Philip Auslander notes that authenticity and the live experience have always been interlinked. Today, electronic media such as television create the impression of ‘liveness’, of disappearance and presence. A football game broadcast is perceived as an absolutely live experience. This interconnection is particularly apparent in the case of live performances by rock musicians: audiences expect the concerts to sound like the ‘original’ recordings, which are attributed with authenticity.[1] In his dissertation project, Imanuel Schipper[2] links the prevailing hype surrounding authenticity with the decline of the Western world’s (political and economic) systems after 1989. He identifies further causes of a growing demand for the authentic as the emergence of virtual realities, globalisation, insecurity following 9/11 and economic crisis. The gradual prevalence of technological media and the development of photographic, video and computer technologies have caused the concept of the authentic to continue to shift and remain fluid, though always performative. It comes to crystallisation at the moment of its use. The feelings of authenticity then experienced tell us more about the producer(s) than about the object received. The commercial market has also discovered this effect. Today, within and beyond the art context, feelings of the authentic are sold to the public in place of ‘authentic facts’. To reiterate, in Steyerl’s words: “In the age of digital reproduction, documentary forms have a tremendously emotionalising effect, not only on an individual level – they are also an important part of the contemporary economy of affect … As the tendency shifts from documentary seeing to documentary feeling, … reality becomes an event.”[3] In view of this, it is advisable to avoid the term or, if used, to state the sense in which an item is described as authentic.
[1] Cf. Auslander, Philip, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture, Routledge, London and New York 1999, p. 160.
[2] Imanuel Schipper (theatre studies scholar, actor, dramaturge) examined the staging of authenticity in contemporary productions in the SNF research project “Sehnsucht nach Authentizität” (http://blog.zhdk.ch/authenticity). His dissertation project “Authentizität als genuine performativer Begriff” is conducted in affiliation with the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft of Berne University (as told in a conversation of 13.3.2012).
[3] Translated from the German: “Im Zeitalter der digitalen Reproduktion wirken dokumentarische Formen nicht nur auf individueller Ebene ungeheuer emotionalisierend – sie stellen auch einen wichtigen Bestandteil zeitgenössischer Ökonomien des Affekts dar … In der Verschiebung vom dokumentarischen Sehen zum dokumentarischen Fühlen, … wird die Realität zum Event“, in: ibid., Steyerl 2008, p. 13.