Politics of Poetics by Boris Groys

  • Year2013
  • LanguageRussian
  • Edition2000
  • Pages400
  • BindingPaperback
  • Price400 RUB
Available on Bookmate
Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press

This collection of articles by philosopher and cultural theorist Boris Groys is about the relationship between art, the art market and political ideology. Groys predicts how our understandings of art will change in the digital era, and how the Internet affects the relationship between artist and viewer.

Politics of Poetics, a volume of articles by philosopher and cultural theorist Boris Groys, has been published in Russian for the very first time under the joint publishing program of Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and Ad Marginem Press. The book combines essays from two English language collections: Art Power (MIT Press, 2008) and Going Public (Sternberg Press, 2010), as well as articles published in American and European magazines.

Boris Groys is a philosopher who is able to bring the major cultural questions of modern times to light with extraordinary clarity. His writing touches upon wide layers of modern and contemporary culture and analyses the fundamental processes in this sphere. He asks questions such as - Are the artist and curator no longer distinguishable from one another? Does art have autonomous goals, ideals or territory worthy of protection?

Throughout his publication, Groys considers the transformation of art in the digital era. Confirming the death of the ‘spectator', Groys credits technological advancements such as the Internet and social media networks with the birth of a new era, that of the ‘producer'.

Another major theme of the publication is the relation of art to politics and the art market. For Groys, contemporary art in Russia and in the West may function as either commodity or propaganda. Although in the West, this political aspect is often ignored. The author's insight into this subject will cause any reader to look again at the art world and reconsider the circumstances that determine why art exists in the first place.

Author

Boris Groys (b. 1947) is a philosopher and cultural theorist. He was born in Leningrad and graduated from the Mathematical Logic department in Leningrad State University in 1971. Starting from the mid-1970s, he published articles on philosophy and theory in “samizdat” journals and participated in apartment seminars on underground art. In 1981 he migrated to Germany. He is a professor of Philosophy, Art and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe College of Arts and Design and a visiting professor at New York University.

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