In Walter Benjamin’s article on Baudelaire’s motifs it states that “What prevents our delight in the beautiful from ever being satisfied is the image of the past.” Perhaps this statement only refers to a portion of the masses. It was discussed that through mechanical reproduction the aura/uniqueness of the reproduced item is lost. However is it the case for those for example who have never encountered or inhaled the flower in person? For example those who have never seen the Mona Lisa in person is not the gaze returned to them, as they have never been satisfied with a past image/ experience with the painting it in person? For them the camera records the likeness and returns the gaze.
With mechanical reproduction of images the aura/uniqueness is lost. With storytelling the lack of reproduction equates in a loss the story completely. With both there is a lack of communication. With mechanical reproduction there is a lack of the returned gaze from the object. In storytelling there is simply a lack of communication between the storyteller and those who hear the story. Why is it that reproducibility (mechanical reproduction) harms one art and lack of reproducibility destroys another?
Benjamin says that the nature of every real story is to contain something useful, either openly or covertly, in the form of a moral, practical advice, or a proverb or maxim. Storytelling is reaching its end because wisdom is dying out. A story integrates the life experiences of generations of listeners-turned-storytellers through their memories. Does the absence of this explicit didactic purpose really mean that a novel contains nothing useful? What is the specific nature of wisdom passed from storyteller to listener, and how is this really different than what may be gained by relating fictional experience of a novel to personal experience... Is wisdom something that can only be acquired through this layering of experience, and is storytelling unique in its ability to achieve this? Benjamin's claim of the death of wisdom is related to his assertion that the communicability of experience is decreasing, and with it storytelling. What does Benjamin mean when he says the communicability of experience is decreasing, and is this a symptom of or cause of the end of storytelling?
In “The Storyteller”, Benjamen writes that wisdom is dying out because of secular productive forces. Was it only religion then that could teach us the “epic side of truth”, that particular way to view and convey experiences?
“The Storyteller” also discusses the new form of communication, information, which has arisen with the rise of the press (read: mass-media). “ Information is antithetical to the story . . .every morning brings us the news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation . . . it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation”. Could this connect with the Brenkman reading in its assertion that mass media is a mediator for our actions and thoughts, whereby we are constantly fed information about what we should think and feel? Could the lack of interpretation and direct interaction between ourselves and the media, as well as the novel, be seen as parallel to the capitalist system’s separation between workers (capital) and their actual labor and productivity? Benjamen’s thoughts on information remind me of the lines by T. S. Eliot: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
If the question that underlies Benjamin’s text is how and to what extent is urban experience determined by historical conditions, the answer would be that, under the conditions of modern urbanism, the ways in which history dettermines experience do not become matters of conscious awareness. (Just as the photograph provides a permanent record of a transient moment). What could that signal for artistic development, modes of art-making, and subject matter?
Walter Benjamin says storytelling communicated in narrative form "counsel" through experience. He goes on to say that "counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom." The idea that storytelling leaves out the explanation that information demands, forcing you to confront the wisdom, is good, but it seems like receiving the counsel requires a level of common sense that I doubt all hearers of the storytelling possess. What is required to receive the counsel or wisdom?
In the Baudelaire article, Benjamin says the shock experience has become the norm. The shocking element actually gives us an experience with the lyric poetry, and probably also storytelling. Benjamin is down on information vs. experiential storytelling, but can information not have the same shock factor that leads to action that storytelling does? If so, would he just argue that presenting shocking information in a context of storytelling be more effective?
Live storytelling is deemed less effective a communication by Benjamin than novels. But what about live performance (storytelling) that cannot be recreated through text? A novel can describe both the historical happenings of an event as well as its emotional experience. But in his article on Baudelaire, he praises Baudeliare's poetic ability to shock. Can't live storytelling do more than convey information? Benjamin seems to argue that the novel is more effective, but his argument seems rooted in the historical and emotional experience. Why is our sense-experience is lessened? In today's mass-media society, where do we fulfill our wants for a more robust, sense-heavy experience? Do we simply not crave to have our eardrums throb? Experience new tastes? New smells? Has the mass-media's overhaul also taken our need for this personal experience and replaced it with one heavily weighted in fact and the novel's opportunity to poetically interpret?
