Hörner, Fernand <br/><br/>
Reproduction and historical flexibility of the aura: Walter Benjamin meets Radiohead 

 -  2015.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> This article analyzes the role played by music and its relationship to the concept of aura, developed by Walter Benjamin in his famous essay The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Although Benjamin primarily takes his examples from the fields of photography and cinema, music plays a subliminal, but essential role in his approach to mechanical reproduction. Historicization of the musical object is therefore required, as the contradictory relationship between reproduction and aura is shifting. What is the role of aura, if music is taken out of the context of a concert and “produced” (and not reproduced) on vinyl, CD or MP3? Reproduced art also claims auratic status. In the field of recorded music, the strategies of the group Radiohead highlight this phenomenon of re-auratization, by selling vinyl, performing concerts, selling CDs and even by allowing a whole album to be downloaded for free. This article offers a detailed analysis of the paradoxes of this flexible aura.