Open-air museums: digital cultures, aesthetics and everyday life

Abstract

At a time when everything becomes art, art no longer belongs to itself, to the point of overflowing from the frames that have enclosed it for several centuries – museums, galleries, churches – with unprecedented effects not only in the field of aesthetics, but above all in ordinary life. To understand this in depth, it is necessary to take into account the digital reproducibility of the work of art as a dynamic that upsets the relationship between work and spectator, subject and object, politics and everyday life. From the second half of the 18th century onwards, we saw a dynamic of "aestheticization of the public" parallel to the birth of the cultural industry and, therefore, the transformation of culture into merchandise. It is an ambiguous process, as it implies the emergence of the mass as the central subject of our culture, but also its definitive reification. What about aesthetics in such a condition? This study explores the genology and history of this process by updating Walter Benjamin's thinking in relation to the cultural emergencies of our time. In particular, it seems essential to understand what happens to the aura in the context of a condition in which the aesthetic object, the work of art and, more generally, the area that concerns beauty is available, used and consumed in everyday life, to the point of placing our cities as "open air museums".