Boris Groys

Entering theFlow: MuseumbetweenArchive andGesamtkunstwerk

Traditionally, the main occupation of art was toresist the flow of time. Public art museums andbig private art collections were created to selectcertain objects – the artworks – take them out ofprivate and public use, and therefore immunizethem against the destructive force of time. Thus,our art museums became huge garbage cans ofhistory in which things were kept and exhibitedthat had no use anymore in real life: sacralimages of past religions or status objects of pastlifestyles. During a long period of art history,artists also participated in this struggle againstthe destructive force of time. They wanted tocreate artworks that would be able to transcendtime by embodying eternal ideals of beauty or, atleast, by becoming the medium of historicalmemory, by acting as witnesses to events,tragedies, hopes, and projects that otherwisewould have been forgotten. In this sense, artistsand art institutions shared a fundamentalproject to resist material destruction andhistorical oblivion.đđđđđđđđđđArt museums, in their traditional format,were based on the concept of a universal arthistory. Accordingly, their curators selectedartworks that seemed to be of universalrelevance and value. These selective practices,and especially their universalist claims, havebeen criticized in recent decades in the name ofthe specific cultural identities that they ignoredand even suppressed. We no longer believe inuniversalist, idealist, transhistoricalperspectives and identities. The old, materialistway of thinking let us accept only roles rooted inthe material conditions of our existence:national-cultural and regional identities, oridentities based on race, class, and gender. Andthere are a potentially infinite number of suchspecific identities because the materialconditions of human existence are very diverseand are permanently changing. However, in thiscase, the initial mission of the art museum toresist time and become a medium of mankind’smemory reaches an impasse: if there is apotentially infinite number of identities andmemories, the museum dissolves because it isincapable of including all of them.đđđđđđđđđđWhile the museum emerged as a kind ofsecular surrogate for divine memory during theEnlightenment and the French Revolution, it ismerely a finite material object – unlike infinitedivine memory that can, as we know, include allthe identities of all people who lived in the past,live now, and will live in the future.đđđđđđđđđđBut is this vision of an infinite number ofspecific identities even correct, e.g., trulymaterialist? I would suggest that it is not.Materialist discourse, as initially developed byMarx and Nietzsche, describes the world inpermanent movement, in flow – be it dynamics

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This illustration depicts Jorge Luis Borges's short story “The Library of Babel,” which was originally published in Spanish in the collection of stories El jardínde senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), 1941.

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of the productive forces or Dionysian impulse.According to this materialist tradition, all thingsare finite – but all of them are involved in theinfinite material flow. So there is a materialistuniversality – the universality of the flow.đđđđđđđđđđHowever, is it possible for a human being toenter the flow, to get access to its totality? On acertain very banal level the answer is, of course,yes: human bodies are things among other thingsin the world and, thus, subjected to the sameuniversal flow. They become ill, they age, andthey die. However, even if human bodies aresubjected to aging, death, and dissolution in theflow of material processes, it does not mean thattheir inscriptions into cultural archives are alsoin flow. One can be born, live, and die under thesame name, having the same citizenship, sameCV, and same website – that means remainingthe same person. Our bodies, then, are not theonly material supports of our persons. From themoment of our birth we are inscribed into certainsocial orders – without our consent or often evenknowledge of this fact. The material supports ofour personality are state archives, medicalrecords, passwords to certain internet sites, andso forth. Of course, these archives will also bedestroyed by the material flow at some point intime. But this destruction takes an amount oftime that is non-commensurable with our ownlifetimes. Thus, there is a tension between ourmaterial, physical, corporeal mode of existence– which is temporary and subjected to time –and our inscription into cultural archives thatare, even if they are also material, much morestable than our own bodies.đđđđđđđđđđTraditional art museums are a part of thesecultural archives – even if they claim torepresent the subjectivity, personality, andindividuality of artists in a more immediate andricher way than other cultural archives arecapable of doing. Art museums, like all othercultural archives, operate by restoration andconservation. Again: artworks as specificmaterial objects – as art bodies, so to speak –are perishable. But this cannot be said aboutthem as publicly accessible, visible forms. If itsmaterial support decays and dissolves, the formof a particular artwork can be restored or copiedand placed on a different material base. Thehistory of art demonstrates both thesesubstitutions of old supports by new supportsand the efforts of restoration and reconstruction.Thus, the individual form of an artwork insofar asit is inscribed in the archives of art historyremains intact – only marginally affected bymaterial flux, if at all. And we believe that it isprecisely this form that,đafter the artist'sdeath,đsomehow manifests his or her soul – or atleast a certain zeitgeist or certain culturalidentity that has disappeared.