1. In "The Storyteller", Benjamin writes: "people imagine the storyteller as someone who has come from afar. But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions" (84). This quote reminds me of a situation I've encountered as a photojournalist. I used to be an international storyteller like Benjamin describes. I thought stories from exotic places would be particularly compelling. In 2007, I spent six months in Africa and did photo projects about AIDS orphans and child beggars while I was there. However, oddly enough, my photojournalism work in small-town Kansas the following year was much richer and more rewarding. Why are storytellers drawn to foreign, exotic places for their material when there is plenty of compelling material locally? Are stories from other places enriching our culture and making it more worldly, or are they detracting from it by replacing our stories with distant ones?
2. In Benjamin's essay, Leskov is quoted describing writing as a craft. Benjamin writes, "It cannot come as a surprise that he felt bonds with craftsmanship, but faced industrial technology as a stranger" (92). This made me think about the disappearance--actually, the transformation--of craftsmanship in art as a result of technology. Film photography, for instance, involves a lot of labor (developing the negatives, making the prints, etc). An intimate relationship develops between the photographer and his work as a result of the time-consuming processes. However, the hard work and craftsmanship make the end product all the more gratifying. Technology has somewhat simplified the craftsmanship involved in photography. Digital cameras have automatic settings. Digital photographs can be shot and viewed instantly. Photo editing no longer involves the artist's direct hand, but the tools of computer programs. What are the consequences of this simpler, much more immediate type of craftsmanship? How has it altered the relationship between artist and artwork?
In considering Benjamin's article on the storyteller, I began thinking of storytelling in relation to nostalgia, urgency, and the instantaneous. I am personally very interested in the art of storytelling and in preservation and the way that oral history allows for transformation. Benjamin says that storytelling is dying out because the "epic side of truth and wisdom" is disappearing. To me, nowadays the cause lies more in the disappearance of leisure and the personal. Everything is about how much you can cram into one day and how productive one can be. Time is a commodity. Especially with the creation of the internet, blogs, facebooks, personal pages, everyone is an author. Are these the modern novels? What does this say about archiving and how people share stories now? There is a sense of urgency that is missing from novels that is present in active storytelling. With novels, there is a safety in knowing there is a finite ending and the ability to retrace exact steps in the text, whether you do or do not interpret it the same way. But with storytelling, is there a way to capture that same exact inflection in your speech? When it is passed from person to person it transforms. Benjamin argues that what makes the novel work is understanding that there is a "death" and an end. Does Storytelling richness then come from its ability to keep transforming? And yet doesn't the fact that it is based on making sure the story is not lost through the passage of time similarly give it richness through death?
In "The Storyteller" Benjamin states that the success or failure of storytelling is based on a shared experience of the audience. In novels, this common experience of the audience is lost because readers enter the novel on an individual basis and cannot interpret the same emotions and inflections as if it were told via a storyteller. Current mass media and communication limits shared experience even further because we are given information without knowledge, according to Benjamin. But in terms of news obtained from oral sources, such as TV, radio or internet, don't we all hear the same inflections and emotions from the voice? Is this not a shared experience? Or is some traumatic news too shocking for us to absorb and therefore we forget it (I'm not really sure what Benjamin is saying about shock reactions and consciousness)?
In Bejamin's The Storyteller, he mentions that, "According to Lukacs, the novel is at the same time the only art form which includes time among its constitutive principles." (I think) I greatly disagree. Doesn't photography base time on constitutive principles as well? Even when just focusing on the technical aspects, the exposure time can determine the story that is told in the frame. Even so, a photograph conveys the same information as a story because the viewer has a similar experience as a listener. They can visually see what the photographer saw while taking the photo. Like a story, there is focus on detail and less emphasis on information and explanation. (The above isn't a question, as much as it is my own food for thought.)
But then, in the Baudelaire piece, there is a discussion about how the camera "gave the moment a posthumous shock." Benjamin talks about how the camera has the power to record an event in terms of sound and sight. Because I study film and photography, I'm interested in how Benjamin's argument changes from the Storyteller to Baudelaire, if it does at all. There is something that is lost, that "counsel" is lost when reading a novel as opposed to listening to a story. But can a film (documentary) or a photograph exchange experience just as well as a story? Is the director the storyteller archiving his or her experience on tape or on film?
I'm curious as to how his idea of the "shock experience" has become the norm within his time could also reflect upon artworks in our time. The argument that "the more that he consciousness has to become aware to defend and screen against this stimuli, the less these impressions enter the experience" seems both true and false, at least within our modern contexts.
