Editors' Introduction Walter Benjamin's Media Tactics: Optics, Perception, and the Work of Art

摘要

When Walter Benjamin composed the initial version of "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in 1935, he concluded his observations on media-before turning, in the essay's final paragraph, to the political situation of his time-with the following resume:Reception in distraction-the sort of reception which is increasingly noticeable in all areas of art and is a symptom of pro found changes in perception-finds in the cinemas its central place. And there, where the collective seeks distraction, the tactically [taktisch] dominant element that rules over the regrouping of apperception is by no means lacking.