Issue 1 May 2017 Boris Groys USe of theory by art 12 Use of art by theory A transcribed except from the talk by an art critic and a theoretician Boris Groys as a part of the Age of Global Transition conference at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
Issue #1 Who let my fish loose? “Call Now” In the recent years, this notion of “life” has become more and more prominent. The whole philosophy and theory of discourse in the last century was about life, not about thinking like it was before, its quite a change, and I will be talking about this change. Why Philosophy for so long, from Plato up to the end of 19th century had actually thinking, logos and reason, for its main topic, and then suddenly the theme changed to life as the main notion. We are always speaking about reality TV, and all these things, we speak about life and we speak about the possibility of changing lives and exchanging lives, about imitating life. And all of this has presuppositions and I will try to discuss them. In our time, we are attacked form all sides by different calls to change our life. To change our body, by diet and fitness, to change our mental abilities by education and meditation. You know, now I’m living in New York, as it was already said, and I always get accustomed to a certain way that American TV presents this call. You know, when you see an advertisement for new medicine, new practise or new fitness program, at the end they always say, with a very insistent voice “Call Now!” “Please call now!” “Do not wait!” “Call now!” "Change your life! Now!" The society that is only based on differences is no longer a society, it is a market economy. This is what I want to talk about. What does this feeling of urgency mean? That we cannot delay it, that we have to do it now, we have to respond now. Every such a call proposes a sort of model that is a call to imitate socially recognised beauties, etc. And every such call for change is a call for imitation and a call to become somebody that somebody else already is. But is it possible to become another person, to follow a model to radically change our own identity to imitate another identity and if it is possible to follow this, should we follow this, so is our desire of imitation really good? First off, I would suggest that the desire to become similar to the others - the “mimetic” desire that is so criticised by many authors is actually in a certain way a positive desire. It is a desire to be social, to produce sociality. We tend to think about our society as a society of differences. We tend to think about our society as the society of differences. We have different culture identity, different professions, skills, sexual orientations etc. However, a society that is only defined by differences seizes to be a society the space of difference is not a society but an economy, and specifically market economy - that means economy of exchange. Difference 13
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