Exhibition
Leo Asemota: AFTER WALTER
20 Oct 2016 – 16 Dec 2016
Leeds College of Art & Design
Leeds, United Kingdom
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"Leo Asemota AFTER WALTER" video still. ©2007 Leo Asemota Courtesy of Leo Asemota / EoTLA
Screening
"Leo Asemota | After Walter: Act 1
20 Sep 2016
Cost of entry
FREE
Address
- 20 Richardstraße
- Berlin
Berlin - 12043
- Germany
Event map
A screening and artist's talk on Leo Asemota's performance reading written for radio of Walter Benjamin's landmark essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936)
About
In 2007, artist Leo Asemota wrote for radio, a performance interpretation of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), the landmark essay by the German critical theorist Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). Titled “After Walter: A transmission in 2 acts” the production was broadcast on January 19, 2007 on Resonance 104.4FM, London’s premiere art radio station. Asemota’s staging of the work looked to Benjamin’s broadcasts on German radio between 1927 and 1933 and provided a platform for him to appraise the essay as central to his ongoing multipartite artwork “The Ens Project” (2005 – present) which the broadcast was a part of.
The performance was a combined instrumentation, actions and readings in German and in English from select movements in the essay. Asemota’s intent with the “After Walter” performance was to engage radio transmission as central to key ideas in Benjamin’s essay, of the auditory aura, site-specificity, technology and language, at the same time integrating other Benjamin’s thinking on translation and the task of the translator.
The project “Leo Asemota | After Walter: Act 1” is motivated by the 80th anniversary of Benjamin’s essay. Asemota’s production is possibly the only performance interpretation of this seminal text in a medium the cultural theorist regarded.
The screening of this work will be followed by an open conversation with attendees and Leo Asemota.
