Boris Groys

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

OPEN! KEY TEXTS, 2004-2012
NAI010 PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789462080034 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 3/31/2013
Active | In stock

ANTON GINZBURG: AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
Text by by Jeffrey Kastner, Boris Groys. Conversation with Boris Groys.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775734295 | US $75.00
Pub Date: 2/28/2013
Active | In stock

ACTIVE BACKLIST

BORIS GROYS: GOOGLE, WORDS BEYOND GRAMMAR
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775728959 | US $10.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Active | In stock

OSTALGIA
NEW MUSEUM
ISBN: 9780915557967 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 9/30/2011
Active | Awaiting stock

OPEN 22: TRANSPARENCY
NAI010 PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789056628390 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 2/29/2012
Active | In stock

SERIOUS GAMES
Edited by Ralf Beil, Antje Ehmann. Text by Paul Virilio, Harun Farocki, Boris Groys.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775729918 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2011
Active | In stock

THE 8TH GWANGJU BIENNALE: 10000 LIVES
THE GWANGJU BIENNALE FOUNDATION
ISBN: 9788987719122 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 12/31/2010
Active | Awaiting stock

FRANCIS ALÿS: A STORY OF DECEPTION
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870707902 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2010
Active | In stock

ALEXANDER KOSOLAPOV: SOTS ART
Text by Boris Groys, Alexander Borovsky, Lyudmila Novikova.
KERBER
ISBN: 9783866782273 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 6/30/2010
Active | In stock

MEDIUM RELIGION
Text by Boris Groys, Peter Weibel.
WALTHER KöNIG
ISBN: 9783865606044 | US $46.00
Pub Date: 6/30/2011
Active | In stock

THE AESTHETICS OF TERROR
CHARTA
ISBN: 9788881587278 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 9/30/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

BORIS GROYS & ANDRO WEKUA: WAIT TO WAIT
Edited by Christoph Keller.
JRP|RINGIER
ISBN: 9783037640210 | US $28.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

ILYA KABAKOV: CATALOGUE RAISONNé PAINTINGS 1957-2008
Edited by Renate Petzinger. Text by Boris Groys, Robert Storr.
KERBER
ISBN: 9783866781733 | US $195.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2009
Active | In stock

OPEN 16: THE ART BIENNIAL AS A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
NAI010 PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789056626679 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 10/31/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

NINA FISCHER & MAROAN EL SANI: BLIND SPOTS
Text by Gabriele Knapstein, Nicolas Trembley, Jennifer Allen, Boris Groys.
JRP|RINGIER
ISBN: 9783905829181 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2008
Active | In stock

40 YEARS VIDEOART.DE
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775717182 | US $48.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2006
Active | Awaiting stock

ILYA KABAKOV: THE RED WAGON
Edited by Volker Rattemeyer. Essays by Boris Groys, Jürgen Harten and Renate Petzinger.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783933096258 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 3/15/2005
Active | Awaiting stock

ROBERT LEHMAN LECTURES ON CONTEMPORARY ART NO.3
DIA ART FOUNDATION
ISBN: 9780944521779 | US $16.95
Pub Date: 7/2/2004
Active | In stock

ILYA KABAKOV: A UNIVERSAL SYSTEM FOR DEPICTING EVERYTHING
Essays by Boris Groys and Ilya Kabakov.
RICHTER VERLAG
ISBN: 9783933807595 | US $70.00
Pub Date: 9/2/2002
Active | In stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

BORIS GROYS: THINKING IN LOOP
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775723374 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 2/1/2009
Out of print | Not available

TOTAL ENLIGHTENMENT
Edited and with text by Boris Groys, Max Hollein.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775721240 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 9/1/2008
Out of print | Not available

BERNHARD LEITNER
Text by Boris Groys, Bernhard Leitner.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775720472 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 2/1/2008
Out of print | Not available

MISCHA KUBALL: IN PROGRESS PROJECTS
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775719261 | US $65.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

THE VINCENT 2006
Text by Michael Zeeman, Boris Groys, Marius Babias, James Tierney, Martin Prinzhorn.
VEENMAN PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789086900312 | US $32.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

