Walter Benjamin and the Haunting of the Digital Copy [Abstract]
Mercedes Bunz
The “digital copy”, and the economical and social problem associated with it, is the starting point for Mercedes Bunz’s lecture. She will go back to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936). Therein Benjamin tried to import an utopian moment into the technique of film. This utopian moment will be imported into the technique of the digital copy.
In “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin imports a utopian moment into the technique of film pointing to a certain political potential that is intrinsic in the technical modes of reproduction. My presentation will try to appropriate this gesture by transferring it to the digital copy.
With the digital copy the relation between the original and the copy is turned upside down. The shift of this relation provides immense effects, due to the fact that within the order of European culture the original plays an extraordinary role. Indeed, as I will try to show, the original establishes the capitalistic order of property. This is one reason for the strong fight that comes along with the advent of the digital copy.
The other reason is a shift of capital itself: Within digital culture the copy becomes itself the starting point for production. It is not the creation anymore, but the editing, that marks the moment of production. It is apparent, that digital programs form new works of art by editing existing material. Exactly here one finds the reason, why copyright is such an important issue for western countries: The investment capital of digital culture is not anymore the machine – even powerful computers are too cheap to introduce distinction – but the copyrights, licenses and patents.
Walter Benjamin drew our attention towards the political effects that technical revolutions provide. Nowadays we have to re-read these effects. But this time art itself is on stake. Therefore it is high time to formulate demands in the politics of technology.