đđđđđđđđđđWe can thus say that the traditional artsystem is based on desynchronizing the time ofthe individual, material human existence fromthe time of its cultural representation. However,the artists of the historical avant-garde and latersome artists of the 1960s and 1970s alreadytried to resynchronize the fate of the human bodywith the mode of its historical representation –to embrace the precariousness, instability, andfiniteness of our material existence. Not to resistthe flow of time, but to let it define one’s ownartwork, to pursue a certain self-propelledfluidity, rather than trying to make the work, oroneself, into a self-eternalizing being. Theideađwas to make the form itself fluid.đHowever,the following question emerges: What is theeffect of this radicalized precariousness, of thiswill to resynchronize the living body with itsculturalđrepresentation within the relationship ofartists to art institutions?đđđđđđđđđđI would suggest that the relationshipbetween these entities went through twodifferent periods: the first is enmity on the partof the artist against the art system and,especially, art museums, complete withattempts to destroy them in the name of livingart. The second encompasses the slow morphingof museums themselves into a stage, on whichthe flow of time is performed. If we ask ourselveswhat institutional form the classical avant-gardeproposed as a substitute for the traditionalmuseum, the answer is clear: it is theGesamtkunstwerk. In other words, the total artevent involving everybody and everything – as areplacement for a totalizing space of trans-temporal artistic representation of everybodyand everything.đđđđđđđđđđWagner introduced the notion of theGesamtkunstwerk in his programmatic treatise“The Art-Work of the Future” (1849–1850).Wagner wrote this text in exile, in Zurich, afterthe end of the revolutionary uprisings in Germanyin 1848. In this text he develops a project for anartwork (of the future) that is heavily influencedby the materialist philosophy of LudwigFeuerbach. At the beginning of his treatise,Wagner states that the typical artist of his timeis an egoist who, in complete isolation from thelife of the people, practices his art exclusively forthe enjoyment of the rich; in so doing he followsthe dictates of fashion. The artist of the future,says Wagner, must become radically different:“He now can only will the universal, true, andunconditional; he yields himself not to a love forthis or that particular object, but to wide Loveitself. Thus does the egoist become acommunist.”1đđđđđđđđđđBecoming communist, then, is possible onlythrough self-renunciation – self-dissolution inthe collective. Wagner defines his supposed hero

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A photograph of Aby M. Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas features the Boards of the Rembrandt Exhibition, 1926.

as such: “The last, most complete renunciation[Entäusserung] of his personal egoism, thedemonstration of his full ascent intouniversalism, a man can only show us by hisDeath; and that not by his accidental, but by hisnecessary death, the logical sequel to hisactions, the last fulfillment of his being. Thecelebration of such a death is the noblest thingthat men can enter on.”2 Admittedly, thereremains a difference between the hero whosacrifices himself and the performer who makesthis sacrifice onstage (the Gesamtkunstwerkbeing understood by Wagner as a musicaldrama). Nonetheless, Wagner insists that thisdifference is suspended by theGesamtkunstwerk, for the performer “does notmerely represent in the art-work the action of thefêted hero, but repeats its moral lesson;insomuch as he proves by this surrender of hispersonality that he also, in his artistic action, isobeying a dictate of necessity which consumesthe whole individuality of his being.”3 In otherwords, Wagner understands theGesamtkunstwerk precisely as a way ofresynchronizing the finiteness of humanexistence with its cultural representation –which, in turn, also becomes finite.đđđđđđđđđđAll the other performers achieve their own

