How to write like Walter Benjamin

Mateusz Pozar (SWE)

How to write like Walter Benjamin is a series of videos which purport to teach the viewer how to write art theory, using Walter Benjamins 1935 essay The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

By copying Benjamins text, and presenting it online – in a medium where everything is a reproduction – I try to see if the aura which he believed was lost, has reappeared with the public use of mass communications; Have we become savvy enough that we experience certain reproductions as a “presence” on a stage? Also, by focusing on the banal aspects of writing, of putting pen to paper, the value of reflecting on ones surroundings, and the value of analysis and purposeful thinking, is brought to the forefront.

The series will conclude in February 2010. You can see it at: vimeo.com/album/168375