Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction
The Sacred, The Sublime, The Important (Part 1)
In Walter Benjamins famous 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction he marches us through how art and the sacred are being changed at a rate and speed that make “Art” and “The Sacred” almost unknowable or at the very least indistinguishable from previous generations, going all the way back to ancient times. In many ways the quote he used in the first section of his essay by Paul Valery sums it up “Just as water, gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.” This was 1936, I repeat 1936: before TV, before the internet, before smart phones, before swiping and scrolling.
What’s important to me in this moment in this time/age, is accessing and approaching and experiencing the sacred. It’s the number one thing we need! It is important over urgent. It has not gone anywhere, it’s still there/here, but we have been distracting ourselves from it, distancing ourselves from it (in 1985 Neil Postman pointed to this in his famous book Amusing Ourselves to Death). We have put so much space between us and the sacred/sublime that we think it doesn’t exist or if it does than surely its an anomaly. I believe it’s right next to you, always has been always will be.
There are many definitions of the sacred, however in this context I am using it in the sense of reverence….but reverence is not the right word. Reverence is an aspect of the sacred but not all aspects of it.
We have distanced our self from the sacred with all our convenience’s. They distract us from knowing the sacredness of things. We have lost touch. We no longer know the full value of the fundamental aspects of being human, a mammal, a cell, a living organism. Or put another way: The Sufi Poet Rumi is famous for saying “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”
We could frame this is many different ways but the essence of it is….we no longer chop wood and carry water! When you chop wood and carry water you are tied to the wood, connected to the water. The effort of working with it and acquiring it puts you in direct relationship to these fundamentall elements. If the water is 1 mile away from where you live you understand “water” in a much more significant way than if you turn it on and off with little effort. You have a relationship with water if you have to go get it, no matter how far. Same is true with many of our human needs. This effort, this energy exerted creates the space for the sacred to show up. Or at least in this context the sacred is easier to see and experience. When you can acquire things without much effort the sacred becomes a distant cousin you never knew. In having to “work for it” you get closer to it. The work, the effort, is not the sacred but it creates the space where you have chance of seeing it, recognizing it and can appreciate it.
Like Rumi say’s its easy to snap out of it be free and connected, we just have to see that the door is open, it was never closed.
Occasionally I perform an experiment. It wasn’t until writing this that I realized it is a way to connect immediately to the sacred, the reverent, the beautiful. Yesterday I circled back to the exercise/experiment. On my walk with Ludo (our miniature schnauzer) I stopped and gazed at a tree. In my minds eye, and in my body, I imagined I was standing like the tree. I imagined my arms, my legs and all my being in the shape of the tree and something inside of me smiled. (To be continued…)