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Wolfgang Ernst THE CONCEPT OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE AGE OF THE W1RIÜAL WORLD Aura and Original (with, and beyond of, Walter Benjamin) According to Walter Benjamin, objects with a magnetic aura are precisely those that, in contrast to the ephemerality and repeatability of reproducible art, convey an aesthetics of singularity and permanency: as a unique "appearance of the distant, however near it may be." 1 Can Benjamin's aura, then, not be linked with the technologically repeatable video image? Let us consider an icon of video art, Nam June Paik's video installation Buddha (circa 1989. ZKM/Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe). Indeed, the video Buddha reminds us that from a cultural-aesthetical point of view, aura experiences can be incomparably authentic and irrefutable for the individual - "which brings them close to the mystic experiences of Christianity or Zen Buddhism." 2 Jochen Hörisch is also speaking of an aura literally coming forth ex negative referring to Walter Benjamin's work Kleine Geschichte der Photographie where he describes early portrait photographs: "There was an aura about them, a medium that, penetrating it, gave their gaze fullness and surety." 3 Here, aura still describes the substance itself (in the medical and religious sense). In antiquity, medicine viewed the aura as indicating an imminent epileptic or hysteric attack: in the 19th century, the psychiatrist Hippolyte Baraduc tried, "through photographs, to objectify the aura of individuals which is invisible to the naked eye" - something of a scientific-positivist opposite to Benjamin's meaning regarding the loss of the aestheticmystic aura in the medium of photography, which he proclaims as a chance for the development of an antifascist aesthetics in film. 4 Benjamin's theories have been refuted by the reality of Pop-Art (Andy Warhol's serial sculptures) and in particular by media art itself, where technology did not signal the exorcism of the aura, but an added dimension. The art critic Michael Glasmeier calls for a renewed study of Benjamin, "in which aura and reproduction will at last become secondary issues" 5 . The digital media are indeed diminishing the value of classic reproduction. The era when technological reproducibility was the foundation of the cultural economy is drawing to a close. An economy of mindfulness that values immediate perception rather than storage media will affect culture as a whole and hence the arts - and for the culture of the Occident this means a shift in emphasis from storage to transfer, from the savings account to the volatile share portfolio. It has been suggested that worldwide, fees for publications on the internet should no longer be based on the (actual) publication or programme (the original in television terms) but on the fact of its transmission, which need not be part of a framework. 6 The internet is not interested in archives (the build-up of storage as build-up of capital, the cultural prerequisite for claims of copyright), but in distribution. From the media change regarding the criteria material, space and time, Paul Valery - to whom Benjamin is referring 7 - has drawn his conclusions for "the whole of artistic -148-
techniques" and has thus given a precise description of the television and video screen, the principle of transmission, transfer and storage of technological images, the work of art in the era of tele-presence: Reproduction and communication of the works will undoubtedly be the first [...] to be affected. [...] The works will achieve some kind of omnipresence. At our command, they will obediently be present anytime, anywhere, or recreate themselves anew. No longer will they simply exist in themselves - they will all be wherever there is an individual. 8 - "and the appropriate equipment", he adds. Contemporaneous with Benjamin, the German Dadaists declared: "Art is dead / Long live the new machine art of TATLIN"; and indeed, media art now is no more than art by the grace of technological grammar, in contrast to the concept of an also literally autonomous art (that is, art that is not defined by the dash). Aura and Authenticity The authorisation of the original is considered both the genitivus subjectivus and the genitivus objectivus: It is the discourse that styles the object an original (since, viewed discretely, every reproduction is a unique object). Underlying it is not a metaphysical aesthetics, no pure love for the object, but a discourse on power: the will for a right, the proof of a right, just as for a long time, archives were not built up primarily for historical research (indeed, that would be a misuse of the archive), but to prove the legality of a state's claims. In this sense, the term Urkunde (title deed) corresponds with that of the archaeological original (and after all, the German "Urkunde" is pretty much a literal translation of "archaeoilogy"). But it is not just in the sense of the discourse that the original has a special quality: with technological media, the equipment helps define the original if the term is understood as a piece of information. "The proliferation and prospects of digital media have drawn our attention to the question of how the authority of informa- 9 tion can and cannot be established in a new medium." And thus it is no longer simply the physical reality that authenticates the representation, where signs of age and disintegration induce historicity - analogous to the changes in a work of art "that it has suffered over time in its physical structure". So, what does authorise the original as opposed to the reproduction? According to Benjamin, it is tradition and the notion of authenticity, physically endorsed in the form of a chemical patina or - analogous - through the archival proof of provenance: The authenticity of an object is the sum and substance of all that can be traced back to its origin, from its material duration to its historical testimony. [...] and thus the historical testimony of the object begins to falter [...] in the reproduction. [...] but it is the 10 authority of the object, its traditional importance that is thus faltering. Benjamin sees authenticity as a characteristic of the object, yet it is impossible to "determine an essence of that which is authentic." Like Benjamin's concept of the aura, the aesthetic category of authenticity is, in fact, oriented on both subjective experience and the ontic nature of the (art) work. Let us shift the question from that of authenticity to that of discourse strategies that define what is to be considered genuine. By analogy, we can say: -149-
Page 1 and 2: VIDEO IM MUSEUM RESTAURIERUNG UND E
Page 3 and 4: Vorwort 4 Einführung 5 George Legr
Page 5: Reinhold Mißelbeck/Martin Turck Vo
Page 9 and 10: In the age of industrial technology
Page 11 and 12: The Currency of the Original The ec
Page 13 and 14: mary" 34 . With the camera obscura,
Page 15 and 16: tecture regarding the German Museum
Page 17 and 18: gic mirror' and 'window on the worl
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Page 21 and 22: But in the video image, infrastruct
Page 23 and 24: sely the obstacles, anachronisms an
Page 25 and 26: tivalue logic) here, the technologi
Page 27 and 28: Photographic reproductions of works
Page 29 and 30: lity). 122 Thus it shares a charact
Page 31 and 32: 43 Cf W Ε, Mehr Speicher, weniger
Page 33 and 34: 103 Andreas Menn, Text supplement (
Page 35 and 36: particular performance or, to go ba
Page 37 and 38: somewhere. It is a sculpture signed
Page 39 and 40: estoration of an installation, i.e.
Page 41 and 42: sis from which he develops his work
Page 43 and 44: Jochen Gerz Ich habe meinen kurzen
Page 45 and 46: tuell zu sein als sich mit physisch
Page 47 and 48: Abb. 7/ill. 7 Dan Graham: Present C
Page 49 and 50: Abb. 15/ill. 15 Andreas Menn: Worko

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