Es ist kein Zufall, dass die These von der Überwindung der Dichotomien“von Kultur und Politik,

Aldo Milohni ć ARTIVISM [03_2005] Any man today can lay claim to being filmed. Walter Benjamin In the concluding paragraph of his legendary essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' Walter Benjamin outlines a critique of the Fascist aestheticisation of politics. His crucial, and later frequently quoted, conclusion is encapsulated in the last two sentences: "This is the situation of 1politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicising art." That is how politics and the arts appeared in the 1930s when this essay was written. To be more precise, that is how Benjamin delimited the representational strategies of the political left and right. His thesis implies that politics (which is aestheticised) is the representational domain of the right, while the left operates inside the field of art (which is politicised). This is not to say that politics is exclusively a sphere of interest of the right, nor that art is exclusively the creative field of the left. The point at issue here is the evolution of paradigms employed by one political tendency to oppose the other. Seventy years later, nothing similar can be claimed, but not because our time would be immune to aestheticisation of politics or politicisation of art; indeed, these processes are never-ending. However, what has melted away in the meantime and what can no longer be distinguished or brought into focus in the way Benjamin was able to ...