‘Contemporary thinking is like a dead corpse’

In three public meetings this week, cultural philosopher Boris Groys (East Berlin, 1947) is presenting his thoughts on contemporary culture as well as his newly translated Going Public, or Volverse público. He touched upon the transformation caused by the Internet in art and life in general Wednesday evening at the Goethe Institute. Yesterday he discussed the relations between art and politics and the Universidad Nacional de San Martín and today he will talk at the Di Tella University about art as a medium of truth. It is clear that all these subjects are intertwined. The essays, as bundled in Going public, touch upon all these themes, proposing a Neo-Marxist view of contemporary society, in which the philosopher seems to both part and flirt with Romantic thought. The focal point is the role of the Internet as a platform where everyone produces content, whether it is real of fictitious. “Even if an image placed on the net is simulated, it is something that is being simulated, hence it is real,” he says. The Internet thus becomes a reality. And everyone who places something on this platform creates, which can be seen as an art intervention. Boris Groys grew up in the Soviet Union. “I was a very sickly child,” he says, when asked about his childhood. “I wasn’t allowed to go to school, which was very atypical at the time.” Afterward, he did attend high school in Leningrad and continued studying philosophy, mathematics and logic at the University of Leningrad. He then started writing about art. “In 1980, the KGB followed me around, and I was asked to leave the country. I was told I was performing anti-soviet activities.” Having left, he continued writing articles for clandestine magazines. He seems to have believed in the possibilities of the Russian Revolution, but he does not see any point in turning nostalgic as time moves on. “Society tries to continuously self improve itself. Destruction of the anterior is part of this permanent self-improvement. After the first wave of Enlightenment, followed by secularism, we are now in a time where we want to be traditional again”, Groys claims. The Herald asked him whether he believes this to be true anywhere in the world, as Enlightenment and the effect of Nietzsche’s call on the death of God may be somewhat euro-centric. Groys laughed and said very clearly: “I don’t believe in different cultural perspectives. I don’t think location has anything to do with it. Contemporary thinking is like a dead corpse.” By the dead corpse, Groys refers to the changes of the view of men, who first believed in an eternal soul because of religion and/or Romanticism, which changed to nothingness — both soul and body dying at the same time — as a result of secularism. At the present time, Groys suggests, we have come to realize that the corpse remains. While alive, the body already functions as a corpse for the living, but in effect, he argues in his essays and words, “you are a living tomb”. The way one designs one’s life is therefore eternal, made possible through the Internet, where one produces one’s own design, as an artist, or not: “We are all artists”, Groys quotes Joseph Beuys. There are people too behind the Internet, the Herald pushed. “No,” the philosopher firmly answered, “behind everything are machines. I remain a true Marxist in that sense.” A true Marxist, who compares himself to a vampire, referring back to us being corpses. “A corpse, which is gentleman-like, well-mannered, well-read and reflective.” The lectures given by Groys are public and free of charge. Where and when “Art as a Medium of Truth,” at the auditorium of the University Torcuato Di Tella (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350). Today, 6.30pm.