A technikai reprodukálhatóság korszaka után (Millenáris Park, D Kiállítócsarnok, 2003)

The media art exhibition, AURA, realised within the framework of the Budapest Autumn Festival as a collaboration of the C3 Foundation and the Míllennárís Kht., presents works by more than thirty artists that are quite new or have never been shown in Flungary before. AURA provides a survey on the current state of art employing digital technologies both in today's Flungary as well as in more distant countries, and on the nature of the changes brought on by digital information and communication since the end of the classical age of technical reproduction. The exhibition and accompanying events of AURA draw the view­er into the space of tension and potential interconnections between the technical novelties of the 21 st century and the constant artistic aesthetics that are independent of artistic era, with the reciprocity between the unique artwork and the changing notion of art rendered perceptible. Aura is the Latin word for air. One of the four elements, an indispensable condition of life on Earth, In today's parlance, aura is a word charged with magic: a membrane enveloping living creatures, which is invisible, but supposedly rendered visible with the use of special visual tools. The AURA exhibition, never­theless, reaches back to a different interpretation of the aura, choosing one of philosopher Walter Benjamin's key artistic categories as its point of departure. In his essay published in 1936, entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin draws a parallel between the unique, singular appear­ance of an original work of art and the change brought about by advanced techniques of reproduction, which in his opinion lead to the loss of aura. According to Benjamin's approach, with the propagation of technical reproduction and the evolution of mass-produced art, the aura - which is linked to the cult value of the work of art and its role played in the life of the community, and which ensures artistic uniqueness - dissipates. The exhibition value supersedes the cult value, and mass-production may be converted into a political tool. The concept of the aura was defined by Walter Benjamin as: "the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be". This formulation continues to inspire, and to stimulate interpretation, because it calls our attention to the clear difference between works created through classical media on the one hand, and technical media on the other: while the former always exists somewhere as an original, works created through new media can have multiple identical ver­sions, or they have no original in the traditional sense. In the digital age, this situation has changed once again. Since concepts of time and space are dif­ferent, so is the notion of the aura, The changes in artistic techniques undoubtedly bear witness to the transformation in perception. But does this mean that we must give up the aura for good? During the planning stages of the exhibition, we asked the artists to reflect upon the mode of existence of the mediated art object, upon the here and now, or on the contrary, to question the validity of this concept with their artworks.

Next