Task 2- Benjamin & Mechanical Reproduction

Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design, that you think relates to the themes of the text, and employing quotes, concepts and terminology from the text.

The essay can be found online here.http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

As Benjamin says 'in principle a work of art has always been reproducible' and people have been reproducing artwork for years. A good example of this can been seen in the 'Keep Calm and Carry on' posters, but these reproductions seem to mock the originals, wich were used during war time, and devalued their meaning,and 'thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public.'

Reproductions question the authenticity of the original but can also be a good thing as it makes a it more widely available to people who would maybe not know about or get to see the original. However as more productions are being made the aura around the original shrivels, as Benjamin says 'the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning.'

However all these arguments against reproduction and how it devalues the original seem to be surrounding the works of fine art, is it ment to be inaccessible is that what the artists are aiming for, where as within graphic design is the work more open to questioning and challenge and made to be accessible to the masses, like the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters.

Benjamin states two ways work gains it value 'the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work', so if we remove the artwork from its place in a gallery by reproducing it and putting it on our wall, are we to say that it loses its value, should the Mona Lisa only be seen in the Louvre? If reproductions exist surely this opens up the artwork to a much wider audience who may never get to go to Paris to see the original. If not this woud create a hierarchy within the art world, like a facist state, where only the rich make the artwork and only the rich can view it, which frankly is not right.

Lecture 5-The Gaze and The Media

Seminar 2

 In this seminar we looked at the lecture we had a few weeks before, 'Technology will Liberate us', we took Walter Benjamin's essay an analysed it. We took sections in groups and tried to work out what he was talkign about and feedback to the rest of the group, I looked at the first 2 sections, notes can been seen on the essay above.

Lecture 4-Critical Positions of the Media and Popular Culture

In developing Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations, Marx identified civil society as the economic base and political society as the political superstructure.^[1] Marx postulated the essentials of the base–superstructure concept in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

“

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and politicalsuperstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure. In studying such transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.[2]

”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure

Lecture 3-Marxism and Activism

Aims

-To introduce a critical definition of ideology

-To introduce some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy

-To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as a subject

-To introduce 'cultural jamming' and the idea of design activism.

'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, it to change it.'

Marx, K (1845) 'Theses On Feuerbach'

Marxism is:

A political manifesto-he wrote the communist manifesto-leading to socialism, Communism and the twentieth century conflicts between capital and labour

He also wrote about aspects of society-Marxism is a philosophical method

A philosophical approach to the social sciences-human behaviour

What is Capitalism?

-Control of the means of production in private hands

-A market where labour power is bought and sold

-Production of commodities for sale

-Use of money as a means of exchange

-Competition/meritocracy

-Its the society we live in today in the western world.

-Its a competition that makes us compete

-Comes from the start of life, told to compete against others at school for grades, told to compete in the work market

Communist Evolution

1.Primitive Communism: as seen in the cooperative tribal societies.

2.Slave society: develops when the tribe becomes a city-state.Birth of aristocracy.

3.Feudalism: aristocracy becomes the ruling class. Merchants develop into capitalists.

4.Capitalism: (what we are in now) capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the real working class.

5.Socialism-workers gain class consciousness,overthrow the capitalists and take control over the state

6.communism:a classless and stateless society.

Marx's Concept of Base/Superstructure

 (Marx is a materialist philosopher)

Base

Forces of production-materials,tools,workers,skills etc

relations of production-employer/employee, class, master/slave etc

Superstructure

social institutions-legal, political, cultural

forms of consciousness-ideology

'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles'

(Marx, Communist Manifesto)

Base------>determines content and form of-------->Superstructure------>Reflects form of and legitimises------->Base

Where we are in life we are forced into situations and relations that we don't really have a choice about, even though we like to think that we do. If you are born in a poor, deprived area of the country you will have a different life from someone born in a richer more well off area.

The State

-'...but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie'(Marxs and Engels)

-Instruments of the state

Ideological and Physical concern

-The Bourgeoisie

-The Proletariat

Ideology

1. system of ideas and beliefs (eg beliefs of a politicla party)

2. masking, distortion, or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations, through creation of 'false consciousness'

'[ The ruling class has ] to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, ... to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.'

Karl Marx, (1846) The German Ideology, 

'Religion is the opiate of the Masses'

Art as Idelogy-Artist used to come from people who were educated, so only rich people produced art and only men were allowed to make art, white rich men are making the art.

Kings and Queens buy the art and dictate what gets painted. Rich people are making art for other rich people.

-Guerrilla Girls

Society=Economical, Political and Ideology

Ideology is a practice through which men and women 'live' their relations to real conditions of existence.

Ideology offers false, but seemingly true resolutions to social imbalance.

Althusser, (1970) 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses'

The Media as Ideological State Apparatus

-A means of production

-Disseminates the view of the ruling class (dominant hegemonic)

-Media creates false consciousness

-The individual is produced by nature; the subjects by culture. (Fiske, 1992)

-The constitution of the subject

-Interpolation

The way ideology works- for example in newspaper- it becomes more than propgagnda it becomes a way of life.

-Discursive Codes

-Ideological assumptions

-Myth

-Orality

 The newspapers also set judgement on people, they make assumptions and project them onto people.

Marx-Ideology

'Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most of the relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.'

Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972

 -Patriarchal ideology

-Commodity Fetishism

-We can almost comodify or brand anything,

-These are sold for $100 each, making nothing into a commodity.

-The assets of the worlds top three billionaries are greater then those of the poorest 600 milllion on the planet. 

-More than a third of the worlds population (2.8 billion)live on less than two dollars a day. 

-1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day 

-In 2002 34.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line (8.5 million of those had jobs!) Black American Poverty double that of whites 

-Per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa =$490 

-Per capita subsidy for European cows = $913

‘I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.’ (Kinnock 1983)