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Celeste OlalquiagaDust / 1998

The grey film of dust covering things has become their best part.- Wa lte r Benjami n, Dreamkitsch , 1927

1lln the one short piece where he di scusses kitsch, Wal ter Benjam in employsthe metaphor of dust to describe the rundown state of dreams in modernity.Attuned to the fate of the aura, he says . dream s are langer removed fromconcrete experience. bur tangible and near. Th ey have lost their romanticdimension, their bill e distance , fading into a sad greyness tha t figurat ive lyrepresents the di sintegration which befalls dreams when they cease beingimaginary and enter the polluted at mosphere of everyday life.

Benjamin associates thi s colourless stare wirh the du st that acc umulates onforgotten objects, establishing an analogy betwee n what he calls rh e ext inctworld of things things infused with aura, of co urse) and the worn -out conditionof dreams: both are now in the realm of the banal, that is , of kitsch. What makesdreams and things kitsch, therefore, is the ir tangibility - the fact that they nolonger stand two metres away from the body , but have become in stead familiarand access ibl e. The connect ion of kitsch and decay is underscored by the irmutual susceptibility to physical touch. And, as is always the case with the aura,the 1055 of di stance is occasioned by technology, which Be njam in likens to billsof currency, in other words, to exchange va lue: bill s and technology stand forthe exterior cf things. as opposed to th ei r essence. In this way, Benjamin seemsto perpetuate the c ss ic op position between essence and appearance thatimplicitly underlies the official status of kitsch as a superfi cial phenomenonand art outcast.

Benjamin s apparent dichotomy between outside and inside, body and soul,assumes that once things have been touched by the deadly hands of commodityfeti shi sm, they wilt li ke nowers. And truly, only in the faraway d im ension ofconceptual dista nce (or of memory) ca n things remain beyond the mortal trialsoftimeand space, [he wear and tear ofage and use.Thi sauratic dista nce isbette runderstood with the help of what Benjamin di stinguishes as cu lt va lue , atraditional relationship to objects whereby these are infused wit h a sacredqua l ty cha racteristie of cu ltures w ith a magie or theocentric view of the wo rld .In t.urn, cult va lue is re lated to use va lue, where the wo rth of things is directlydenved from rheir relation ship ro human acrivity, instead ofsubordinated to thelaws of market exchange, or exchange value, I

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Although Benjamin longs forcu ltvalue, he recognizes its modern disintegrationas the break ing down of old hierarchies wh ich places essence ove r appearanceand, co nsequentiy, believes technology has a revo luri onary potential. Simila rly,alrhough for hirn the novel promotes an indi vid ualistic exper ence that is rad icallydifferent from rhe communal one of oral and epic literary traditions, it enables forthis ve ry reason a creative understanding of the wo rld rather than an acceptanceof handed-down beliefs) wh ch can open the way for its transformation.

What is most rele van t about Benjamin s kitsc h essay, therefore, is th at itdescribes the consequence of the shift from a mode of experience based on asacred distance to a mode ba sed on perceptual proximity, For Benjamin,modernity replaces the cyclic f10w oftraditional tim e with m irage ofmovementconstituted by sheer repetition: the new as the ever-always-the-same , Thi scondition is exposed by dust, which can slowly accumulate on things given theirultimate immobility, sinc e the proliferati on in spa ce does not gra nt thingsmovement that is, transformation) in time.

lronically, or perhaps by some intuitive acknowledgment, sti llness was fearedby the pragmatic idealism of the nineteenth century, where everything had tohave a reason, an explanation: or a function. Victorian ~ i o r p p r e ~ t l y Jmerely ornamental. had a practlcal purpose : to cover the emptmess left behmdby the absence of tradition, Materia l proliferation was legitimized by thepretended usefulness of things that contained other things - albums, armOires,]boxes, glass cases - often protecting them from this eras arch-enemy,Interiors themselve s, ke the arcades of a few decades ea rlier, were created toprotect objects from the outs id e, keeping them safe for contemplation.

The vast production of the late 18005 was geared to protecting, showing,hold ing - an obsession that accounts for this period s fastidious arrangements,where nothing is out of place and a ll the different elements participate in anobligatory mea ningfulness. Dust is a cumberso me residue that taints what itrouches and must be era dicated: du st is seen as dirt , a persistent conraminationexuded by deat h onto the world of the living, Al ready the 1851 Crystal Palacefeatured [wo devices to combat dust: a stru ctural feature whereby the woodenplanks of the palace s noors we re left slightly separate so that the dust could fallthrough them, and a bizarre vacuum corn n guaranteed to prevent decay ,

Eventually, nineteenth-century production surpassed the spaces that sogenerous ly embraced it, overnowing them to such a degree that they almostdrowned under the weight oftheir own culture. Sa tiated, this society then turnedaro und and lashed out against its own abunda nce am idst se lf-accusations ofsupernuity and waste. After all , its objects were no longer connected to anythingvital. but were the emblems of a cul tural death perpetrated by commodification,the remnants of an aura (however mythical ) whose brutal di sintegration marked

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the end of an era. So. while Benjamin s dust metaphor states that dust - kitsch.the banal - is a worthless. extrinsic detritus, at the sa me time ir exposes thecultural condition that made this metaphorica l dust possible: the 1 55 of usevalue and the disintegration o the aura.