artistic significance solely through participatingin the hero’s ritual of self-sacrifice. Accordingly,Wagner speaks of the hero performer as adictator who mobilizes the collective ofcollaborators, with the exclusive goal of staginghis own sacrifice in the name of this collective. Inthe sacrificial scene, the Gesamtkunstwerk findsits end – there is no continuation, no memory. Inother words, there is no further role for thedictator-performer. The artistic collectivedissolves, and the next Gesamtkunstwerk iscreated by another artistic collective, with adifferent dictator-performer in the main role.Here the precariousness of an individual humanexistence and the fluidity of working collectivesare artistically embraced, and even radicalized.Historically, we know that many artisticcollectives followed this model: from Hugo Ball’sCabaret Voltaire to Andy Warhol’s Factory andGuy Debord’s Situationist International. But thecontemporary name for this temporary andsuicidal dictatorship is different: the “curatorialproject.”đđđđđđđđđđHarald Szeemann, who initiated thecuratorial turn in contemporary art, was sofascinated by the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerkthat he organized an exhibition called “TheTendency to Gesamtkunstwerk” [“Hang zum

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Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Celebration? Realife, 1972.

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Gesamtkunstwerk”] (1984). Considering thishistorical show based on the idea of theGesamtkunstwerk, it becomes necessary to ask:What is the main difference between atraditional exhibition and a modern curatorialproject? The traditional exhibition treats itsspace as anonymous and neutral. Only theexhibited artworks are important – but not thespace in which they are exhibited. Thus, artworksare perceived and treated as potentially eternal– and the space of the exhibition as acontingent, accidental station where theimmortal artworks take a temporary rest fromtheir wanderings through the material world. Incontrast, the installation – be it artistic orcuratorial – inscribes the exhibited artworks inthis contingent material space. (Here one cansee an analogy between this shift and the shiftfrom theater actor or cinema actor to the directorof theater and cinema.)đđđđđđđđđđThe curatorial project, rather than theexhibition, is then the Gesamtkunstwerkbecause it instrumentalizes all the exhibitedartworks and makes them serve a commonpurpose that is formulated by the curator. At thesame time, a curatorial or artistic installation isable to include all kinds of objects: time-basedartworks or processes, everyday objects,documents, texts, and so forth. All theseelements, as well as the architecture of thespace, sound, or light, lose their respectiveautonomy and begin to serve the creation of awhole in which visitors and spectators are alsoincluded. Thus, stationary artworks of thetraditional sort become temporalized, subjectedto a certain scenario that changes the way theyare perceived during the time of the installationbecause this perception is dependent on thecontext of their presentation – and this contextbegins to flow. Thus, ultimately, every curatorialproject demonstrates its accidental, contingent,eventful, finite character – in other words, itenacts its own precariousness.đđđđđđđđđđIndeed, every curatorial project necessarilyaims to contradict the normative, traditional art-historical narrative embodied by the museum’spermanent collection. If such a contradictiondoes not take place, the curatorial project losesits legitimation. For the same reason, the nextcuratorial project should contradict the previousone. A new curator is a new dictator who erasesthe traces of the previous dictatorship. In thisway, contemporary museums continually morphfrom spaces for permanent collections intostages for temporary curatorial projects –temporary Gesamtkunstwerks. And the maingoal of these temporary curatorial dictatorshipsis to bring art collections into the flow – to makeart fluid, to synchronize it with the flow of time.

“Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk,” exhibition poster.

đđđđđđđđđđAs previously mentioned, at the beginningof this process of synchronization, artistswanted to destroy art museums. Malevich offersa good example of this in his short but importanttext “On the Museum,” from 1919. At that time,the new Soviet government feared that the oldRussian museums and art collections would bedestroyed by civil war and the general collapse ofstate institutions and the economy. TheCommunist Party responded by trying to secureand save these collections. In his text, Malevichprotested against this pro-museum policy bycalling on the Soviet state to not intervene onbehalf of the old art collections, because, hesaid, their destruction could open the path totrue, living art. In particular, he wrote:

Life knows what it is doing, and if it isstriving to destroy, one must not interfere,since by hindering we are blocking the pathto a new conception of life that is bornwithin us. In burning a corpse we obtainone gram of powder: accordingly thousandsof graveyards could be accommodated on asingle chemist’s shelf. We can make aconcession to conservatives by offeringthat they burn all past epochs, since they

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are dead, and set up one pharmacy.

