Being Flexible! The Aura of the Artwork in the Age of Digital Reproduction
2009. 10. 15 - 2009. 11. 1
The Largest Pavilion Ever! With this slogan, the Internet is presented at the 53 rd Venice Biennale as a pavilion of its own for the first time1. The World Wide Web has been developing rapidly in recent decades. According to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) an estimated quarter of the Earth's population uses its services. The advent of the Internet Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale indicates that the Internet has become a new part of the art world. With its potential to cross geographical, social and cultural boundaries, art in the Internet age reaches larger and more diverse audiences than ever before. Art and its expressions can never be separated from the technologies of their time: Digital technology and the virtual channels of the Internet not only transform the ways in which art is produced, distributed, curated and presented but also expand the way a work of art is experienced.
The exhibition Flexible Aura again raises questions around the notion of the aura in the age of digital reproduction where limitless global communication and image distribution is possible via digital technologies and the World Wide Web. New dimensions of space in a globalised world brush the idea of a fixed location against the grain and thus encourage us to understand the aural beyond its material boundaries.
In a time when art can be collectively experienced beyond the restricted frame of the gallery space, it also seems necessary to reconfigure traditional ideas of experiencing a work of art. Is art experience today more democratic ? Has the viewer become more emancipated, as the philosopher Jacques Rancière describes in his lecture The Emancipated Spectator ?
Flexible Aura illuminates the role of a curator in the digital era by playfully transforming the two curators' visual and artist dialogue via the Internet into the form of an exhibition. It explores how technological advances have influenced contemporary global curatorial practices and how the role of the art institutions has to be recontextualised when art is curated both in the physical and virtual space.
The exhibition Flexible Aura looks at these issues by presenting ten international artists who offer the viewer an opportunity to have flexible experiences of the flexible auras of contemporary art. The artists connect through their common desire to challenge archaic notions of space, distance, originality and authorship by exploring the boundaries between original and copy and subverting the authority of an artwork's so called aura by using digital technologies and new channels of dissemination beyond the dominant culture.
The Aura in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility
Quoting its title from Walter Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) 2, Flexible Aura re-examines the concept of the aura in the age of its digital reproducibility . The aura namely in Benjamin's term is a particular holiness that is intrinsically connected to the original artwork. For instance, when seeing the wall painting The Last Supper (1498) by Leonardo da Vinci in the church Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the viewer can experience the aura of Leonardo's fresco, that means its unique presence in space and time, in the specific location for which it was created.
Later in his essay, however, Benjamin argues that technical reproducibility undermines the authority of the original and that, since the early 20 th Century, the exclusive experience of an artwork's unique aura has been replaced by a collective experience of mass reproducible art. In the age of the mass explosion of digital imagery, the traditional idea of the aura collapses and the border between copy and original blurs. Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan can no longer only be seen in the location where it happens to be . Through high quality catalogues, printed postcards and mass distribution via the Internet The Last Supper has become a dynamic and hyperreal work of art that is able to shift through space and time and is accessible or copied by a single click.
Nowadays, people from every corner of the world can access art on a square PC monitor. On our standardised computers we can take virtual tours through galleries and museums' collections whereby art is represented by high resolution JPEG images and video clips. One can research an artist by looking at his/her images on the Internet and also exchange an artwork via e-mail 3 within quarters of a second. It seems that in the digital era it is not required any longer to physically visit the White Cube 4 in order to see or experience art. Nevertheless, that this is not the case is evident in the long queues of art pilgrims who, once in their life, wish to see, for example, the original Une Odalisque by Ingre in the Louvre. Thus it seems that digital reproduction does not diminish the importance of the original . Hence, it rather can be claimed, that today the virtual exploration of artworks coexists with the experience of an artwork's so called aura in the gallery space .
One can come to the conclusion that in a time where an all embracing perception of art is carried out in the Internet, the real experience of art does not exclusively happen when one physically encounters the material presence of an artwork in a museum or a gallery . Therefore, in the 21 st Century, when new coordinates of space and time apply, it seems to be absurd to longer appropriate the traditional concept of the aura to an artwork and it is necessary to seek an updated idea of the aural.
Towards a Flexible Experience of the Aura
Whilst attempting to reconfigure the notion of the aura in today's digital era, it is also important to look at the way art was experienced in the past and how it is experienced today. In former times, art and its aura were closely linked to the service of a ritual, for example, The Cave Paintings of Lascaux where created and experienced within the context of fertility and hunting rituals. Because the interaction with a work of art was carried out in a spiritual context, the location of the artwork, for instance, a church, was crucial. In the last two centuries, when art became moveable because it was painted on canvas or a panel, the spiritual and religious experience of an artwork was gradually replaced by the exclusive ritual of contemplating an original artwork in ‘in the sacred halls' of the museum.