MY PRIVATE HEROES
Edited by Jan Hoet. Essays by Anne Marie Bonnet, Boris Groys and Jan Hoet.
KERBER
ISBN: 9783938025123 | US $44.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2005
Out of Print | Not available

WHO IF NOT WE...?
ARTIMO
ISBN: 9789085460114 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 3/15/2005
Out of print | Not available

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN AND GUESTS
Edited by Matthias Haldemann. Essays by Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov, and Viktor Mazin.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775714136 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 8/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

PETER KOGLER
Edited by Stephan Berg. Essay by Boris Groys.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775714228 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 7/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

DREAM FACTORY COMMUNISM
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775713283 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 12/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

INFORMATION IS ALIVE
NAI010 PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789056623104 | US $24.95
Pub Date: 7/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

IMAGINE YOU ARE STANDING HERE IN FRONT OF ME
NAI010 PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9789056622886 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 3/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

DEMOCRACY UNREALIZED
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775790826 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 12/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

THE DISCURSIVE MUSEUM
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775711401 | US $19.95
Pub Date: 2/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

ILYA/EMILIA KABAKOV
CHARTA
ISBN: 9788881583027 | US $34.95
Pub Date: 8/2/2001
Out of print | Not available

ILYA KABAKOV: INSTALLATIONS CATALOGUE RAISONNE 1983-2000
Edited by Toni Stooss. Essays by Robert Storr, Rod Mengham, Boris Groys and Oskar Bätschmann
RICHTER VERLAG
ISBN: 9783933807281 | US $175.00
Pub Date: 2/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

MIKE KELLEY - PETER FISCHLI, DAVID WEISS
Essays by Bice Curiger, Patrick Frey, Boris Groys, Mike Kelley, Daniel Kothenschulte.
SAMMLUNG GOETZ
ISBN: 9783980526753 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 1/2/2001
Out of print | Not available

BEAT STREULI
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783893229857 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 10/2/1999
Out of print | Not available

Boris Groys

Anton Ginzburg: At the Back of the North Wind

Text by by Jeffrey Kastner, Boris Groys. Conversation with Boris Groys.
Published by Hatje Cantz

Anton Ginzburg: At the Back of the North Wind presents the culmination of the artist's journey in search of Hyperborea, a mythical region thought to be located "beyond the Boreas" (the north wind). Mixing artifact with mythology, and history with invention, the project's wide-ranging material includes a 45-minute film and still photographs from the forests of Oregon, to St. Petersburg and the White Sea in Russia; sculptures; topological maps; and site-specific framed works. The book's supplementary materials include installation shots of the artist's exhibition at the 2011 Venice Biennale; newly commissioned essays by Jeffrey Kastner and curator Matthew Drutt; a conversation between Boris Groys and the artist; and a process documentation section including notes, objects, photographs and other ephemera. Encapsulating the exhibition's diverse range of works within the space of a printed object, the catalogue cover and interior pages interleave full-bleed imagery of the mythical Hyperborean red cloud, in reference to the ethereal dreamscape of Ginzburg's otherworldly exploration.

Open! Key Texts, 2004-2012

Art, Culture & the Public Domain

Text by Wolfgang Ernst, Brian Holmes, Boris Groys, Sven Lütticken, Saskia Sassen, Jonathan Sassen, Stephan Wright, et al.
Published by nai010 publishers

Since 2004, Open has conducted an interdisciplinary investigation into the changing conditions of public space, fostering new ideas about the public sphere and focusing on the impact of current processes of privatization, mediatization and globalization on society and cultural production. This volume collects key texts from Open, published between 2004 and 2012.

Boris Groys: Google, Words beyond Grammar

100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series 046

Published by Hatje Cantz

For the philosopher and media theoretician Boris Groys, Google performs the function of philosophy and religion as a ubiquitous means of negotiating the world. Philosophical precursors for Google's dissemination of discourses and the emancipation of words from grammar include Plato, Saussure and Derrida; another analogy is the twentieth-century avant-garde's production of 'word clouds' severed from their context, as found in the Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s. Groys identifies this tradition as "the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information-the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space."

