Interview with Boris Groys
Interview with Boris Groys
By David Grosz
The old Soviet propaganda, according to the philosopher, art critic, artist, and media theorist Boris Groys, was like a relentless — and effective — ad campaign. “The whole country and the whole system was one product with one package,” he says. “It’s like a bottle of Coca-Cola.”
Born in East Berlin in 1947, Groys is quite familiar with the Soviet system. He studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Leningrad from 1965 to 1971, was a research assistant in that city for five years, then moved to Moscow, where he immersed himself in the unofficial art scene, coining the term “Moscow conceptualism.” In 1981, he immigrated to West Germany and completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Münster; he has since positioned himself as an expert on late-Soviet postmodern art and the Russian avant-garde, authoring several books, including The Art of Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, and, most recently, Art Power.
Groys now splits his time between teaching posts in the southwestern German city of Karlsrühe and New York and is well-known on the international art scene as a curator and creator of “video collages.” Tonight he will deliver this year’s John McDonald Moore Memorial Lecture at Parsons the New School for Design, on the topic of “Art in the Age of Democracy.”
caught up with the artist-philosopher by phone last week,he spoke about branding Obama, “designing” oneself, and how Prada is to the art world as parliament is to democracy.
Boris Groys giving a talk for the New Museum’s "Night School" series, January 31,
2008
Boris, the promotional material for tonight’s talk at Parsons says that you’ll be discussing art and democracy, the difference between art and design, and the relationship between aesthetics and conspiracy theory. Can you sum up these themes?
What really interests me is the situation of art and politics. I refer in my talk to a famous passage in Walter Benjamin’s essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in which he distinguishes between the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art. The aestheticization of politics is what we would call branding, or design, which presents politics as a seductive spectacle. It’s the same idea as Guy Debord’s “society as spectacle.” Politics becomes a way to seduce people, which can actually lead to fascism and war.
On the other hand, the politicization of art is a way to get free of that and to act purely politically — beyond aesthetics, beyond art, beyond seduction, beyond spectacle. The question is: Is this possible?
Nowadays, politics doesn’t need art to become aestheticized, because in addition to art, we have mass culture, mass media coverage, and other types of image production, but that does precisely mean that art finds politics on the latter’s own territory and can offer an aesthetic criticism of it. And yet to aestheticize something is also to discredit it.
Take the case of Obama. Everyone who wants to say something bad about Obama says that he’s a showman — they aestheticize him. Everyone who wants to say something good about Obama says that he’s a real person.
To look at something as being aestheticized is to look at it as intrinsically bad. It’s not seen, as many suggest, as seductive or enchanting; rather, it becomes loaded with mistrust and suspicion.
Is there a distinction between something being aestheticized and something having aesthetic qualities?
There is a difference, but the difference is only who is doing the aestheticizing. Something can be aestheticized before it goes to a consumer, or something can be aestheticized by the consumer.
In an interview with the publication Art Lies you said: “Art, in general, is nothing but failed or dysfunctional design.” Can you explain this?
If you look at what we call art history, it started at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century with the creation of museums like the Louvre and the British Museum. If you go into these museums, you’ll see that the art collections are actually design collections. Consider the collections of furniture, or religious statues, or icons, or portraits — these are not art but a kind of design. It’s even true for the 20th century: The really important art of the 20th century was design — like Russian constructivism or Bauhaus — in terms of its production of an image for a new society. What is shown in museums and galleries are fragments of this design, and we interpret these as art.
By David Grosz
The old Soviet propaganda, according to the philosopher, art critic, artist, and media theorist Boris Groys, was like a relentless — and effective — ad campaign. “The whole country and the whole system was one product with one package,” he says. “It’s like a bottle of Coca-Cola.”
Born in East Berlin in 1947, Groys is quite familiar with the Soviet system. He studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Leningrad from 1965 to 1971, was a research assistant in that city for five years, then moved to Moscow, where he immersed himself in the unofficial art scene, coining the term “Moscow conceptualism.” In 1981, he immigrated to West Germany and completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Münster; he has since positioned himself as an expert on late-Soviet postmodern art and the Russian avant-garde, authoring several books, including The Art of Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, and, most recently, Art Power.