With the emergence of analog photography and film, art was detached from its original source. It lost its aura but gained mobile qualities as Andr é Malraux described already in 1949 in his text The Museum without Walls 5 . However, in our digital epoch, t he authenticity and the experience of an artwork's aura , based on its unique existence in a fixed space, seem to be even further destabilised by its digital reproducibility and the uncontrolled dissemination of hyperreal and manipulated images through the endless channels of the World Wide Web.
As a result, the context of experiencing an artwork becomes multifarious and the location where one encounters a piece of art is loosing its significance. As described above, in the Internet age the way to perceive art is strongly modified by our new technologies. Today, the viewer can also experience art by facing a monitor, for instance when accessing artworks in the Venice Biennale's Internet Pavilion on-line. For many contemporary artworks the substantial space and location where they are presented are not of importance anymore. Hence, as art experience is flexible and dynamic, that means it can be carried out everywhere at any time by anybody, the aura today should also be flexible and dynamic . In other words, the aura of an artwork needs to be defined by an individual, vis à vis with a work of art, be it on the monitor, in the gallery, or in a catalogue, not by its materiality in a physical location. The aura in the digital reproduction age becomes pluralistic. An artwork does not have only one fixed aura , but manifold auras . Thus, the conventional notion of the aura can be redefined with the idea that a work of art has shifting and flexible auras that depend on the viewer's individual experience.
The Emancipated Art Spectator in the Digital Age
When rethinking the meaning of the aura in the 21 st Century, it becomes evident that the exclusive and bourgeois experience of the original artwork, that was carried out in what Brian O' Doherty described as the White Cube , today coexists with a collective art perception on a square PC monitor. The flexible experience of art, as described above, seems to enhance art becoming more democratic . This is not only because a larger audience can access art from seemingly any location. The idea that an artwork has flexible auras fundamentally changes the role of the viewer as it empowers him/her to have an active and emancipated role when experiencing a work of art beyond the restricted frame and ideologies of a gallery. In his lecture The Emancipated Spectator in which Jacques Ranci è re redefines the relation between the actor and the spectator in the context of the theatre, the philosopher argues: “Emancipation starts from the opposite principle, the principle of equality. It begins when we dismiss the opposition between looking and acting and understand that the distribution of the visible itself is part of the configuration of domination and subjection. It starts when we realize that looking also is an action which confirms or modifies that distribution, and that “interpreting the world” is already a means of transforming it, of reconfiguring it. The spectator is active, just like the student or the scientist: He observes, he selects, compares, interprets.”6
Rancière's understanding of emancipated spectatorship in the theatre can be applied to the contemporary art field and its dynamic relation between artworks and the audience. As the experience of art in the digital age also happens ‘outside the White Cube' in multiple locations, the flexible experience of an artwork's aura endows a collective audience with freedom from the authority of the authentic artwork. Liberated from the hierarchies and constrains of a gallery or art institution, the spectator today can play an active role and individually (re)create an artwork's aura , thereby discovering the value of one's own voice when interpreting a work of art.
Curating via the Internet
Appropriating different models of Internet-Curating, Flexible Aura explores how digital technologies influence contemporary global curatorial practices and investigates how the role of the art institutions has to be re-defined when art and its aura are seen as flexible. By employing the given situation of spatial distance as a curatorial methodology, the two curators of Flexible Aura – one is based in Seoul, the other in London – appropriated the Internet as a tool to curate an exhibition. Over the course of nine months they e-mailed JPEG images of artworks and biographical information about artists to each other, mirroring how contemporary curatorial practice is alienated from the notion of the original artwork. To curate an exhibition via the Internet indicates that the selection of artworks and the process of exhibition making is only based on virtual images and information, thus reflecting how today's politics of representations are deeply interweaved into the channels of digital communication.
In addition, curator Catherine Borra, the founder of Supercream, an on-line platform for contemporary art, curated the on-line exhibition The setting of X for Flexible Aura in collaboration with artist Maria Taniguchi by developing a web based playlist ( www.supercream.org.uk and flexibleauras.blogspot.com ).
Flexible Auras in Contemporary Art Practice
The participating artists also appropriate the new understanding of an artwork's non-static character and of a re-articulated flexible aura in their artwork.