Later, Malevich gives a concrete example of whathe means:

The aim [of this pharmacy] will be thesame, even if people will examine thepowder from Rubens and all his art – amass of ideas will arise in people, and willbe often more alive than actualrepresentation (and take up less room).4

It is obvious that what Malevich proposes here isnot merely the destruction of museums but aradical curatorial project – to exhibit the ashesof artworks instead of their corpses. And in atruly Wagnerian manner, Malevich further saysthat everything that “we” (meaning he and hisartistic contemporaries) do is also destined forthe crematorium. Of course, contemporarycurators do not reduce museum collections toashes, as Malevich suggested. But there is agood reason for that. Since Malevich’s time,mankind has invented a way to place all artworksfrom the past on one chemist’s shelf withoutdestroying them. And this shelf is called theinternet.đđđđđđđđđđIndeed, the internet has transformed themuseum in the same way that photography andcinema transformed painting and sculpture.Photography made the mimetic function of thetraditional arts obsolete, and thus pushed thesearts in a different – actually opposite – direction.Instead of reproducing and representing imagesof nature, art came to dissolve, deconstruct, andtransform these images. The attention thusshifted from the image itself to the analysis ofimage production and presentation. Similarly,the internet made the museum’s function ofrepresenting art history obsolete. Of course, inthe case of the internet, spectators lose directaccess to the original artworks – and thus theaura of authenticity gets lost. And so museumvisitors are invited to undertake a pilgrimage toart museums in search of the Holy Grail oforiginality and authenticity.đđđđđđđđđđAt this point, however, one has to bereminded that according to Walter Benjamin,who originally introduced the notion of aura,artworks lost their aura precisely through theirmuseumification. The museum already removesart objects from their original sites of inscriptionin the historical here and now. Thus forBenjamin, artworks that are exhibited inmuseums are already copies of themselves –devoid of their original aura of authenticity. Inthis sense, the internet, and its art-specializedwebsites, merely continue the process of the de-auratization of art started by art museums. Manycultural critics have therefore expected – and

still expect – that public art museums willultimately disappear, unable to competeeconomically with private collectors operating onthe increasingly expensive art market, and bereplaced by much cheaper, more accessiblevirtual, digitized archives.

This film still shows the author and narrator John Berger, from the TVseries Ways of Seeing, 1972.

đđđđđđđđđđHowever, the relationship between internetand museum radically changes if we begin tounderstand the museum not as a storage placefor artworks, but rather as a stage for the flow ofart events. Indeed, today the museum hasceased to be a space for contemplating non-moving things. Instead, the museum has becomea place where things happen. Events staged bymuseums today include not only curatorialprojects, but also lectures, conferences,readings, screenings, concerts, guided tours, andso forth. The flow of events inside the museum istoday often faster than outside its walls.Meanwhile, we have grown accustomed to askingourselves, what is going on in this or thatmuseum? And to find the relevant information,we search for it on the museums’ websites, butalso on blogs, social media pages, Twitter, and soforth. We visit museums far less often than wevisit their websites and follow their activitiesacross the internet. And on the internet, themuseum functions as a blog. So thecontemporary museum does not presentuniversal art history, but rather its own history –as a chain of events staged by the museum itself.But most importantly: the internet relates to themuseum in the mode of documentation, not inthe mode of reproduction. Of course, themuseums’ permanent collections can bereproduced on the internet, but the museum’sactivities can only be recorded.đđđđđđđđđđIndeed, one cannot reproduce a curatorial

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Man Ray, Waking Dream Seance, 1924.