His discussion of Proust's idea of sensory memory being the strongest versus the newspaper's purposeful intent of not wanting to create personal memories was also incredibly intriguing. (the past is "somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect, and unmistakably present in some material object (or in the sensation which such an object arouses in us) though we have no idea which one it is. As for that object, it depends entirely on chance whether we come upon it before we die or whether we never encounter it." p. 158) I wonder what he would think of more recent additions of blogs, Op-Ed pages about very specific issues, as well as more interactive features within the NYT websites and other reputable newspapers.
If the purpose of the story is to transmit an experience and teach a life lesson, why then is the novel inadequate? What makes oral histories more important than individual experiences?
Why must a storyteller be a teacher also? Why is mere entertainment insufficient when it comes to a story, and does this requirement cross over into other arts?
Benjamin goes to great lengths to illustrate the superiority of storytelling above raw information. This is due in part to the temporal constraints of information--that information only "survives in the moment that it is new." Storytellers possess the ability to enable their audience to "encounter themselves." Given that we are now living in "the information age" how are we supposed to construct identities and understand ourselves in this sea of of what benjamin puports as vacuous information?
In the illuminations reading Benjamin talks about experiencing the aura of an object and the relationship between inanimate objects and man. How are we supposed to experience non-object based work? Can non-object essentially return our gaze?
Both of these readings really got me to think about the evolution of mass media, and the battle between information and interest. The discussion of the "shock" of the camera favors undeniable information, everything is sort of laid out on the table. He states in the Storyteller that "half the art of storytelling is to keep a story free from explanation". Nowadays, we are given an overload of information, and he's right when he says that connections are made for us. On the whole we gravitate towards the simplistic: we're lazy. Why strain yourself to make larger sense of the concept if it is all spelled out on the next page? Ok, so now, what does this say of the relationship between the listener and the storyteller? That is, if this is our tendency, if these are the desires of each, each party must become responsible for his own presentation or interpretation. Through mechanization and reproducibility have we lost the ability to achieve this? This sort of harkens back to the Frankfurt School discussion...where did we get by embracing this newfound "convenience" given to us by industrialization? if we can't rewind and go backwards, how do we move forwards? Also, in response to an earlier comment by Becky on secularism, I am also interested in a discussion of the "epic side of truth" and its dependence on assuming the existence of something larger than ourselves. We can so focused on true facts and accurate information that a "myth" or "story" in Benjamin's sense of the word is almost an affront to our sensibilities. What if factual information cannot possibly convey the story? Where does truth really lie, if not in "the facts"?
It's interesting that Benjamin opens the Storyteller paper with a reference to Leskov, an author whose "Tale of the Mechanical Flea" is a fundamental element of my Animate Arts senior project. I am particularly interesting in Benjamin's interpretation of Leskov's religious affiliations, since Benjamin is a Marxist thinker. Is the death of storytelling as he describes it intimately linked with the capitalist condition and with progress? And is storytelling truly gone, or has it become shortened and simplified in the age of contemporary media and instant information?
In reference to Baudelaire, I found it difficult to follow some of the descriptions, having never read any of Baudelaire's work except excerpts as they related to Moreau and Khnopff. I was particularly interested in the idea of involuntary memory and how it was created. And in reference to shock in the artist's work, is shock the same as surprise? Is it enough to delight and surprise the viewer in order to achieve an effect or does shock need to come into play to affect their cerebral integration with the work?
Walter Benjamin contrasts the inherent self-centeredness of the novelis with the communal nature of the storyteller. He believes that it is the storyteller relates his story to his listener as an “experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth” while the novelist relates his work to his readers in a way that is “isolated.” Although the experiences of the story and the novel are inherently different due to personal presence, could it be said that the end result of the novel and the story is similar? That is, if we read the novel aloud or read a transcription of a storyteller's story, might we understand the two types similarly?
Given that Benjamin immediately relates three of the six markers of subculture, “the climate for lyric poetry has become increasingly inhospitable,” “there has been no success on a mass scale,” and “the greater coolness of the public [even] toward the lyric poetry,” could the socio-economic climate surrounding its creation be consider a subculture akin to, say, punk?
