CONSTELLATION MOVING

Theses on the Philosophy of History

Walter Benjamin’s essay has 20 sections. I set out to make a video for each one, in no particular order. This may take quite a while. So far here are…

Thesis I “The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. . . .The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time.”

Thesis III “…nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.”

Thesis V “The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”

Thesis VIII “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”

Thesis IX “This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. . . The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”

Thesis XIV “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.”