Two disclaimers: 1) while Groys's lecturing style is very clear and lends itself well to notation, his lecture was in Russian, while my notes are in English. This means that there will inevitably be some omissions and mistranslations. I'll post a link to the audiotape if/when I get one. 2) While I find the general topic timely and interesting, Groys irritates me quite a bit by what he does with it. My at times irritated commentary is in square brackets.
And finally, I cannot help but feel that Groys's missing the mark on the state of art today (his utter cynicism and lack of historical memory) has something to do with the recent awarding of the prestigious Kandinsky prize to the ultranationalist/fascist artist, Alexei Belyaev-Gintov. (That link is in Russian, but I feel like the images speak for themselves.) In particular, there is something very odd about 1) the prize being sponsored by Deutsche Bank and 2) the strangely pussy-footed reporting the choice is getting in the English-language press. (Thanks for the link, kg.) Groys (being in my mind a Western critic), the mostly-Western panel of judges who voted on the Kandinsky prize, and the Bloomberg coverage of the whole thing, seem - as kg noted - blind to the gravity of the situation. They all seem to be playing around, refusing to take seriously the unmistakably chilling pitch of the words spoken loud and clear. ("Мы все вернем назад!" - We will return everything to the way it was!)
[Disgrace.]I'm running to the second lecture now, but more on this later. As I said to kg, there is plenty of blame to go around. For now, I'm laying it squarely in the hands of the art world.
5 comments:
Thanks so much for posting this! Your notes were as interesting for the commentary (I particularly like "Your cynicism is appalling!") as for the summary of Groys' ideas. Wish I was there to talk it all over :).
It is perhaps the sign of my own cynicism that I do agree with him on more than you do. Most significantly, on the degree to which it is the institutional context rather than the physical object that more and more serves as the only guarantor for the existence of art as a separate sphere. And the larger gist - shift from object to event - seems right, though he's definitely not the first to make that point.
I do think you're right about his lack of historical memory - we've talked about this. It's maddening to hear people theorize "the avant-garde" without specific references to specific groups and works. BG's ideas on originality and authorship sound plausible until one realizes that they do not apply in full (sometimes, they barely apply) to such prominent historical avant-garde groups as Dada, Constructivism and Surrealism. In general, I think the accusation more reasonably leveled against BG's work on the Russian avant-garde - important though I think it is - is its indifference to historical context and nuance. I think he tends to flatten out politics in order to be able to talk about paradigm shifts (which end up making any individual work ultimately irrelevant, a mere illustration), and I do think that there must be something amiss in this position if it allows him to participate so non-chalantly in the prize ceremony debacle - I'm yet to see any reference to a statement from him, any sign of a wish to distance himself from the decision or comment on it...
That's all I got for now, will look forward to second set of notes if you post them.
Couple more things:
1) I think the art world bears a lot of the responsibility, but I'd be wary of going to a place where you start blaming the victim.
2) A minor translation point on "Мы все вернем назад!" - I think what is more overtly meant here is "We will get everything back." I believe the poster comes from the Serbian series and is a none too subtle call for a new attempt at a military solution for "getting back" land (and "dignity," needless to say) that Serbia supposedly lost after the NATO intervention in the war.
kg, I admit, it was all for you :) Glad you found it interesting. And thank you for the translation clarification. I admittedly haven't looked into this work too much, mainly because I think it's 1) revolting, and 2) not very interesting. Though your reading does add a certain historical meat.
As for institutional context vs. art object: this talk and my stuff with KD has convinced me more and more that it's the combination of the object and the audience that is most important. The institutional context, for me, seems already a step too far, at which point the work has already entered into the system. What's most interesting is the immediate audience - those who are interested and who will create new and fresh meanings for the work - who will give the work life, so to speak.
And as for "the art world," I would not call them victims here. I'm not talking about artists and audiences; but rather, this "step too far" part of it - the institutionalization of art. More on this in the next post. Now to bed.
Sorry, that should read "gave the work life" - this is, of course, historical. Not today's audiences, which are secondary and somewhat less interesting.
I imagine that our differences on how (in)significant the institutional context is explain the differences in our projects - there is a reason why I care so much about museological practice and the representation of something that can't really be reconstructed 30 years down the road... I think in those cases, the institutional context starts mattering increasingly more, and I'm actually quite shocked that you think "today's audiences, which are secondary and somewhat less interesting" don't matter. We'd need more time and space than we have here to talk about this, but I very much think that even the most underground, insular and communal or art practices do exist with a larger audience in mind, both geographically and temporally, even if this audience is entirely imagined - and to deny that institutions mediate between the original moment and these audiences is not fair to the work first and foremost...
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