1) Reflecting upon the gradual disappearance of storytelling, Walter Benjamin argues that it is a result of the irrelevance of experience, which "has fallen in value." In the present day, if experience has evolved to become so decadent, what does that mean for art in today's society? Does it lack total appreciation for the past and tradition because it has not been cultured by the experiences of many and rather, been produced by the single artist? According to T.S. Eliot, "no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone." How would Walter Benjamin reply to this statement?
2) Walter Benjamin requires that "every real story" must contain something useful, providing its listeners with effective "counsel," whether it be a moral, practical advice, or proverb. In following, then, are all stories or art forms that lack specific recommendations for the people not genuine? If so, then a hierarchy is inevitably created where only a select few, of the learned and wise, are able to create art. Therefore then, would art still be art?
Walter Benjamin differentiates information and storytelling by writing that story telling does not offer explanations and it is from the experience or memory of someone whereas information aims to convey the pure essence of things. Today why are we so obsessed with facts and information more than wisdom or novels? Modern education has devalued the art of storytelling by constantly training people to reason and ask for verification. When someone talks about the experiences afar, we automatically want to see pictures of one's experience and ask to see the tangible evidence. Experience lost its essence and it has become so much about documenting and obtaining information to benefit oneself.
Although Walter Benjamin focuses his essay The Storyteller on oral tradition, his views can be used to explain contemporary art or art in general. On pg 87 of The Storyteller, Benjamin states, "The storyteller takes what he tells from experience - his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself".
The experience a storyteller receives when hearing a story can be compared to that of an artist looking at artwork. Both artists are going to gain from their experiences and then use it to improve their art and make it their own. Doesn't this idea relate to the concept that art is a collective process and great artists' take from their experiences of seeing prior works of art? Also, couldn't that also relate to Benjamin's idea that the artist cannot be isolated like a novelist? As seen in the web of art, every art period is affected by the others and no artist can completely isolate themselves from the history of art.
Also in The Storyteller, Benjamin mentions that a decline in storytelling is due to the fact that everything is already explained for the public and interpretation is lost. If we still think of the storyteller as a comparison to a painter, isn't it plausible to say that almost all artwork is left up to interpretation and almost every viewer will have some sort of "psychological connection" with the image?
18 comments:
In Walter Benjamin’s article on Baudelaire’s motifs it states that “What prevents our delight in the beautiful from ever being satisfied is the image of the past.” Perhaps this statement only refers to a portion of the masses. It was discussed that through mechanical reproduction the aura/uniqueness of the reproduced item is lost. However is it the case for those for example who have never encountered or inhaled the flower in person? For example those who have never seen the Mona Lisa in person is not the gaze returned to them, as they have never been satisfied with a past image/ experience with the painting it in person? For them the camera records the likeness and returns the gaze.
With mechanical reproduction of images the aura/uniqueness is lost. With storytelling the lack of reproduction equates in a loss the story completely. With both there is a lack of communication. With mechanical reproduction there is a lack of the returned gaze from the object. In storytelling there is simply a lack of communication between the storyteller and those who hear the story. Why is it that reproducibility (mechanical reproduction) harms one art and lack of reproducibility destroys another?
Benjamin says that the nature of every real story is to contain something useful, either openly or covertly, in the form of a moral, practical advice, or a proverb or maxim. Storytelling is reaching its end because wisdom is dying out. A story integrates the life experiences of generations of listeners-turned-storytellers through their memories. Does the absence of this explicit didactic purpose really mean that a novel contains nothing useful? What is the specific nature of wisdom passed from storyteller to listener, and how is this really different than what may be gained by relating fictional experience of a novel to personal experience... Is wisdom something that can only be acquired through this layering of experience, and is storytelling unique in its ability to achieve this?
Benjamin's claim of the death of wisdom is related to his assertion that the communicability of experience is decreasing, and with it storytelling. What does Benjamin mean when he says the communicability of experience is decreasing, and is this a symptom of or cause of the end of storytelling?
In “The Storyteller”, Benjamen writes that wisdom is dying out because of secular productive forces. Was it only religion then that could teach us the “epic side of truth”, that particular way to view and convey experiences?
“The Storyteller” also discusses the new form of communication, information, which has arisen with the rise of the press (read: mass-media). “ Information is antithetical to the story . . .every morning brings us the news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation . . . it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation”. Could this connect with the Brenkman reading in its assertion that mass media is a mediator for our actions and thoughts, whereby we are constantly fed information about what we should think and feel? Could the lack of interpretation and direct interaction between ourselves and the media, as well as the novel, be seen as parallel to the capitalist system’s separation between workers (capital) and their actual labor and productivity?