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project; one can only document it. The reason forthis is twofold. First, the curatorial project is anevent, and one cannot reproduce an eventbecause it cannot be isolated from the flow oftime. An artwork can be reproduced because ithas an atemporal status from the beginning, butthe process of the production and exposure ofthis artwork can only be documented. Second,curatorial and artistic installation is aGesamtkunstwerk that can be experienced onlyfrom within. The traditional artwork is perceivedfrom an outside position, but an artistic event isexperienced from a position inside the space inwhich this event takes place. In this way, visitorsto a curatorial or artistic installation enter thespace of the installation and then begin toposition themselves inside this space, toexperience it from within rather than fromwithout. However, the movement of a camera cannever fully coincide with the movement of anindividual visitor’s gaze – as the position of apainter or a photographer making a reproductionof a painting coincides with the gaze of anaverage spectator. And if any form ofdocumentation attempts to reconstruct the innerview and experience of an art event fromdifferent positions, it necessarily becomesfragmentary. That is why we can re-cognize thetraditional reproduction of an artwork but arenever able to fully re-cognize the documentationof an art event.đđđđđđđđđđNowadays, one speaks time and againabout the theatralization of the museum. Indeed,in our time people come to exhibition openings inthe same way as they went to opera and theaterpremieres in the past. This theatralization of themuseum is often criticized because it might beseen as a sign of the museum’s involvement inthe contemporary entertainment industry.However, there is a crucial difference betweenthe installation space and the theatrical space.In the theater, spectators remain in an outsideposition vis-à-vis the stage, but in the museumthey enter the stage, and find themselves insidethe spectacle.đđđđđđđđđđThus, the contemporary museum realizesthe modernist dream that the theater itself wasnever able to fully realize – of a theater in whichthere is no clear boundary between the stage andthe space of the audience. Even if Wagnerspeaks about the Gesamtkunstwerk as an eventthat erases the border between stage andaudience, the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth thatwas built under the direction of Wagner did noterase this border but, rather, radicalized it.Contemporary theater, including Bayreuth, usesmore and more art, especially contemporary art,on stage – but it still does not erase thedifference between stage and audience. Theinclusion of contemporary installation art

remains inscribed in the traditional scenography.However, in the context of an artistic andcuratorial installation, the public is integratedinto the installation space to become part of it.

Two Boys, an opera by Nico Muhly, attempts to portray a murder incyberspace.

đđđđđđđđđđThe same can be said about massentertainment. A pop concert or a film screeningcreates communities among those inattendance. However, mass culture itself cannotmake these communities self-reflective – cannotthematize the event of building these transitory,precarious, contingent communities. Theperspective of the audience during a pop concertor movie screening is too forward-directed – tothe stage or screen – for them to adequatelyperceive and reflect upon the space in whichthey find themselves, or the communities towhich they temporarily belong. That is the kind ofreflection that advanced art installation allowsus to achieve. To borrow Marshall McLuhan’svocabulary, the medium of installation is a coolmedium – unlike the internet, which is obviouslya hot medium, because it requires users to bespatially separated and to concentrate theirattention on a screen. By cooling down all othermedia, contemporary art installation offersvisitors the possibility of self-reflection – and ofreflection upon the immediate event of theircoexistence with other visitors and exhibitedobjects – that other media are unable to offer tothe same degree. Here, individual human beingsare confronted with their common fate – with theradically contingent, transitory, precariousconditions of their existence.đđđđđđđđđđActually, the traditional museum as a placeof things, and not events, can be equally accusedof functioning as part of the art market. This kindof criticism is easy to formulate – and it isuniversal enough to be applied to any possibleartistic strategy. But as we know, the traditionalmuseum did not only display certain things andimages; it also allowed theoretical reflection andanalysis of them by means of historicalcomparison. Modern art has not merely

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Walter Pichler, Small Room(Prototype 4), 1967. The imagefeatures a prototype of awearable TV helmet.

produced things and images; it has also analyzedthe thingness of things and the structure of theimage. In addition, the art museum does not onlystage events – it is also a medium forinvestigating the event, its boundaries, and itsstructure. If classical modern art investigatedand analyzed the thingness of things,contemporary art begins to do the same inrelation to events – to critically analyze theeventfulness of events. This investigation takesdifferent forms, but it seems to me that its focalpoint is reflection on the relationship betweenevent and its documentation – analogous to thereflection on the relationship between an originaland its reproduction that was central to the artof modernism and postmodernism. Today, theamount of art documentation is permanentlygrowing. One also begins to documentperformances, actions, exhibitions, lectures,concerts, and artistic projects that become moreand more important in the framework ofcontemporary art.đđđđđđđđđđOne begins also to document the work ofartists who produce artworks in a moretraditional manner because they increasingly usethe internet, or at least a personal computer,during their working process. And this offers thepossibility of following the whole process of art

production from its beginning to its end, sincethe use of digital techniques is observable. Herethe traditional boundary between art productionand art display begins to be erased. Traditionally,the artist produced an artwork in his or herstudio, hidden from public view, and thenexhibited a result, a product – an artwork thataccumulated and recuperated the time ofabsence. This time of temporary absence isconstitutive for what we call the creative process– in fact, it is precisely what we call the creativeprocess.đđđđđđđđđđAndré Breton tells a story about a Frenchpoet who, when he went to sleep, put on his doora sign that read: “Please, be quiet – the poet isworking.” This anecdote summarizes thetraditional understanding of creative work:creative work is creative because it takes placebeyond public control – and even beyond theconscious control of the author. This time ofabsence could last days, months, years – even awhole lifetime. Only at the end of this period ofabsence was the author expected to present awork (maybe found in his papers posthumously)that would then be accepted as creativeprecisely because it seemed to emerge out ofnothingness.đđđđđđđđđđHowever, the internet and the computer in