Ostalgia

Edited by Jarrett Gregory, Sarah Valdez. Forward by Lisa Philips. Text by Massimiliano Gioni, Ekaterina Degot, Victor Misiano, Joanna Mytkowska, Bojana Pejic, Boris Groys. Interview by Judy Ditner.
Published by New Museum

The word “ostalgie” emerged in Germany in the 1990s to describe a then-burgeoning nostalgia for the era prior to the collapse of the Communist Bloc and the breaking up of countries formerly united under Communist government. Ostalgia looks at the art produced in these countries--some of which did not even formally exist two decades ago--bringing together the work of more than 50 artists from 20 countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Many of these works, by seminal figures and younger artists alike, offer a series of reportages on life and art under Communism and in the new post-Soviet countries. Eschewing a chronological perspective, Ostalgia instead establishes a series of dialogues between different generations and geographies, revealing local avant-garde practices and highlighting their international affinities. Among the artists included are Victor Alimpiev, Said Atabekov, Miroslav Balka, Irina Botea, Erik Bulatov, André Cadere, Stanislav Filko, Sanja Ivekovic, Jiri Kovanda, Edward Krasinski, Jonas Mekas, Boris Mikhailov, Paulina Olowska, Roman Ondák, Helga Paris, Dmitri Prigov, Anri Sala, Andro Wekua and Anna Zemánková.

Open 22: Transparency

Publicity and Secrecy in the Age of Wiki Leaks

Edited by Jorinde Seijdel, Liesbeth Melis. Contributions by Sven Lütticken, Boris Groys, Felix Stalder, Jodi Dean, Jill Magid, Stefan Nowotny, Geert Lovink.
Published by nai010 publishers

Open 22 investigates how transparency and secrecy are intertwined in modern-day society and explores how they relate to the public and the civic, using WikiLeaks as a test case. The contributors consider transparency as fetish and the ideal of the free flow of information.

Serious Games

War-Media-Art

Edited by Ralf Beil, Antje Ehmann. Text by Paul Virilio, Harun Farocki, Boris Groys.
Published by Hatje Cantz

During the Persian Gulf War, the world witnessed an unprecedented convergence of warfare and media coverage. Civilian televisions were broadcasting images that had just been seen by military censors; shortly afterwards, this data was being translated into computer games peddled to teens. Through the work of international artists, Serious Games investigates how devastation is transfigured into forms of entertainment that militarize the imagination.

The 8th Gwangju Biennale: 10000 Lives

Edited by Massimiliano Gioni and Judy Ditner. Essays by Ariella Azoulay, André Bazin, Régis Debray, David Freedberg, Jong-Gil Gim, Boris Groys, W. J.T. Mitchell, Masahiro Mori, Seth Price, Hito Steyerl.
Published by The Gwangju Biennale Foundation

10000 Lives is the companion to the 8th Gwangju Biennale, an exhibition devoted to our obsession with images. With contributions by more than 100 artists, it brings together artworks and artifacts realized between 1901 and 2010 to analyze the relationships that bind people to images.

Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception

Edited by Mark Godfrey, Klaus Biesenbach. Text by Eduardo Abaroa, Klaus Biesenbach, Francesco Careri, Carla Faesler, Mark Godfrey, Boris Groys, Miwon Kwon, Tom McDonough, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Eyal Weizman.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Working in a variety of media and a range of scales, from humble works on paper to monumental staged performances, Francis Alÿs (born 1959) has established himself as one of the world's leading contemporary artists. Based in Mexico City since 1986, the artist fashions much of his work from the street life he observes during long walks throughout the city. Bringing together a variety of participants, from Mexican sign-painters to British Guardsmen, his collaborations have produced several well-known works, including "When Faith Moves Mountains" (2002), in which he enlisted 500 volunteers to attempt to move a sand dune one foot from its original position using shovels, and "The Modern Procession" (2002), a ceremonial procession commemorating MoMA's temporary move to Queens, New York, that included a brass band and uniformed participants carrying reproductions of the Museum's most famous works across the Queensboro bridge. Published to accompany the largest retrospective of Alÿs' work to date, this publication is more a guidebook than a conventional monograph, reflecting the spirit of the artist's wandering practice. It features an introductory essay by Mark Godfrey, a curator at the Tate Modern, an index of quotes from Alÿs' previous writings and interviews compiled by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, and descriptions of works written by Alÿs and Cuauhtémoc Medina, freelance curator and art critic, as well as responses to the artist's work from a wide range of critics and commentators.