Benjamen’s thoughts on information remind me of the lines by T. S. Eliot: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
If the question that underlies Benjamin’s text is how and to what extent is urban experience determined by historical conditions, the answer would be that, under the conditions of modern urbanism, the ways in which history dettermines experience do not become matters of conscious awareness. (Just as the photograph provides a permanent record of a transient moment). What could that signal for artistic development, modes of art-making, and subject matter?
Walter Benjamin says storytelling communicated in narrative form "counsel" through experience. He goes on to say that "counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom." The idea that storytelling leaves out the explanation that information demands, forcing you to confront the wisdom, is good, but it seems like receiving the counsel requires a level of common sense that I doubt all hearers of the storytelling possess. What is required to receive the counsel or wisdom?
In the Baudelaire article, Benjamin says the shock experience has become the norm. The shocking element actually gives us an experience with the lyric poetry, and probably also storytelling. Benjamin is down on information vs. experiential storytelling, but can information not have the same shock factor that leads to action that storytelling does? If so, would he just argue that presenting shocking information in a context of storytelling be more effective?
Live storytelling is deemed less effective a communication by Benjamin than novels. But what about live performance (storytelling) that cannot be recreated through text? A novel can describe both the historical happenings of an event as well as its emotional experience. But in his article on Baudelaire, he praises Baudeliare's poetic ability to shock. Can't live storytelling do more than convey information? Benjamin seems to argue that the novel is more effective, but his argument seems rooted in the historical and emotional experience. Why is our sense-experience is lessened? In today's mass-media society, where do we fulfill our wants for a more robust, sense-heavy experience? Do we simply not crave to have our eardrums throb? Experience new tastes? New smells? Has the mass-media's overhaul also taken our need for this personal experience and replaced it with one heavily weighted in fact and the novel's opportunity to poetically interpret?
1. In "The Storyteller", Benjamin writes: "people imagine the storyteller as someone who has come from afar. But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions" (84). This quote reminds me of a situation I've encountered as a photojournalist. I used to be an international storyteller like Benjamin describes. I thought stories from exotic places would be particularly compelling. In 2007, I spent six months in Africa and did photo projects about AIDS orphans and child beggars while I was there. However, oddly enough, my photojournalism work in small-town Kansas the following year was much richer and more rewarding. Why are storytellers drawn to foreign, exotic places for their material when there is plenty of compelling material locally? Are stories from other places enriching our culture and making it more worldly, or are they detracting from it by replacing our stories with distant ones?
2. In Benjamin's essay, Leskov is quoted describing writing as a craft. Benjamin writes, "It cannot come as a surprise that he felt bonds with craftsmanship, but faced industrial technology as a stranger" (92). This made me think about the disappearance--actually, the transformation--of craftsmanship in art as a result of technology. Film photography, for instance, involves a lot of labor (developing the negatives, making the prints, etc). An intimate relationship develops between the photographer and his work as a result of the time-consuming processes. However, the hard work and craftsmanship make the end product all the more gratifying. Technology has somewhat simplified the craftsmanship involved in photography. Digital cameras have automatic settings. Digital photographs can be shot and viewed instantly. Photo editing no longer involves the artist's direct hand, but the tools of computer programs. What are the consequences of this simpler, much more immediate type of craftsmanship? How has it altered the relationship between artist and artwork?
In considering Benjamin's article on the storyteller, I began thinking of storytelling in relation to nostalgia, urgency, and the instantaneous. I am personally very interested in the art of storytelling and in preservation and the way that oral history allows for transformation. Benjamin says that storytelling is dying out because the "epic side of truth and wisdom" is disappearing. To me, nowadays the cause lies more in the disappearance of leisure and the personal. Everything is about how much you can cram into one day and how productive one can be. Time is a commodity. Especially with the creation of the internet, blogs, facebooks, personal pages, everyone is an author. Are these the modern novels? What does this say about archiving and how people share stories now?
