Search results for ""Author Boris Groys""

Modern history is a history of aesthetizations – and every aesthetization raises a claim of protection. We aestheticize and want to protect almost everything, including Earth, oceans, the atmosphere, rare animal species and exotic plants. Humans are no exception. They also present themselves as objects of contemplation that deserve admiration and care. For some time, artists and intellectuals struggled for the sovereign right to present themselves to society in their own way – to become self-created works of art. Today everybody has not only a right but also an obligation to practice self-design. We are responsible for the way we present ourselves to others – and we cannot get rid of this aesthetic responsibility. However, we are not able to produce our own bodies. Before we begin to practice self-design, we find ourselves already designed by the gaze of others. That is why the practice of self-design mostly takes a critical and confrontational turn. We want to bring others to see us in the way we want to be seen – not only during our earthly life but also after our death. This is a complicated struggle, and the aim of this book is to describe and analyze it.

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Our current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the "creative class" over the rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of care - medical care, child care, agriculture, industrial maintenance and so on. We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care - ill bodies in need of self-care and social care. But the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. The book retraces some episodes of this tradition - beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question discussed is: who should be the subject of care? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.

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Modern history is a history of aesthetizations – and every aesthetization raises a claim of protection. We aestheticize and want to protect almost everything, including Earth, oceans, the atmosphere, rare animal species and exotic plants. Humans are no exception. They also present themselves as objects of contemplation that deserve admiration and care. For some time, artists and intellectuals struggled for the sovereign right to present themselves to society in their own way – to become self-created works of art. Today everybody has not only a right but also an obligation to practice self-design. We are responsible for the way we present ourselves to others – and we cannot get rid of this aesthetic responsibility. However, we are not able to produce our own bodies. Before we begin to practice self-design, we find ourselves already designed by the gaze of others. That is why the practice of self-design mostly takes a critical and confrontational turn. We want to bring others to see us in the way we want to be seen – not only during our earthly life but also after our death. This is a complicated struggle, and the aim of this book is to describe and analyze it.

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Conversaciones con el lúcido ensayista B. Groys que abordan el arte, la producción de la subjetividad y de la identidad cultural, la filosofía, y la economía de las diferencias invisibles como respuesta a la filosofía postmetafísica del siglo XX.

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Since Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society. The transformative power of language, the medium of equality, is the key to any new communist revolution.

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A teacher to Jacques Lacan, André Breton, and Albert Camus, Kojève defined art as the act of extracting the beautiful from objective reality. His poetic text, “The Concrete Paintings of Kandinsky,” endorses nonrepresentational art as uniquely manifesting beauty. Taking the paintings of his renowned uncle, Wassily Kandinsky, as his inspiration, Kojève suggests that in creating (rather than replicating) beauty, the paintings are themselves complete universes as concrete as the natural world. Kojève’s text considers the utility and necessity of beauty in life, and ultimately poses the involuted question: What is beauty? Including personal letters between Kandinsky and his nephew, this book further elaborates the unique relationship between artist and philosopher. An introduction by Boris Groys contextualizes Kojève’s life and writings.

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This new survey covers the rich and varied history of participatory art, from early happenings and performances to current practices that demand audience interaction. As the internet mindset – browsing, sharing, collecting, producing – increasingly permeates every aspect of society, this timely project reveals the ways in which artists and viewers have approached the creation of open works of art. Original essays identify seminal moments in participatory practice from the 1950s to the present day, while a rich array of plates reproduces the work of the movement’s major figures in vivid detail.

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Wolfgang H Scholz (b. 1958) is a visual artist and film director. His work spans more than three decades and encompasses apart from painting many forms of expression, ranging from theatrical and documentary films, sculpture, photography, and installations to multimedia stage pieces. His central theme is the vision of an imaginary arrival, and his work method is a form of decoding. Other essential concepts that recur in Scholz's work include the labyrinth, time, memories or localization and the questioning of reality. The title The Void is taken from a Buddhist term for the Fifth Element: The Void. Since 2010 Scholz has worked with Japanese Butoh masters, creating several multimedia stage pieces and series of photographic works on this theme. This volume includes a conversation with Prof. Dr. Boris Groys of New York University, one of the most important scholars of the arts and humanities of the twentieth century. This dialogue is an essential text for understanding the creative processes, references, and influences of Wolfgang H Scholz concerning the philosophical and programmatic themes of The Void. This book will be published to coincide with exhibitions by the MACO - Museum of Contemporary Art Oaxaca (2019), Mexico, the Museum Ex Teresa Arte Actual (2019), the gallery Casa Galván - UAM - Universidad Autónoma metropolitana (2020) and in collaboration with the presentations of the performance THE VOID at the Butoh Festival Kyoto, Japan (July 2019) and at the Theatre CC Los Talleres, Mexico City in 2019. Text in English with a Spanish and German insert.

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An interdisciplinary volume of essays identifying the impact of technology on the age-old cultural practice of collecting as well as the opportunities and pitfalls of collecting in the digital era. Seminal to the rise of human cultures, the practice of collecting is an expression of individual and societal self-understanding. Through collections, cultures learn and grow. The introduction of digital technology has accelerated this process and at the same time changed how, what, and why we collect. Ever-expanding storage capacities and the accumulation of unprecedented amounts of data are part of a highly complex information economy in which collecting has become even more important for the formation of the past, present, and future. Museums, libraries, and archives have adapted to the requirements of a digital environment, as has anyone who browses the internet and stores information on hard drives or cloud servers. In turn, companies follow the digital footprint we leave behind. Today, collecting includes not only physical objects but also the binary code that allows for their virtual representation on screen. Collecting in the Twenty-First Century identifies the impact of technology, both new and old, on the cultural practice of collecting as well as the challenges and opportunities of collecting in the digital era. Scholars from German Studies, Media Studies, Museum Studies, Sound Studies, Information Technology, and Art History as well as librarians and preservationists offer insights into the most recent developments in collecting practices.

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