Apologies for the delay in this posting but as we have yet to discuss the Duchamp’s film I figured I might still be able to submit it for consideration.

I would like to consider, if only briefly, Marcel Duchamp's Anémic-cinéma in light of Benjamin's article The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. A little more specifically, I’d like to comment on the ways in which Benjamin and Duchamp engage the notion of tradition.

If one examines the idea of a landscape moving past a spectator in a film, as Benjamin does in his article, one can appreciate that whilst the visual perception is maintained through reproduction, the sentiment of that moment in time and place, indeed its aura, is not. Films attempt to reproduce the here and now of moments, and the technological advancements made in the technology of reproduction have inevitably made this task easier. To this end, Benjamin refers to the fact that any given moment in a film is defined by the sum of those to have proceeded it, as if they were the captions previously assigned to scenes in silent movies. The continuous stream of illustrative captions serve as its dynamic tradition and endeavor to convey the constructed moment’s aura to the viewer. In this way the camera performs the same function as that of a record in its attempts to transport the acoustics of an orchestra playing in a music hall to our living room. Inevitably though the reproduction’s efforts fall short, for our reaction, indeed our perception of the reproduction is inherently different from that of the original.

Benjamin asserts that technological reproduction implicitly devalues “the here and now” of the artwork and consequently strips it of its aura. Broadening the scope of his analysis he goes on to say, “this process extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition.” Benjamin’s generalization permits us to compare his semiotic stance to that of Duchamp’s.

Famous for the use of objets trouve - objects extracted from their original context and placed into a new and unconventional one so as to fundamentally alter their purpose - Duchamp beautifully manipulates the idea laid forth by Benjamin. Anémic-cinéma is a manifestation of his aspiration to explore the inherent properties of preconceived perceptions of language through the creation of an entirely new language. In an early indication of his later intentions in Anémic-cinéma he suggested that the method by which he would create his new language was to eschew all syntactic convention, writing that “if what you want is a grammatical rule: the verb agrees with the subject in consonance”.

The sentences that spin in accordance with the spirals they intercede are constructed of words chosen with object disregard to syntax but careful consideration to alliteration and consonance. Duchamp’s words are objets trouve, unburdened of their historical meaning and meticulously misplaced. In the removal of the object from its tradition Duchamps is free to make an original comment and a unique statement. He will do so through the manner in which he chooses to re-contextualize the words. To enforce his statement Duchamp employs the uses of movement and disorientation. The viewer will struggle to read the incoherent sentences as they spiral, indeed he is meant to. With enough time to read the words as they turn but none to consider their significance the intoxicating spirals entice the viewer to to keep searching for their meaning. Once the film has finished, the viewer is left to decipher a scrambled recollection of disassociated words (albeit specifically chosen). In this way, Duchamp carves out a new tradition, as much defined by his selection of words and syntax as by the subjective perception imparted by the viewer.