This assertion can be extended to suggest that dust grants things a peculiaritythat reconstitutes thern as a new experience. va lidating instead of di squalifyingthem. To this effect. I would like to propose that even though dust - or boredom- settles on things that da not move, dust itself mayaiso be seen as the lastbreath of tradition, and therefore different from the deadly repetition ofmodernity. The dust that fall s on modern things is the decay of the aura, thedecomposition of a previous era that, like the tons of shells and detritus thatcontinuously sink to the ocean bottom, creates a new layer of sed iment. The dustof modernity, a mix ofboredom and death, is the most tangible aspect ofthe newhistorica l time, a thin patina of shattered moments remaining after the frenzy ofmultiplication has subsided or moved away.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Benjamin equates dust with kitsch,s ince both are constituted by what I am distinguishing here as the debris of theaura. What is at stake for kitsch and dust is the transformation of reality fromunitary to fragmented, from continuous to chaotic, along with a shift in the waywe perceive, which goes from ritualistic to a pragmatic apprehension. The layerof dust makes things into opaque phantoms of themselves in the same way thatkitsch is the distorted copy, or brilliant shadow, of a unique original that ittransfarms whi le replicating. And in so far as kitsch is like dust - a fragmentedreminder ofsomething now gone, a mundane proliferation that infi ltrates hornesat will, a bizarre form of object appropriation - then kitsch is liable to the sameaccusations and cleans ing operations that du st must endure.

Dust is what connects the dreams ofyesteryear with the touch of nowadays.It is the aftermath ofthe co llapse of illusion s a powdery cloud that rises abruptlyand then begins falling on things, gently covering their bright, polished surfaces.Du st is like a soft carpet of snow that gradually coats the city, quieting its noi seumil we feellike we are inside a snow glbe, the urban exterior transmuted intDa magica l interior where all time is suspended and space contained. Dust mak esthe outside inside by calling attention to the surface ofthings, a surface formerlydeemed untouchable or simply ignored as a conduit to what was consideredreal: that essence which supposedly lies inside people and things waiting to bediscovered. Dust turn s things inside out by exposing their bodies as more thanmere shells or carriers, for only after dust settles on an object da we begin tolang for its lost splendour, realizing how much of this forgotten object s beautylay in the more ex ternal, concrete aspect of its existence, rather than in itshidden attributed meaning.

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- Dust brings a little ofthe wor ld into the enclosed quarters o f objects. Belangingto the outside, the exterior, the street, dust constantly creeps into the sacred arenaof private spaces as areminder that there are no impermeable boundaries betweenlife and death. It is a transparent veil that seduces with the promise of wh at liesbehind it, which is never as good as the titillating offer. Dust makes palpable theelusive passing of time, the infinite pulverized particles that co nstitute its vo latilematter, catching their prey in a su rprise embrace whose c1ingy hands, like aninvisible net, leave no other mark than a de licate sheen of faint glitter. As it sticksto our fingert ips, dust propels a vag ue state of retrospection, carrying us on itssupple wings. A messenger of death, dust is the signature of lost time.Ind eed, dust is where faded dreams and touch intersect, where the blue horizonfades to grey, Benjamin s distinction between dreams and touch reflects the aura sunderlying hierarchy of value. In a time when the manufacturing of objects hasgiven way to their mechanical and ma ss production, pre- industrial times areco nsidered superior for representing a direct connection between producerconsumer and object; they are granted a transcendental dimens ion for seeminglybridging the gap between sensorial perception and symbolic apprehension.Withinthe parameters ofuse value the aura remains intact; theconnotationsofauthenticityand uniqueness permeating process, object and subject.

Not so wi th mass production. which replaces use value with exchange value.where the emphasis is on accessibility and pragmatism. Having descend ed fromthe Mount Olympus of exclusivity, objects need no langer to surpass theirimmediate function on Earth, but can be relished instead for their corporealexistence. Like fallen angels, objects lose or rather ruin their auras upon descentarriving with linie more than a crumbling. dusty shadow oftheir once iride scenthaloes. Deprived of supernatural immunity, the shaken-down aura fall s prey toa ll the vicissitudes of earth-bound things: it can be touched, traded, copied andtampered with; it is but a fragment of its former existence. It is kitsch. [ .. [

Wa ter Benjamin, 'Traumkirsch' [Dreamkirsch ] (1927), in usgewahlre Schrifren vol. 2 Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp, 1966) 158- 60.

Celeste OlalQuiaga. extracts from The Areijidal Kingdom ATreasu ry oftlle Kitsch Experience New Vork:Pantheon Books 1998) 87-95; 140-46

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