Alexander Kosolapov: Sots Art

Text by Boris Groys, Alexander Borovsky, Lyudmila Novikova.
Published by Kerber

Alexander Kosolapov is one of the most remarkable "go-betweeners" of contemporary art, a nomadic presence across ideologies and cultures and a hero of Russian Conceptualism alongside Ilya Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov and Dmitri Prigov. In 1973, he cofounded the Sots-Art movement, which satirically conflated Soviet and American capitalist iconographies; in 1975 he relocated to New York, remaining there for 30 years and immersing himself in the American art scene. Dovetailing Russian political art with American Pop, Kosolapov created such well-known images as the "Lenin Coca Cola" (1985), "Malevich Marlborough" and "Lenin McDonald's." In his most recent works, Kosolapov proposes new, nonexistent brands for post-Soviet Russia. This substantial survey appraises the entirety of his career to date.

Medium Religion

Faith, Geopolitics, Art

Text by Boris Groys, Peter Weibel.
Published by Walther König

The religious movements of today no longer depend on the handselling of literature such as bibles, pamphlets etc, but instead operate predominantly with electronic picture media such as video and television that can be disseminated much more widely, and which are capable of enormous rhetorical impact. Medium Religion approaches religion as a media phenomenon, whose expressions are subject to the same laws of reproduction as any other consumer entity, and focuses particularly on geopolitical religious hotspots like the Middle East, Asia, Russia, North America and South America. It contains commentary by (among others) such notable thinkers as Boris Groys, Peter Sloterdijk and Slavoj Zizek; contributing artists include Adel Abdessemed, Oreet Ashery, Maja Bajevic, Paul Chan, Omer Fast, Barbad Golshiri, Kajri Jain, Vitali Komar, Alexander Kosolapov, Nira Pereg, Dorna Safaian, Anri Sala, Michael Schuster, Wael Shawky, Joshua Simon and Jalal Toufic.

The Aesthetics of Terror

Edited by Manon Slome. Text by Manon Slome, Joshua Simon, Eric Stryker, Sven Lütticken, Boris Groys.
Published by Charta

The Aesthetics of Terror examines how terror has permeated and impacted contemporary art. It includes works by the Chapmans, Blue Noses, Jenny Holzer, Jon Kessler and Martha Rosler.

Boris Groys & Andro Wekua: Wait to Wait

Edited by Christoph Keller.
Published by JRP|Ringier

Celebrated Russian philosopher Boris Groys and Georgian artist Andro Wekua were convened for this publication to compare and discuss their experiences of contemporary art: the Soviet era, the contemporary conditions of production and the concerns of a new generation of artists born in the 1970s. Wekua's two large installations "Wait to Wait" and "Get Out of my Room" serve as touchstones for these topics. As Groys and Wekua also explore their generational differences--Groys recalling the critical and social solidarity of Russian art circles in the 1970s, Wekua noting the nomadism and ubiquity of "scene" for his generation--broader themes of loneliness, doubles, repetitions and waiting emerge, which are punctuated in the book by images of the two installations and several collages by Wekua.

Boris Groys: Thinking in Loop

Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality

Published by Hatje Cantz

The topic of these videos by art historian and philosopher Boris Groys is, actually, video as a medium: the use of the image within the video, the analogy between video and essay, the difference between private and public use of the video, the video running in loop as a contemporary form of ritual. The film footage is not used here as a mere illustration to make the text more comprehensible, or to make certain theoretical positions more evident. Rather, these video lectures thematize the gap between what we hear and what we see, and reflect on the relationship between image and word in our media-driven world.
Boris Groys, Global Professor at New York University, is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media theorist and an internationally acclaimed expert on late-Soviet Postmodern art and literature, as well as on the Russian avant-garde. Dr. Groys' writing engages the wildly disparate traditions of French Poststructuralism and Modern Russian philosophy.