Groys now splits his time between teaching posts in the southwestern German city of Karlsrühe and New York and is well-known on the international art scene as a curator and creator of “video collages.” Tonight he will deliver this year’s John McDonald Moore Memorial Lecture at Parsons the New School for Design, on the topic of “Art in the Age of Democracy.”
caught up with the artist-philosopher by phone last week,he spoke about branding Obama, “designing” oneself, and how Prada is to the art world as parliament is to democracy.
Boris Groys giving a talk for the New Museum’s "Night School" series, January 31,
2008
Boris, the promotional material for tonight’s talk at Parsons says that you’ll be discussing art and democracy, the difference between art and design, and the relationship between aesthetics and conspiracy theory. Can you sum up these themes?
What really interests me is the situation of art and politics. I refer in my talk to a famous passage in Walter Benjamin’s essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in which he distinguishes between the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art. The aestheticization of politics is what we would call branding, or design, which presents politics as a seductive spectacle. It’s the same idea as Guy Debord’s “society as spectacle.” Politics becomes a way to seduce people, which can actually lead to fascism and war.
On the other hand, the politicization of art is a way to get free of that and to act purely politically — beyond aesthetics, beyond art, beyond seduction, beyond spectacle. The question is: Is this possible?
Nowadays, politics doesn’t need art to become aestheticized, because in addition to art, we have mass culture, mass media coverage, and other types of image production, but that does precisely mean that art finds politics on the latter’s own territory and can offer an aesthetic criticism of it. And yet to aestheticize something is also to discredit it.
Take the case of Obama. Everyone who wants to say something bad about Obama says that he’s a showman — they aestheticize him. Everyone who wants to say something good about Obama says that he’s a real person.
To look at something as being aestheticized is to look at it as intrinsically bad. It’s not seen, as many suggest, as seductive or enchanting; rather, it becomes loaded with mistrust and suspicion.
Is there a distinction between something being aestheticized and something having aesthetic qualities?
There is a difference, but the difference is only who is doing the aestheticizing. Something can be aestheticized before it goes to a consumer, or something can be aestheticized by the consumer.
In an interview with the publication Art Lies you said: “Art, in general, is nothing but failed or dysfunctional design.” Can you explain this?
If you look at what we call art history, it started at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century with the creation of museums like the Louvre and the British Museum. If you go into these museums, you’ll see that the art collections are actually design collections. Consider the collections of furniture, or religious statues, or icons, or portraits — these are not art but a kind of design. It’s even true for the 20th century: The really important art of the 20th century was design — like Russian constructivism or Bauhaus — in terms of its production of an image for a new society. What is shown in museums and galleries are fragments of this design, and we interpret these as art.
So you would say that design precedes art?
Yes, historically, design precedes art.
And then art arises to criticize or undo design?
Art is first of all a part of design — it is a part of the design of the new life, the new society, the new aesthetic dream. But art is also capable of demonstrating the ambiguity of design. If we seek to build a new society, a new religion, even a new product, then we have a new vision. We have a perspective and a future. But in the moment, the future gets lost; what remains is art. If you look at Malevich or Russian constructivism or Bauhaus, their paintings and objects are all parts of wonderful projects of a better world; but at the same time they are only combinations of quadrangles and triangles. And that means that the project already failed, before being realized. Art is about success and failure at the same time. Design needs to be successful. But art — that is, 20th-century art, modern art — accepts failure. The main topic of modern art, and postmodern and contemporary art, is failure. It’s the impossibility of doing art, in fact, and art constantly demonstrates this impossibility, this failure of its own project. Art is the other side of design, the other side of utopia.
How does conspiracy theory fit in?
The fact that something is designed already produces in the spectator some suspicion that the thing itself is bad, because if the thing were good enough it would not need this supplement of design. If something is mediated, there is a suspicion that there is some manipulation behind it, some interest or strategy, and maybe even some danger. So people begin to dismantle the designed surface, looking for cracks in it.
This is also a strategy of modern art. Modern art is about cracking the surface of things. It begins with cubism and constructivism – indeed, the whole practice of art in the 20th century shows things being undone. Why is that? People don’t do this because they are angry or aggressive. It’s because this design surface provokes mistrust and suspicion.
