Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 73

THE EMBODIED ACT

longer so we can escape the "grind" in order to play. Our play is
decidedly nonreligious, which is to say nonfestive. But remove
the religious festival, Pieper argues, and art itself goes homeless.
Homeless art is readily politicized, and rather than being characterized by striving toward the transcendent, politicized art (which
is a form of pseudo-art) is subject to appropriation by whatever
political power or social movement is currently in fashion.

W

e live today with unparalleled access to art. Music is ubiquitous. Famous paintings are available to us with the click
of a mouse. Film is a vibrant and exciting art form. More books
are published than ever before. This is at best a double-edged
sword, however. True, we can access more reproductions of art
than ever before, but is enjoying the re-production the same
as enjoying the production? Through technological reproduction the immediacy of the embodied act is potentially lost and
replaced with a disembodied nonact. Or at the very least a gulf
emerges between the initial act and reproduction of the act.
Consider the typical consequence. What is ubiquitous is taken
for granted. We attend differently to that which is rare or fleeting or obtained with difficulty. Prior to recording technology, for
instance, a musical performance was a one-time affair. Once the
last note faded away, it was gone forever. People had a powerful
incentive to pay attention. So too when a painting is located in
one place, or when a book is painstakingly copied from an original. With our various technologies we can easily (and cheaply)
take a great performance for granted. We can reduce a singular
performance to an easily repeated (and therefore easily ignored)
commodity-like Andy Warhol's pop art. And when art is commodified, the transcendent essence is easily lost in the numbing
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Modern Age - Summer 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Summer 2016

Contents
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Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Contents
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