1. How did Benjamin view the importance and role of ‘the collector’? How do objects and the spaces they inhabit help us to see more closely and anew?
Benjamin thought that the collector’s role was to resuscitate the past by using objects which are collected only for their antiquarian and/or sentimental value. He believed that objects surpassed their functions to become part of a more intricate process in which they tell the story of a specific period of time, culture, society and are “free from the bondage of being useful”.
2. In what ways did Benjamin identify with the Surrealists and their anti-commodity, poetical strategy of data collection from everyday life, dreams, street life, and from the banalest environments?
Benjamin was identified by the surrealists in that both collected data in order to rediscover even the most monotone activities to reinvision a new world in which they both see dreams, myths, and memories of childhood as a conductor for evoking feelings and resurecting the past.
3. When photography and film were emerging visual technologies, Benjamin introduced the term ‘optical unconscious.’ What did he mean by this? How does photography and film both reflect and construct the world around us?
“Optical unconscious” allude to the premise that “bric-a-brac” objects bring out the past and connect different time periods and memories overlapping them, this is what Benjamin calls “interpolations” and this are expressed throughout film and photography transforming them into unconscious images that freeze time.