If design gives rise to conspiracy theory, which gives rise to art, what gave rise to design in the first place?
Design emerged from a certain kind of religious understanding of nature. If you assume that nature is something like design made by God, you can take the position of God and start to make your own design.
And then to extend the analogy, what does art give rise to?
To philosophy, metaphysics, maybe even a kind of negative religion. To trying to look through the things to find something like a hidden core.
You’ve also argued that art is the most democratic of institutions. How so?
You can ask why this kind of radical 20th-century modern art is not very popular. I think it is because it represents interests that are imaginary, or virtual. Politics is about the representation of interest groups — different segments of a population, different communities, different identities. But what identity is represented by Malevich’s Black Square or by Duchamp? No identity at all. Malevich even said that he didn’t like his own work. What he represents is a possibility, an imaginary interest, a fictional desire. He opened the space of democracy beyond the existing borders of representation, beyond the borders of a nation or state, and this opening was an opening for the future. This vision beyond the horizon of contemporaneity is, I think, something that makes art unique.
And how exactly is that democratic?
Because it opens the way to something beyond any ordinary represented interest. It offers a chance for somebody to take a step beyond the existing system of representation and to say: “I am not represented by all of that, I am represented by Duchamp.” It gives a chance to go beyond any existing system of representation, including the dominating system of democratic representation.
Can art itself become a kind of design? Do you have a problem with, say, slickly produced artworks?
Yes and no. Everything depends on context, of course. If you do some design within the context of the art system, as Warhol did or Jeff Koons does, then it is ironic from the beginning. So it is, in its conception, failed or unsuccessful design. It’s not a real design project, so I don’t see any problem there.
Yes, historically, design precedes art.
And then art arises to criticize or undo design?
Art is first of all a part of design — it is a part of the design of the new life, the new society, the new aesthetic dream. But art is also capable of demonstrating the ambiguity of design. If we seek to build a new society, a new religion, even a new product, then we have a new vision. We have a perspective and a future. But in the moment, the future gets lost; what remains is art. If you look at Malevich or Russian constructivism or Bauhaus, their paintings and objects are all parts of wonderful projects of a better world; but at the same time they are only combinations of quadrangles and triangles. And that means that the project already failed, before being realized. Art is about success and failure at the same time. Design needs to be successful. But art — that is, 20th-century art, modern art — accepts failure. The main topic of modern art, and postmodern and contemporary art, is failure. It’s the impossibility of doing art, in fact, and art constantly demonstrates this impossibility, this failure of its own project. Art is the other side of design, the other side of utopia.
How does conspiracy theory fit in?
The fact that something is designed already produces in the spectator some suspicion that the thing itself is bad, because if the thing were good enough it would not need this supplement of design. If something is mediated, there is a suspicion that there is some manipulation behind it, some interest or strategy, and maybe even some danger. So people begin to dismantle the designed surface, looking for cracks in it.
This is also a strategy of modern art. Modern art is about cracking the surface of things. It begins with cubism and constructivism – indeed, the whole practice of art in the 20th century shows things being undone. Why is that? People don’t do this because they are angry or aggressive. It’s because this design surface provokes mistrust and suspicion.
If design gives rise to conspiracy theory, which gives rise to art, what gave rise to design in the first place?
Design emerged from a certain kind of religious understanding of nature. If you assume that nature is something like design made by God, you can take the position of God and start to make your own design.
And then to extend the analogy, what does art give rise to?
To philosophy, metaphysics, maybe even a kind of negative religion. To trying to look through the things to find something like a hidden core.
You’ve also argued that art is the most democratic of institutions. How so?
You can ask why this kind of radical 20th-century modern art is not very popular. I think it is because it represents interests that are imaginary, or virtual. Politics is about the representation of interest groups — different segments of a population, different communities, different identities. But what identity is represented by Malevich’s Black Square or by Duchamp? No identity at all. Malevich even said that he didn’t like his own work. What he represents is a possibility, an imaginary interest, a fictional desire. He opened the space of democracy beyond the existing borders of representation, beyond the borders of a nation or state, and this opening was an opening for the future. This vision beyond the horizon of contemporaneity is, I think, something that makes art unique.