There is a sense of urgency that is missing from novels that is present in active storytelling. With novels, there is a safety in knowing there is a finite ending and the ability to retrace exact steps in the text, whether you do or do not interpret it the same way. But with storytelling, is there a way to capture that same exact inflection in your speech? When it is passed from person to person it transforms. Benjamin argues that what makes the novel work is understanding that there is a "death" and an end. Does Storytelling richness then come from its ability to keep transforming? And yet doesn't the fact that it is based on making sure the story is not lost through the passage of time similarly give it richness through death?
In "The Storyteller" Benjamin states that the success or failure of storytelling is based on a shared experience of the audience. In novels, this common experience of the audience is lost because readers enter the novel on an individual basis and cannot interpret the same emotions and inflections as if it were told via a storyteller. Current mass media and communication limits shared experience even further because we are given information without knowledge, according to Benjamin. But in terms of news obtained from oral sources, such as TV, radio or internet, don't we all hear the same inflections and emotions from the voice? Is this not a shared experience? Or is some traumatic news too shocking for us to absorb and therefore we forget it (I'm not really sure what Benjamin is saying about shock reactions and consciousness)?
In Bejamin's The Storyteller, he mentions that, "According to Lukacs, the novel is at the same time the only art form which includes time among its constitutive principles." (I think) I greatly disagree. Doesn't photography base time on constitutive principles as well? Even when just focusing on the technical aspects, the exposure time can determine the story that is told in the frame. Even so, a photograph conveys the same information as a story because the viewer has a similar experience as a listener. They can visually see what the photographer saw while taking the photo. Like a story, there is focus on detail and less emphasis on information and explanation. (The above isn't a question, as much as it is my own food for thought.)
But then, in the Baudelaire piece, there is a discussion about how the camera "gave the moment a posthumous shock." Benjamin talks about how the camera has the power to record an event in terms of sound and sight. Because I study film and photography, I'm interested in how Benjamin's argument changes from the Storyteller to Baudelaire, if it does at all. There is something that is lost, that "counsel" is lost when reading a novel as opposed to listening to a story. But can a film (documentary) or a photograph exchange experience just as well as a story? Is the director the storyteller archiving his or her experience on tape or on film?
From "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" -
I'm curious as to how his idea of the "shock experience" has become the norm within his time could also reflect upon artworks in our time. The argument that "the more that he consciousness has to become aware to defend and screen against this stimuli, the less these impressions enter the experience" seems both true and false, at least within our modern contexts.
His discussion of Proust's idea of sensory memory being the strongest versus the newspaper's purposeful intent of not wanting to create personal memories was also incredibly intriguing.
(the past is "somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect, and unmistakably present in some material object (or in the sensation which such an object arouses in us) though we have no idea which one it is. As for that object, it depends entirely on chance whether we come upon it before we die or whether we never encounter it." p. 158)
I wonder what he would think of more recent additions of blogs, Op-Ed pages about very specific issues, as well as more interactive features within the NYT websites and other reputable newspapers.
If the purpose of the story is to transmit an experience and teach a life lesson, why then is the novel inadequate? What makes oral histories more important than individual experiences?
Why must a storyteller be a teacher also? Why is mere entertainment insufficient when it comes to a story, and does this requirement cross over into other arts?
Benjamin goes to great lengths to illustrate the superiority of storytelling above raw information. This is due in part to the temporal constraints of information--that information only "survives in the moment that it is new." Storytellers possess the ability to enable their audience to "encounter themselves." Given that we are now living in "the information age" how are we supposed to construct identities and understand ourselves in this sea of of what benjamin puports as vacuous information?
In the illuminations reading Benjamin talks about experiencing the aura of an object and the relationship between inanimate objects and man. How are we supposed to experience non-object based work? Can non-object essentially return our gaze?
Both of these readings really got me to think about the evolution of mass media, and the battle between information and interest. The discussion of the "shock" of the camera favors undeniable information, everything is sort of laid out on the table. He states in the Storyteller that "half the art of storytelling is to keep a story free from explanation". Nowadays, we are given an overload of information, and he's right when he says that connections are made for us. On the whole we gravitate towards the simplistic: we're lazy. Why strain yourself to make larger sense of the concept if it is all spelled out on the next page?
Ok, so now, what does this say of the relationship between the listener and the storyteller? That is, if this is our tendency, if these are the desires of each, each party must become responsible for his own presentation or interpretation. Through mechanization and reproducibility have we lost the ability to achieve this? This sort of harkens back to the Frankfurt School discussion...where did we get by embracing this newfound "convenience" given to us by industrialization? if we can't rewind and go backwards, how do we move forwards?