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general are collective, observable, surveillableworking places. We tend to speak about theinternet in terms of an infinite data flow thattranscends the limits of our control. But, in fact,the internet is a machine to stop and reversedata flow. The unobservability of the internet is amyth. The medium of the internet is electricity.And the supply of electricity is finite. So theinternet cannot support an infinite data flow. Theinternet is based on a finite number of cables,terminals, computers, mobile phones, and otherequipment. Its efficiency is based precisely onits finiteness and, therefore, on its observability.Search engines such as Google demonstrate this.Today, one hears a lot about the growing degreeof surveillance, especially online. Butsurveillance is not something external to theinternet, or merely a specific technical use of itsservices. The internet is, in its essence, amachine of surveillance. It divides the flow ofdata into small, traceable, and reversibleoperations, thus exposing every user tosurveillance – real or potential. The internetcreates a field of total visibility, accessibility, andtransparency.đđđđđđđđđđIf the public follows my activity all the time,then I do not need to present it with any product.The process is already the product. Balzac’sunknown artist who could never finish hismasterpiece would have no problem under thesenew conditions – documentation of his effortswould comprise this masterpiece and he wouldbecome famous. Documentation of the act ofworking on an artwork is already an artwork.With the internet, time became space indeed –and it is the visible space of permanentsurveillance. If art has become a flow, it flows ina mode of self-documentation. Here action issimultaneous with its documentation, itsinscription. And the inscription simultaneouslybecomes information that is spread through theinternet and instantly accessible by everybody.This means that contemporary art work canproduce no product – yet it still remainsproductive. But again: if the internet takes overthe role of the museum as the place of memory –because the internet records and documents theactivities of the artist even before his or her workis brought into the museum – what is the goal ofthe museum today?đđđđđđđđđđContemporary museum exhibitions are fullof documentations of past artistic events, shownalongside traditional works of art. Thus, themuseum turns the documentation of an old eventinto an element of a new event. It ascribes thisdocumentation a new here and now – and assuch gives it a new aura. But, unlikereproduction, documentation cannot be easilyintegrated into contemporaneity. Thedocumentation of an event always produces

nostalgia for a missed presence, a missedopportunity. It does not erase the differencebetween past and present, as reproductiontends to; instead, it makes the gap between pastand present obvious – and in this waythematizes the flow of time. Heidegger describedthe whole world process as an event staged byBeing. And he believed that we can get access tothe eventfulness of this event only if Being itselfoffers us this possibility – through a clearance ofbeing (Lichtung des Seins). Today’s museum is aplace where the clearance of being is artificiallystaged.đđđđđđđđđđIn a world in which the goal of stopping theflow of time is taken over by the internet, thefunction of the museum becomes one of stagingthe flow – staging events that are synchronizedwith the lifetimes of the spectators. Thischanges the topology of our relationship to art.The traditional hermeneutical position towardsart required the gaze of the external spectator topenetrate the artwork, to discover artisticintentions, or social forces, or vital energies thatgave the artwork its form – from the outside ofthe artwork toward its inside. However, the gazeof the contemporary museum visitor is, bycontrast, directed from the inside of the artevent towards its outside: toward the possibleexternal surveillance of this event and itsdocumentation process, toward the eventualpositioning of this documentation in the mediaspace and in cultural archives – in other words,toward the spatial boundaries of this event. Andalso towards the temporal boundaries of thisevent – because when we are placed inside anevent, we cannot know when this event beganand when it will end.đđđđđđđđđđThe art system is generally characterized bythe asymmetrical relationship between the gazeof the art producer and the gaze of the artspectator. These two gazes almost never meet. Inthe past, after artists put their artworks ondisplay, they lost control over the gaze of thespectator: regardless of what some arttheoreticians say, the artwork is a mere thing andcannot meet the spectator’s gaze. So under theconditions of the traditional museum, thespectator’s gaze was in a position of sovereigncontrol – although this sovereignty could beindirectly manipulated by the museum’s curatorsthrough certain strategies of pre-selection,placement, juxtaposition, lighting, and so forth.However, when the museum begins to functionas a chain of events, the configuration of gazeschanges. The visitor loses his or her sovereigntyin a very obvious way. The visitor is placed insidean event and cannot meet the gaze of a camerathat documents this event – nor the secondarygaze of the editor that does the postproductionwork on this document, nor the gaze of a later

