Sven-Olov Wallenstein

Nihilism, Art, Technology Sven-Olov Wallenstein Revised edition

Beginning in an analysis of three paradigmatic instances of the encounter between art and technology in modernism-the invention of photography, the step beyond art in Futurism and Constructivism, and the interpretation of technology in debates on architectural theory in the 1920s and '30s-this book analyzes three philosophical responses to the question of nihilism-those of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, and Martin Heidegger-all of which are characterized by an avant-garde sensibility that looks to art as a way to counter of the crisis of modernity. These responses are then brought to bear on the work of the architect Mies van der Rohe, whose "silence"-understood as a withdrawal of language, sense, and aesthetic perception-is analyzed as a key problem in the interpretation of the legacy of modernism. From this, a different understanding of nihilism, art, and technology emerges. These concepts form a field of constant modulation, which implies that the foundations of critical theory must be subjected to a historical analysis that acknowledges them as ongoing processes of construction, and that also accounts for the capacity of technologies and artistic practices to intervene in the formation of philosophical concepts.