actually the Hydra grows two..anyways..

This latter part is just a venting of frustrastion to be honest..as well as the victim of the former part. The former, however, I heartily uphold.

Interesting.

Unfortunatly everything relates to something. To look at something in light of something else reveals the original. Ignoring this and treating everything as its own train of thought is unproductive. Therefore, looking at "architecture" from the view of this writing is valid, simply because there is an outcome. And I want to know what that outcome is.
There can be several directions to this. Simply put, is the original idea still powerful after being copied indefinitly? It can be applied to the revival of historical styles. Can you really "take on" the aura if you remake the original? And in this case what would the aura refer to?

Katie-
wouldn't benjamin argue that aura is necessarily linked with the Original--to the point that neither exists without the other? the transfer of aura, he would say, is impossible. aura can "leave" the Original and be appreciated on its own, but cannot transfer to another object--even one that is a copy of the original.

in this way, aura, in terms of architecture, could be most closely related to locus.

...or cicadas, whatever.

Benjamin explicitly compared architecture to cinema as cinema's "all-encompassing" impact was most closely related to the total environment that some architectural experiences create.

The aura of the original fades after time, but I don't think his main point was about originality and fakes, (Duchamp or Venturi) but the urgency and compelling nature of this new medium (film and cinema) that was emphatically NOT an "original"

Furthermore, this new and compelling public experience was a new type of mass art that while rejecting "aura" of the object also stood in opposition to the kitsch of totalitarian regimes, where war was the ultimate act of art. The famous conclusion that facsism aestheticizes politics and communism politicizes art still resonates as the fascinating chimera of an engaged mass art movement and a vox populi aesthetic impulse

Without this essay, so much wouldn't exist. Situationism, archigram, etc. I'm going to go reread it...

I just reread this AM and the epilogue continues to blow my mind, especially thinking about the war and Bush... and Reagan defeating Communism. And Halliburton and maintaing the current property system... and Reality TV... damn.

"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 relations; 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 it Fuhrer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values."

And aren't those ritual values all the forced piety of the Bush administration? Family, Church values... kinder und kirche...

"All efforts to render politics aesthetic result in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments..."

"The horrible features of imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production-in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of "human material", the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trecnhes; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way."