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spectator of this document.đđđđđđđđđđThat is why, by visiting contemporarymuseum exhibitions, we are confronted with theirreversibility of time – we know that theseexhibitions are merely temporary. If we visit thesame museum after a certain amount of time,the only things that will remain will bedocuments: a catalogue, or a film, or a website.But what these things offer us is necessarilyincommensurable with our own experiencebecause our perspective, our gaze isasymmetrical with the gaze of a camera – andthese gazes cannot coincide, as they could in thecase of documenting an opera or a ballet. This isthe reason for a certain kind of nostalgia that wenecessarily feel when we are confronted withdocuments of past artistic events, whetherexhibitions or performances. This nostalgiaprovokes the desire to reenact the event “as ittruly was.”

Ai Wei Wei tweeted this image of himself in bed after suffering ahemorrhage caused by police aggression. Ai Wei Wei is the secondmost followed artist on Twitter, despite Twitter being illegal in China.

đđđđđđđđđđRecently in Venice, the exhibition “WhenAttitudes Become Form” was reenacted at theFondazione Prada. It was a very professionalreenactment – and so it provoked a new andeven stronger wave of nostalgia. Some peoplethought how great it would be to go back to the1960s and breathe the wonderful atmosphere ofthat time. And they also thought how awfuleverything is at the Biennale itself, with all itsfuss, compared to the sublime askesis of “WhenAttitudes Become Form.” At the same time,visitors from a younger generation found theexhibition unimpressive, and liked only thebeautiful guides in their Prada clothes.đđđđđđđđđđThe nostalgic mood that is inevitablyprovoked by art documentation reminds me ofthe early Romantic nostalgia towards nature. Artwas seen then as the documentation of the

beautiful or sublime aesthetic experiences thatwere offered by nature. The documentation ofthese experiences by means of painting seemedmore disappointing than authentic. In otherwords, if the irreversibility of time and the feelingof being inside rather than outside an event wereonce the privileged experiences of nature, theynow became the privileged experiences ofcontemporary art. And that means precisely thatcontemporary art has become the medium forinvestigating the eventfulness of events: thedifferent modes of the immediate experience ofevents, their relationship to documentation andarchiving, the intellectual and emotional modesof our relationship to documentation, and soforth. Now, if the thematization of theeventfulness of the event has become, indeed,the main preoccupation of contemporary art ingeneral and the museum of contemporary art inparticular, it makes no sense to condemn themuseum for staging art events. On the contrary,today the museum has become the mainanalytical tool for staging and analyzing theevent as radically contingent and irreversible –amidst our digitally controlled civilization that isbased on tracking back and securing the tracesof our individual existence in the hope of makingeverything controllable and reversible. Themuseum is a place where the asymmetrical warbetween the ordinary human gaze and thetechnologically armed gaze not only takes place,but also becomes revealed – so that it can bethematized and critically theorized.đđđđđđđđđđ× This text was originally presented as a lecture at MuseoReina Sophia, November 8, 2013.

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Boris Groys (1947, East Berlin) is Professor ofAesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at theCenter for Art and Media Karlsruhe and GlobalDistinguished Professor at New York University. He isthe author of many books, includingđThe Total Art ofStalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Spacefrom His Apartment,Art Power,đThe CommunistPostscript, and, most recently,đGoing Public.

đđđđđđ1Richard Wagner,đThe Art-Work ofthe Future and Other Works,trans. W. Ashton Ellis (Lincoln,NE: Bison Books, 1993), 94.

đđđđđđ2Ibid., 199.

đđđđđđ3Ibid., 201.

đđđđđđ4Kazimir Malevich, “On theMuseum,” in KazimirMalevich,đEssays on Art, vol. 1(New York: George Wittenborn,1971), 68–72.

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