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The walker in the city sees many things and understandsfew of them. Snatches of conversation, glimpses of hap-penings, intuitions of relations pass in kaleidoscopic varia-tion. Amidst this cascade of mostly trivial experiencesthere are a few gems, moments of significance thatdeserve to be remembered or perhaps photographed.The significant moments are signalled by a shock, theshock of the unexpected or bizarre or profound.
Shock appears in the writings of the culture critic WalterBenjamin as an essential category of modern life. The cityis the place of chance encounter, of the stimulus of thenew, of the visible movement of time as fashions changewith startling rapidity. With Baudelaire as his guide,Benjamin explores the world of the flaneur. Shock is theemphatic presence of the crowd, the sudden glance ofrecognition between strangers, the vacant lot where usedto be a building, the parade of bums and beggars.
The flaneur with a camera can record a small sample ofthis rich field of urban life. The photographer edits reali-ty, leaving context on the cutting room floor. Only theessential moment remains, and it is often as incompre-hensible as it is evocative. If its original shock value pass-es through the lens something is preserved from theephemera of the street. This exhibit presents the enig-matic results.
Enigmas
Photographs by Andrew Feenberg
The enigmas exhibit opened February 3, 2005
at the Exposure Gallery851 beatty street, Vancouver
British Columbia, Canada.
Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in the Philosophyof Technology in the School of Communication of SimonFraser University. He has taught at San Diego State University, the University of California, Irvine, the University of Paris, the University of Tokyo, Duke University and the StateUniversity of New York at Buffalo.
He is the author of Heidegger and Marcuse, TransformingTechnology, Questioning Technology, Alternative Modernity,Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory, co-author ofWhen Poetry Ruled the Streets, and co-editor of Technology andthe Politics of Knowledge, Community in the Digital Age, andModernity and Technology. He lives in Vancouver, BritishColumbia and La Jolla, California.
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