And how exactly is that democratic?
Because it opens the way to something beyond any ordinary represented interest. It offers a chance for somebody to take a step beyond the existing system of representation and to say: “I am not represented by all of that, I am represented by Duchamp.” It gives a chance to go beyond any existing system of representation, including the dominating system of democratic representation.
Can art itself become a kind of design? Do you have a problem with, say, slickly produced artworks?
Yes and no. Everything depends on context, of course. If you do some design within the context of the art system, as Warhol did or Jeff Koons does, then it is ironic from the beginning. So it is, in its conception, failed or unsuccessful design. It’s not a real design project, so I don’t see any problem there.
Of course, you can use any art as design, and you can do this whether you are a designer, a collector, a museum director, or someone setting up an apartment and buying some art. Art can be used in different ways, and not only as art. But then it’s no longer the work of an artist; it’s your work.
What about an artist who has a signature style? Does that become a kind of design?
Yes, it becomes what I call “self-design,” people branding themselves. People tend to do this; they mask themselves and create a kind of second body, an artificial body. Even in a very explicit way, like, say, Duchamp. Then again, some artists are permanently changing their style and permanently changing themselves, creating something like a fluid body, an uncertain identity.
In any case, I think what’s interesting is that these strategies for self-design are also inescapable for us. How we speak, how we behave, how we dress.
What do you think about the premise of the Parsons show — that democracy itself has become a brand?
Democracy has become a brand, no question about it, because it has a form. Everything that has a form is design. We have this kind of democratic design, and it has a tradition, coming from Ancient Rome, with a senate and congress and all this stuff. If we see those things, we think, “Oh, that’s democracy.” It’s like when we look at people in black and wearing Prada and Yamamoto and think, “Oh, that’s the art world.”
But is democracy as a brand still democracy?
Yes, but it’s democracy as a brand. If you have a form, if you have a brand, then some people are automatically excluded. They are excluded because they don’t look like democrats. And that’s why I say that modern art, 20th-century art, is more democratic that any political system. It opens the possibility to identify people who don’t look democratic as also part of society. What happens today is that a spectator looking at a country can immediately say: “Are the clothes the right ones — do they come from the right designer? Do they have a parliament? Do they have a judicial system like in America or France?” If the answers are yes, yes, and yes, then they are democrats.
I think that the problem with contemporary democracy is that is has become a system of easily identifiable signs, and this creates a tendency to dismiss something that looks different as not being a democracy.
What about an artist who has a signature style? Does that become a kind of design?
Yes, it becomes what I call “self-design,” people branding themselves. People tend to do this; they mask themselves and create a kind of second body, an artificial body. Even in a very explicit way, like, say, Duchamp. Then again, some artists are permanently changing their style and permanently changing themselves, creating something like a fluid body, an uncertain identity.
In any case, I think what’s interesting is that these strategies for self-design are also inescapable for us. How we speak, how we behave, how we dress.
What do you think about the premise of the Parsons show — that democracy itself has become a brand?
Democracy has become a brand, no question about it, because it has a form. Everything that has a form is design. We have this kind of democratic design, and it has a tradition, coming from Ancient Rome, with a senate and congress and all this stuff. If we see those things, we think, “Oh, that’s democracy.” It’s like when we look at people in black and wearing Prada and Yamamoto and think, “Oh, that’s the art world.”
But is democracy as a brand still democracy?
Yes, but it’s democracy as a brand. If you have a form, if you have a brand, then some people are automatically excluded. They are excluded because they don’t look like democrats. And that’s why I say that modern art, 20th-century art, is more democratic that any political system. It opens the possibility to identify people who don’t look democratic as also part of society. What happens today is that a spectator looking at a country can immediately say: “Are the clothes the right ones — do they come from the right designer? Do they have a parliament? Do they have a judicial system like in America or France?” If the answers are yes, yes, and yes, then they are democrats.
I think that the problem with contemporary democracy is that is has become a system of easily identifiable signs, and this creates a tendency to dismiss something that looks different as not being a democracy.