Goldin+Senneby's installation After Microsoft traces the origin of the Microsoft desktop image Bliss which is the most disseminated image in the world. After Microsoft is accessible both in the exhibition and on the artist's website and questions the authenticity of this digitally manipulated landscape photograph and its meaning within corporate culture. Tasha Aulls and Niina Hartikainen's digital print series November Telepathy conceives telepathy as a form of communication beyond the channels of the World Wide Web. Both artists furthermore explore how material boundaries and notions of authenticity dissolve when their drawings are transformed into digital data information. Tina Hage deploys contemporary photojournalistic and topical imagery from newspapers and the Internet, which she reflects upon by using her own digitally manipulated portrait repetitively, as for example in Dream Start. Once re-made, these images sometimes appear more ambiguous than the initial context of the image. Although they still refer to the source, questions are raised about the real and the new context in which the piece now exists. Jee Oh's GORI , a small new media plant, built on physical computing and connected to the Internet, is fed by network data generated by the artist's online communication in real time. The project visualises the process of data circulation and blurs the distinction between virtual and real space. For Flexible Aura, Jee Oh builds one GORI in London, which is projected in the exhibition in Seoul by Skype. The viewer in the exhibition can see Jee Oh, in her room in London, ‘gardening' the GORI.
Flexible Aura also presents a selection of Candida Höfer's photographic series Twelve that depicts August Rodin's bronze sculpture The Burghers of Calais . Höfer photographed all twelve bronze casts in their different locations around the world. The artist deals with the reception of a sculpture in the public realm, showing what impact the different modes of presentation at specific sites, for example in museums or public squares, have on the aura of the artwork. By presenting the temporary performance Bona Park at the opening of Flexible Aura , Bona Park playfully explores how the contextual integration of the aura can be transformed when an artwork is immaterial. The work will be generated in various forms triggered by the audience who plays on the artist's unnoticed stage. Kristoffer Akselbo's The Mona Lisa Toaster , that burns the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa on an ordinary sandwich toast, ironically reflects what happens when an artwork is over-reproduced. On the one hand side, the work becomes as ‘banal' as a piece of toast, on the other hand it seems to make the original and the experience of the artwork's aura even more desirable, as one can see in the masses of people who want to see the original Mona Lisa in the Louvre. The visitors of Flexible Aura can take a ‘The Mona Lisa Toast' with them, thus contributing to a further flexibility of the Mona Lisa 's aura.
By infusing physical realities with virtual spaces in the setting of the gallery, Flexible Aura questions what today can be defined as an exhibition . It explores how new technologies have shaped and renewed the perception of art and reflects how this new experience has emancipated the viewer beyond the boundaries of a gallery. The artworks in the exhibition reveal that the authority of the original and the experience of a unique aura in a single place are being replaced today by the idea that a work of art has flexible auras that are accessible in multiple places and can exist in manifold formations, be it in the physical or in the virtual space and that can be translated and transformed from one place to another, from one cultural setting to another.
1 http:// www.Padiglioneinternet.com and http://www.biennale.net
2 Benjamin, W. 1968. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In H. Arendt. (ed.). Illuminations. 219-253. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
3 The participating artist group Goldin+Senneby sent their artwork by email to the curators of Flexible Aura.
4 O'Doherty, B. 1986. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Expanded Edition) . Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
5 Malraux, A. 1974. The Museum Without Walls . St. Albans, Herts: Paladin. p130-131.
6 Rancière, J. 2007. The Emancipated Spectator. Art Forum . 45/7: 277.
Jacques Rancière originally presented The Emancipated Spectator at the opening of the 5th International Summer Academy of Arts in Frankfurt on August 20, 2004.
