Tag: art theory

Part eight of the series “Write like Walter Benjamin” where you’ll learn how to write art theory with the help of Benjamins essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” using Andy Blundens translation. For some reason I always misspeak Andys surname as “Bloomden” and I apologise for that. Sooner or later I’ll get it right.

Today, we’ll work through chapter six, which is a short one. If you’ve followed this course from the beginning (as I keep insisting that you do) you should be getting the hang of writing art theory by now, and I hope you are excited about it.

We’re now more than one third through the essay, and — if you’ve been diligent — you’re one third ready to write art theory! If you’ve followed the previous episodes — and I encourage you to check those out if you haven’t — you know that we’re at chapter five of the Andy Blunden translation of Benjamins classic essay. I hope you enjoy it!

Here’s part six of my tutorial “How to write like Walter Benjamin” for your consideration. If you haven’t done the previous ones, I recommend you to do so before starting on this.

As usual, we’re using the 1936 essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, translated by Andy Blunden.

Welcome to the fifth installment of How to write like Walter Benjamin, a series of videos which encourages you to learn how to write art theory. With just a minimum effort you will be writing art theory in no time! We’re using the 1935 essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” as translated by Andy Blunden. Here’s a link: Marxists.org

The run-time of this part is 40 minutes, and we cover all of chapter three. So sit down, grab a pen and paper, and follow along! As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here or over at Vimeo. In case you’ve missed the previous episodes, please check those out before starting on this one.

Welcome back to the fourth installment of “How to write like Walter Benjamin,” where you are invited to learn how to write art theory — with a little effort on your part, you’ll be writing in no-time!

This tutorial, which clocks in at around one hour, contains chapter 2 of the essay, and since it’s a bit long you might want to take a break half-way through, or at least warm up your hand to minimize cramping.

We’re using the 1935 essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” as translated by Andy Blunden. (UCLA translation, on Wikipedia)

Some people have asked if they have to use the same setup as I when writing, and the answer is in one word “no.” You can write by hand on paper or on a computer, and you are welcome to type as well — the point is to teach you how to write art theory, not to do it in a particular way.

This is the third episode of the tutorial in which you’ll learn how to write like art theoretician Walter Benjamin. With just under an hour a week you will be able to write proper art theory in no-time. For this series, we’re using the 1935 essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” as translated by Andy Blunden.

Having previously written the introductory quote and the preface, we can finally start on the essay proper and its first chapter. Enjoy!

The goal of these video tutorials is to help those who otherwise struggle with writing theoretical texts, enabling anyone to learn to write like Walter Benjamin, and more specifically to write his 1936 essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” which is a good starting point if one intends to write theory.

In this part, we’ll be writing the preface to essay, using the UCLA translation of the original German work. If you are serious about learning this skill I’d recommend that you’d download the English or German version and follow along. Learning by doing, as it were.

Pardon the clicking and hissing towards the end of the video — My computer threw a hissy fit when it had to open a new document, and this somehow affected only the audio.

You to can learn to write like Walter Benjamin! An ongoing project which you’re welcome to follow along.