Ilya Kabakov: Catalogue Raisonné Paintings 1957-2008

Edited by Renate Petzinger. Text by Boris Groys, Robert Storr.
Published by Kerber

This two-volume, slipcased set presents the first complete overview of iconic New York-based, Russian-born artist Ilya Kabakov's paintings. Centered around 130 works produced by Kabakov in Moscow between 1957 and 1987--when he used imaginary characters in his paintings to portray the banality of everyday life in the Soviet Union, providing both a parable on humankind and sardonic commentary on the system's unfulfilled promises and undelivered utopias--this comprehensive catalogue raisonné follows the publication of a two-volume catalogue raisonné of Kabakov's installations in 2004 and includes important essays by curator and critic Robert Storr and acclaimed late-Soviet Postmodern art and literature expert Boris Groys.
Ilya Kabokov was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1988. Kabokov is a contemporary of other "unofficial" Russian artists like Komar & Melamid--who also immigrated to the U.S.--and Oleg Vassilyev and Ivan Chuikov, who remained.

Open 16: The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon

Edited by Maria Hlavajova, Thierry de Duve, Chantal Mouffe, Molly Nesbit, Boris Groys, Michael Hardt, Irit Rogoff.
Published by nai010 publishers

This year, Open celebrates its fifth anniversary with this extra edition, which addresses the role of the art biennial in city marketing. Open 16 is published concurrently with the first Brussels Biennial.

Total Enlightenment

Moscow 1960-1990

Edited and with text by Boris Groys, Max Hollein.
Published by Hatje Cantz

Total Enlightenment is a superb and much-needed survey of the Conceptual movement in late- and post-Soviet Russia, a movement which even today remains still relatively unknown in the West. The book owes its title to a 1974 essay by the influential theorist Boris Groys, in which he asserted that Moscow artists held a unique relationship to the traditional art of Russia, which set them apart from their Western role models and contemporaries. He also noted that, for these artists, who were laboring under the censorious gaze of the government, the political content of their work constituted a genuine risk-taking. This volume features key works and paintings, drawings, photographs and installations by some of the most important artists of this era: Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Alexander Kosolapov, Igor Makarevich & Jelena Jelagina, Andrej Monastyrskij, Boris Mikhailov, Dmitri Prigov, Leonid Sokov and Vadim Zakharov.

Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani: Blind Spots

Text by Gabriele Knapstein, Nicolas Trembley, Jennifer Allen, Boris Groys.
Published by JRP|Ringier

This publication presents the first comprehensive overview of the German collaborative Fischer/El Sani. Nine of their most important films, installations and photographic works are featured, all of which emphasize the duo’s ongoing commitment to dismantling and re-appropriating Modernist architecture. Included are texts by, among others, critics Boris Groys and Jennifer Allen.

Bernhard Leitner

P.U.L.S.E.

Text by Boris Groys, Bernhard Leitner.
Published by Hatje Cantz

“Sound spaces--space in general, really--are measured acoustically by the entire body, not just with the ears,” declares Austrian artist Bernhard Leitner. Born in 1938, Leitner is recognized as a pioneer of sound sculpture. .P.U.L.S.E. documents architectural structures and installations of the past decade, along with work from 1972 onward on DVD.

Mischa Kuball: In Progress Projects

1980-2007

Edited by Florian Matzner. Text by Boris Groys, Peter Weibel, Armin Zweite, Peter Sloterdijk, et. al.
Published by Hatje Cantz

Mischa Kuball, born in 1959 in Düsseldorf, has projected the flickering aqua light of a swimming pool bottom onto the surface of a Berlin bridge, built a glittering solar system from a disco ball and mirrors and hung spotlights over the footprint of an old bunker hidden under the streets of Lünenburg, Germany. He's also trained his spotlights on contemporary politics, hanging 10 of them over a red carpet outside the Parliament Building in Copenhagen, and then again trained them on his viewers, installing the same piece at the entrance to a museum space. Throughout all this he's been featured in solo exhibitions in Europe, Australia, and the U.S., and as far afield as Tokyo and São Paulo. A forthcoming midcareer retrospective--to include all of the works documented here--is expected to travel to Denmark, Finland, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, Australia, China and Japan.