Also, in response to an earlier comment by Becky on secularism, I am also interested in a discussion of the "epic side of truth" and its dependence on assuming the existence of something larger than ourselves. We can so focused on true facts and accurate information that a "myth" or "story" in Benjamin's sense of the word is almost an affront to our sensibilities. What if factual information cannot possibly convey the story? Where does truth really lie, if not in "the facts"?
It's interesting that Benjamin opens the Storyteller paper with a reference to Leskov, an author whose "Tale of the Mechanical Flea" is a fundamental element of my Animate Arts senior project. I am particularly interesting in Benjamin's interpretation of Leskov's religious affiliations, since Benjamin is a Marxist thinker. Is the death of storytelling as he describes it intimately linked with the capitalist condition and with progress? And is storytelling truly gone, or has it become shortened and simplified in the age of contemporary media and instant information?
In reference to Baudelaire, I found it difficult to follow some of the descriptions, having never read any of Baudelaire's work except excerpts as they related to Moreau and Khnopff. I was particularly interested in the idea of involuntary memory and how it was created. And in reference to shock in the artist's work, is shock the same as surprise? Is it enough to delight and surprise the viewer in order to achieve an effect or does shock need to come into play to affect their cerebral integration with the work?
Walter Benjamin contrasts the inherent self-centeredness of the novelis with the communal nature of the storyteller. He believes that it is the storyteller relates his story to his listener as an “experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth” while the novelist relates his work to his readers in a way that is “isolated.” Although the experiences of the story and the novel are inherently different due to personal presence, could it be said that the end result of the novel and the story is similar? That is, if we read the novel aloud or read a transcription of a storyteller's story, might we understand the two types similarly?
Given that Benjamin immediately relates three of the six markers of subculture, “the climate for lyric poetry has become increasingly inhospitable,” “there has been no success on a mass scale,” and “the greater coolness of the public [even] toward the lyric poetry,” could the socio-economic climate surrounding its creation be consider a subculture akin to, say, punk?
1)
Reflecting upon the gradual disappearance of storytelling, Walter Benjamin argues that it is a result of the irrelevance of experience, which "has fallen in value." In the present day, if experience has evolved to become so decadent, what does that mean for art in today's society? Does it lack total appreciation for the past and tradition because it has not been cultured by the experiences of many and rather, been produced by the single artist? According to T.S. Eliot, "no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone." How would Walter Benjamin reply to this statement?
2)
Walter Benjamin requires that "every real story" must contain something useful, providing its listeners with effective "counsel," whether it be a moral, practical advice, or proverb. In following, then, are all stories or art forms that lack specific recommendations for the people not genuine? If so, then a hierarchy is inevitably created where only a select few, of the learned and wise, are able to create art. Therefore then, would art still be art?
Walter Benjamin differentiates information and storytelling by writing that story telling does not offer explanations and it is from the experience or memory of someone whereas information aims to convey the pure essence of things. Today why are we so obsessed with facts and information more than wisdom or novels? Modern education has devalued the art of storytelling by constantly training people to reason and ask for verification. When someone talks about the experiences afar, we automatically want to see pictures of one's experience and ask to see the tangible evidence. Experience lost its essence and it has become so much about documenting and obtaining information to benefit oneself.
Although Walter Benjamin focuses his essay The Storyteller on oral tradition, his views can be used to explain contemporary art or art in general. On pg 87 of The Storyteller, Benjamin states, "The storyteller takes what he tells from experience - his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself".
The experience a storyteller receives when hearing a story can be compared to that of an artist looking at artwork. Both artists are going to gain from their experiences and then use it to improve their art and make it their own. Doesn't this idea relate to the concept that art is a collective process and great artists' take from their experiences of seeing prior works of art? Also, couldn't that also relate to Benjamin's idea that the artist cannot be isolated like a novelist? As seen in the web of art, every art period is affected by the others and no artist can completely isolate themselves from the history of art.
Also in The Storyteller, Benjamin mentions that a decline in storytelling is due to the fact that everything is already explained for the public and interpretation is lost. If we still think of the storyteller as a comparison to a painter, isn't it plausible to say that almost all artwork is left up to interpretation and almost every viewer will have some sort of "psychological connection" with the image?
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