Hyunjoo Byeon and Christine Takengny, September 2009
Artists and Curators
Kristoffer Akselbo
Born in 1974
Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark
Education
2006 The Royal Danish Art Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark
Selected solo exhibitions
2008 Made Ready Made , Brown, London, UK
Trojan Horse , BolteLang, Zurich, Switzerland
2007 Privately , The Rosenkranz Residence, Zurich, Switzerland
2006 S.O.S. Titanic , kirkhoff, Copenhagen, Denmark
Rune S øchting Boom Boxed, Jurassic Java… , Q, The Royal Danish Art Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark
Selected exhibitions
2009 Pose / Expose , IMO, Copenhagen, Denmark
2008 Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis 2008, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany
NO BORDERS (Just N.E.W.S*) , La Centrale Electrique, Brussels, Belgium, traveling to Centre of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki, Greece
2007 Match Race , Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Nord-Jutland Museum of Art, Denmark
Hello, Flux Factory, New York, USA
2006 Commissioned work for The Cultural Ministry, Copenhagen, Denmark
Awards/Grants
2008 Nominated by Louisiana Museum of Art for the German Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis 2008
2004 Marie Månsson Legat
2003 Mogens Poulsens Mindelegat
Tasha Aulls
Born in 1972 in Minneapolis, USA
Lives and works in London, UK
Education
2009 MFA Art Practice, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
1997 BFA Fine Art, Concordia University, Canada
Solo exhibition
2006 Between the Big Bang and the Big Bomb , p|m Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Selected group exhibitions
2009 Chinese Whispers with Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin , Sasson Gallery, London
Group | Grope , Unit 10, London, UK
2008 Metamorphose 2 , Islington Arts Factory, London, UK
Prickle & Gleam , p|m Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2007 Toronto International Art Fair, Toronto, Canada
2006 Potentially Mighty , p|m Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Awards/Grants
2006 Ontario Arts Council Emerging Visual Artists Grant, Canada
Goldin+Senneby
Since 2004, based in Stockholm, Sweden
Solo exhibitions
2009 Index , Stockholm, Sweden
2008 Goldin+Senneby: Headless , The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
2005 Artport , Whitney Museum of American Art, online, USA
Selected group exhibitions
2009 Feedforward: The Angel of History , LABoral, Gijon, Spain
2008 In Living Contact , 28th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
2008 Data Recovery , GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy
2007 Twentyfourseven , Signal, Malmö, Sweden
2005 Game Dump , Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway
Awards /Grants
2010 Artist in Residence, Kadist Foundation, Paris, France
2008 Working grants, Swedish Arts Grants Committee
2008 Artist in Residence, Gasworks, London, UK
2007 Artist in Residence, Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden
2006 Skapande Människa award, Sweden
Tina Hage
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Lives and works in London, UK
Education
2009 MFA Art Practice, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
2003 College of Fine Arts, Sydney, Australia
1999-2004 Diploma in Audio Visual Studies, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany
Selected exhibitions
2009 Jamais-vu , 2009 Hackney Wicked Festival, H.Forman & Son event hall, London, UK
MFA Degree Show , Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
KiC – Nord Art 09 , Buedelsdorf, Germany
HackGold , The Triangle, Space, London, UK
2007 24h Fall-in-Theatre , V22 Ashwinstreet, London, UK
Awards /Grants
2009 Warden's Purchase Prize of Goldsmiths College, London, UK
2006-2007 Scholarship from the DAAD - German Academic Exchange Service
2002-2004 Scholarship from the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation, Germany
Niina Hartikainen
http://niinahartikainen.blogspot.com/
Born in1978 in Espoo, Finland
Lives and works in London, UK
Education
2009 MFA Art Practice, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
2001 BA Fashion Design, Central Saint Martins, London, UK
Solo exhibitions
2006 Uni Kaukoputkesta ja Hevosesta , Library of Richardinkatu, Helsinki, Finland
Kitaralaukuissakin Leopardivuori , Jangva Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2005 Look Beyond Garbage and the Flowers , Close Up, London, UK
Kirjaillut Seikkailut , Finnish National Craft Museum, Jyväskylä , Finland
Selected group exhibitions
2007 Art Fair Suomi , Muu Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
Uni Kaukoputkesta ja Hevosesta , Artist's Society Gallery, Hyvinkää, Finland
2006 Uni Kaukoputkesta ja Hevosesta , Lönström Art Museum, Rauma, Finland
2005 Euro Trash Girls , Add Café, Tokyo, Japan
2004 Brixton Open , Bettie Morton Gallery, London, UK
Nihilism Part II, The Exciting Adventures of Young People , Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, UK
Candida Höfer
Born 1944 in Eberswalde, Germany
Lives and works in Cologne, Germany
Selected solo exhibitions
2009 Candida Höfer, Projects: Done , Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany
2007 Candida Höfer, Le Louvre , Louvre, Paris, France
2005 Candida Höfer: Timespaces , Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2003 Candida Höfer, Biennale di Venezia , Biennale di Venezia, Venezia, Italy
1999 Candida Höfer, Leseräume , Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Selected group exhibitions
