A Response to Walter Benjamin

In his seminal essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin investigates the development of artistic methods and technologies that allow a work of art to be easily reproduced and the effect that has had on artmaking and reception of art.

Benjamin first notes the importance of the “authenticity” of an original, whereby its place in time and location are important factors in establishing its uniqueness and “authority.” Technically reproduced art, such as a photograph, destabilizes the original by placing it in new times and contexts, which he argues has a deteriorating effect on the “presence” or “aura” of the art object. Furthermore, the multiplication of reproductions allows for new conditions in which these works can be presented, further stretching the intended meaning of the original. Whereas art found its beginnings evoking the divine or manifesting reality in specific circumstances, reproduction is focused more on the manner of its exhibition. This ultimately changes the viewer’s understanding of the original. Benjamin uses the example of photographs displayed in newspapers as requiring captions to understand their meaning, or how a screen actor’s performance can be cut and manipulated as necessary to generate the desired effect, without the actor ever actually sharing physical space with an audience.

I invoke Benjamin and elaborate on his essay in detail to highlight his theory regarding how reproduction dilutes the “aura of the original.” Art historian and scholar of religion Kathryn Barush notes that those who are quick to speak of the disenchantment of art based on Benjamin’s essay, often leave out a passage where he states, “in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.”[1] Yes, the proliferation of copies enables new situations in which the original can be interpreted, but it is also true that replication can assert its own “aura.” The relic classification system not only affirms that the “presence of the saint” transfers to each subsequent object, but in doing so, the proliferation of relics brings the sacred aura to the people instead of requiring the people to make pilgrimage to the saint. Therefore the relics, miraculous photographs, and miraculous rose petals of Felt Presence expand the aura of the sacred by “replicating its signs, spreading its emanations, and increasing its presence among believers.”[2]

Scholar of religion Paolo Apolito sums up this sentiment by highlighting that the power of reproduction “lies in the investment of differential value that different people place in the same object,” giving the example that hundreds of Virgin Mary statues could be produced in a workshop only to have one which miraculously weeps blood. He elaborates that, “the penetration of technology into the most intimate recesses of individual and collective life triggers new and unpredictable processes whereby sacred status is conferred.”[3]

In correspondence with scholar of religion Diana Walsh Pasulka, she explained her belief that part of her scholarship’s role was to help re-enchant the world. It is easy to believe that in our technological moment all hope is lost, no universal truths exist, and the “aura” has faded with the proliferation of images. I reject those notions.

The current AI discourse is merely emblematic of the nebulous nature of both our archive of contradictions and the motivations of disparate “felt presences.” These issues are often incomprehensible and paradoxical, and those who are caught in the middle often resign themselves to cynicism or blind faith. This is the biblical story of Job. This is the story of the human condition. By constructing an exhibition that enables my audience to pilgrimage, discover their own questions, and meaningfully discern the answers along the way, I hope to promote a sense of solidarity. We are all victims of this and complicit in this. The answer to our questions may be to reside in the mystery.

[1] Benjamin quoted in Barush, Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience, 74.

[2] Brown quoted in Wojcik, “‘Polaroids from Heaven’: Photography, Folk Religion, and the Miraculous Image Tradition at a Marian Apparition Site,” 141.

[3] Apolito, The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web, 120.

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