Recently
I flâneured over to the Peltz Gallery
at Birkbeck’s School of Arts in Gordon Square, London, to see an exhibition of
photographs and two films related to Walter Benjamin (one of which was not
running during my visit). It is designed
to be a celebration of his influence plus a sombre memorial to him in the form
of a focus on landscapes known to him, particularly his final walk.
Benjamin’s
story begins in Berlin, where he was born in 1892, and finishes in Catalonia, where
he died. He left Paris in May 1940
hoping to emigrate to the United States via Portugal, but committed suicide at
Portbou in September 1940 when threatened with deportation back to France; an
action that would have put him in the hands of the German occupiers, a group of
individuals not noted for their kindness to Jewish intellectuals.
Alas
for someone whose creativity has been so significant, Day for Night is a small show with small ideas. The heart of it is a series of photographs of
people holding either a large portrait of Benjamin – titled ‘Essential passage’;
or placards with quotations from his best-known essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction’ (or as it is also more clunkily known, ’The Work of
Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’) – titled ‘More than a
Sign’.
The
placards themselves were included in the exhibition, in what was horribly
termed ‘selfie corner’. Visitors were
invited to take said selfies while holding them, to be posted on
Instagram. The fragments were rendered
meaningless by being ripped out of context (‘Authority of the object’, ‘Instead
of being’, ‘Mode of existence’ etc.), and you don’t have to be a member of the
Frankfurt School to suspect that Benjamin would not have been impressed by this
particular act of mechanical (in more than one sense) reproduction. The large portrait held up or carried around
was even worse. By evoking the portraits
of dictators carried in processions it suggests a cult of Benjamin.
 |
| Screen grab, ‘More than a Sign (film)’ |
Literalness is taken even further in a set of photographs showing light
effects, called ‘Luminosities’, referencing Benjamin’s Illuminations. A further
set, ‘Day for Night’, photographed in Portbou, uses the film technique in which
scenes shot during the day mimic night-time by underexposing the image. The curators make the rather obvious point
that day and night can interpenetrate, as Benjamin found in Naples, day unravelling
what the night has woven. The link to
Benjamin here is tenuous.
As
if inspiration has failed entirely, the exhibition opens out to consider the
issue of migration into Europe, equating it to Benjamin’s flight from the Nazis. A rather nice group of photographs is titled
‘Life in the Shadows’ (hinting at L’Armée des Ombres?). The caption reads: ‘This series of images
focuses on a group of Senegalese migrants and their adopted home of present-day
Port de la Selva, a town 14 kilometres from the place of Benjamin’s death. The camera captures their figures in
ambiguous, quasi-ritualistic poses in the empty streets of the off-season.’
Despite
the persecution of Christians, and the usual problems women and gays tend to have
in a Muslim-majority country, Senegal is not equivalent to Nazi-controlled
Europe. These are more likely to be
economic migrants, as the gallery’s publicity concedes, and the comparison to
Benjamin’s flight feels inappropriate. The
exhibition concludes with a film, ‘More than a Sign (film)’, tracing that final walk
over the Pyrenees, covering 20km from southern France to Portbou. Unfortunately it involves carrying the portrait
of Benjamin, and becomes preposterous (fortunately we are spared the entire
20km).
The
idea to celebrate Benjamin’s life and work was praiseworthy, but in practice
the results presented here are rather dim.
We may hope for more substantial commemorations in 2020. Day for
Night: Landscapes of Walter Benjamin runs from 21 September to 27 October
and is curated by Diego Ferrari and Jean McNeil. A small book, edited by the curators, accompanies
the event.