2009 Sigmar Polke. Wir Kleinbürger! Clique , Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany
Objectivités. La photographie à Düsseldorf , Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
2002 Documenta 11, Binding Brauerei , Kassel, Germany
1999 The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect , The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Räume/Rooms , Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria
Jee Oh
Born in Seoul, South Korea
Lives and works in London, UK
Education
MA Networked Media Environments, University of Sussex, UK
BA Industrial Design, Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul, Korea
BM Han-Yang University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibition
2006 Kiberpipa , Ljubljana, Slovenia
Selected group exhibitions
2009 Entry Forms: UK Korean Artists , Korean Cultural Centre UK, London, UK
2008 International Symposium on Electronic Art 2008, juried Exhibition, National Museum of Singapore, Singapore
2006 ACM 2006 Interactive Arts Juried Exhibition, Santa Barbara, USA
2006 SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Gallery, juried Exhibition, Boston Convention & Exhibition Centre, Boston, USA
2005 Ars Electronica Festival 2005, Bruckenerhaus, Linz, Austria
Awards/Grants
2008 Artist in Residence, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2007 Young Korean Artist 2007, grant awarded by Arts Council Korea
2006 Artist in Residence, Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Bona Park
Born in 1977 in Seoul, South Korea
Currently lives and works in London and Seoul
Education
2008 MFA Art Practice, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
2004 BA Fine Art, Korean National University of Arts, Seoul, Korea
2000 BA English Literature/BA Mass Communication, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2009 X2 , The Room, Total Museum, Seoul, Korea
2005 Ya project 01 - Park, Bona , gallery Ga, Seoul, Korea
2003 Eraser head , gallery 126, Seoul, Korea
Selected group exhibitions
2009 Jamais-vu , 2009 Hackney Wicked Festival, H. Forman & Son event hall, London, UK
2008 Visual Vocabulary – Between Words and Images , The Gallery at Willesden Green, London, UK
2007 The Shifted state , Bear Space, London, UK
2005 15 Villages stories in Gwangju , the City Hall, Gwangju, Korea
2005 Let's go to Venice Biennale , gallery 175, Seoul, Korea
Awards/Grants
2009 Artist Residency, Cittadellarte- Fondazione Pistoletto, (UNESCO-Aschberg Grant), Italy
2006 The New Face Artist for 2006 awarded by the monthly magazine, 'Art in Culture', Korea
Supercream/Catherine Borra
Supercream.org.uk is an on-line platform for contemporary art, initiated by curator and editor Catherine Borra in 2008. The initiative is interested in developing tools that investigate the experience of cultural production, together with the promotion of an emerging generation of writers, artists and curators. As well as the consistent production of web-content, Supercream has developed a number of external projects such as The Green Room Studio (Royal Academy, London, 2008/2009) and Youtube Patterns (176 Project Space, London, 2009). For this project, Supercream.org.uk invites artist Maria Taniguchi to collaborate.
Maria Taniguchi (b.1981, Philippines) makes objects and videos that rely on the logic of equations. Far from being clinical, her work information replaces both subject and material, leaving room for discourse and strangeness in the wake of the juxtapositions. Recent activities include shows at FormContent in London and VWFA in Kuala Lumpur. Taniguchi is finishing her MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Hyunjoo Byeon
Hyunjoo Byeon (b.1980, Seoul, South Korea) is an independent curator based in Seoul and London. She has co-curated IM magazine (London, 2007), gold&delicious (The Apple Tree, London, 2008) as well as Here Once Again – Where Art and Cinema Interac t (Alternative Space Loop, Museum of Art, Seoul, 2008). Recent curatorial projects include Visual Vocabulary – Between Words and Images (The Gallery at Willesden Green, London, 2008) and Jason Underhill's Sing Your Heart Out , which was part of Event Horizon of GSK Contemporary at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2008-09. She has also given lectures at the Kaywon School of Art and Design. Byeon earned her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London and BA in Art History and Business Administration at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
Christine Takengny
Christine Takengny (b.1973, Germany) is a curator based in London. In Germany she worked at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Documenta 11 and at Ulmer Museum. In 2008 she was an assistant curator for Martin Beck's exhibition Panel 2: Nothing better than a touch of ecology and catastrophe to unit the social classes at Gasworks, London and for the exhibition series GSK Contemporay at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her recent curated shows include gold&delicious (The Apple Tree, London, 2008), Weickmann's Wunderkammer. Hommage mit Georges Adéagbo, Candida Höfer und Matthias Beckmann (Ulmer Museum, Germany, 2007), 18. Triennale Ulmer Kunst (Ulmer Museum, 2006), Visual Vocabulary – Between Words and Images ( The Gallery at Willesden Green, London , 2008 ) , Chinese Whispers (Saasoon Gallery, London, 2009), ethKnowcentrix – Museums Inside the Artist ( October Gallery, London, 2009) and Curating Fictions , a series of talks at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Currently she is working in London as associate curator for Iniva and October Gallery.