Ears

Walter Benjamin taught us that works of art, when seen reproduced in a book or on a postcard, lose their ‘aura’. It is obvious that a reproduction can be very good, even absolutely faithful to the original colors and sizes –in the case of a painting–, or that the observer can get a very thorough idea of what, for example, the Mona Lisa is. But a reproduction of La Gioconda is not the original, because the original has the aforementioned 'aura', which comes to it from that theorized 'distance': the original has traversed time, often space as well, and appears before us in one place, without losing either its mystery or its authority. The concept of aura, then, is back in fashion, it seems due to the young people who meet to compete in fascinating and a bit grotesque 'aura battles', which first must be cultivated, or 'farmed', as they say, making an English verb their own, mostly learned from video games. Aura is cultivated because through battles or clashes between different young people, one manages to increase the social perception that others have of one's own charisma, style, presence, confidence, or the ability to show oneself as 'cool'. But young people are wiser than they seem; we must want to go beyond the blind and blunt criticism that many make on social media to finally understand 'the game', because it is all too revealing. Often one just needs to be a little careful. Because the more aura you want to have, the less you have, or the more it seems you want to act cool and charismatic, the more your true colors show and you lose the game completely. I wouldn't say that in the literary field things work in a very different way: there are those who have aura and those who don't, and no one seems more grotesque or dispensable than the one who wants above all to cultivate aura, that is, to start pulling strings or pushing buttons to seem to have greatness or insight or grace, when precisely if one had all that, one wouldn't have to do anything, because we would already be there. The game or irony is competing for something for which you should not want the victory, because just by wanting it –or exhibiting this desire– they can no longer give it to you. The winner must be the one who seems to want it the least, and at the same time the one who does things that, for one reason or another, end up fascinating the public the most. Now the aura is quantified, as Benjamin also taught us to do, who knew how to see which things were or were not 'authentic'. And this is where art returns, because everything is pure simulation: you have to make it look like you are doing nothing, no effort, or that the way you dress, walk, dance, or look are not the result of hours of trial and error. If for Benjamin the aura was destroyed because of technique, these young people have learned that technique is the only way in which they can cultivate it. Art was unrepeatable, but the aura that is now sought to be had ends up being nothing more than a reputation of singularity produced through repetition. Art does not say anything to them, surely, but what they do is nothing more than seek the artistic experience in a more or less showy way.