The Vincent 2006

Text by Michael Zeeman, Boris Groys, Marius Babias, James Tierney, Martin Prinzhorn.
Published by Veenman Publishers

The Vincent Van Gogh Biennial Award aims to recognize and reward (at 50,000 Euros) emerging European artists who will have significant, enduring impact. In this, its fourth cycle since its inception, the Award has broadened its scope in two key ways--first by removing an age limit for artists, and then by allying with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which will exhibit some of the nominated work and is slated to become home to the Award's collection. This year's shortlisted artists, Urs Fischer, Andrey Monastyrski, Dan Perjovschi, Wilhelm Sasnal and Cerith Wyn Evans, are notable for a diversity spanning generations (their birthdates range over the decades from 1949 to 1973), disciplines (from painting to installation to film) and locations (from London to Moscow). The three previous winners include the Finnish video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, the German painter Neo Rauch and the Polish artist Pawel Althamer.

40 years Videoart.de

Digital Heritage: Video Art in Germany from 1963 to the Present

Edited by Rudolf Frieling and Wulf Herzogenrath. Essays by Dieter Daniels, Boris Groys and Hans Dieter Huber.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

This book--accompanied by a DVD containing excerpts of all featured works and additional materials--tracks 40 years of German video art, from 1963 to the present. It offers a comprehensive overview of historical and current tendencies in video art, via 59 individual artworks. The included texts reflect on current strategies involving moving images and issues of presentation, conservation and restoration.

My Private Heroes

Edited by Jan Hoet. Essays by Anne Marie Bonnet, Boris Groys and Jan Hoet.
Published by Kerber

For the opening exhibition in Frank Gehry's gleaming new MARTa Herford Museum in Germany, Artistic Director Jan Hoet, longtime director (from 1975 to 2001) of the Stedelijk Museum, rounded up images and objects representing (his private--and now public) heroes. Uniting them is a sweeping and important examination of the idea of heroism in visual culture from different eras by Hoet and other scholars such as Anne-Marie Bonnet, Bazon Bock and Boris Groys. This intensely personal and subjective selection, culled from his 30 years in curating, includes depictions of artists, singers, boxers and filmmakers, by 76 artists from Abramovic to Ziegler, with Kiefer, Koons, Polke, Picasso, and many more in between. And since MARTa is based on an interdisciplinary approach to the arts, with its name forming an acronym from the German words for furniture, art, ambience and architecture, that spirit of inclusion encompasses works like Alessandro Mendini's Proust chair and video works by Ingrid Mwangi. It's likely you'll find some of your own heroes among Hoet's.

Who If Not We...?

...Should at Least Try to Imagine the Future of All This? 7 Episodes on (ex) Changing Europe

Edited by Maria Hlavajova and Jill Winder. Essays by Catherine David, Ole Bouman, Etienne Balibar, Robert Fleck, Boris Groys and Igor Zabel.
Published by Artimo

Who if not we . . . ? consists of seven exhibitions (episodes) and a number of additional projects throughout Europe organized by Thinking Forward--a cultural program formed on the occasion of the Dutch presidency of the European Union. The main motivation of this visual art program is to discuss how art can participate in current social and political change. In the words of Maria Hlavajova: "The question ÎWho if not we . . . ?' points to our primary motivation: to interpret this political assignment as an opportunity to modestly appeal to Îwe'--European artists, thinkers, and others--to take an active part in creating a new reality through artistic and knowledge production. If not we, then others will, and we run the risk that such a future would not necessarily be shaped around our own hopes and dreams." This publication presents comprehensive insight into all parts of the program, and includes new texts by Ole Bouman, Boris Groys, Igor Zabel, and others.

Ilya Kabakov: The Red Wagon

Edited by Volker Rattemeyer. Essays by Boris Groys, Jürgen Harten and Renate Petzinger.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

This book extensively documents Russian-American Ilya Kabakov's Red Wagon project through the artist's sketches and installation photographs. The intricate wooden construction is a work that has been conceived as a poetic allegory of artists' hopes, unrealized dreams and the demise of the former Soviet Union.

Pavel Pepperstein And Guests

Edited by Matthias Haldemann. Essays by Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov, and Viktor Mazin.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Pavel Pepperstein, one of the best-known artists and authors of Russia's younger generation, represents an important link between the elder exponents of Moscow Conceptualism and the young artists of his homeland. While working for the Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland, from 1998 to 2002, he invited select Russian guests to take part in exhibitions within the context of an unusual collection project. His invitees included the groups Inspection Medical Hermeneutics (which he helped found) and Russland, plus Viktor Pivovarov, Viktor Mazin, Boris Groys, and Ilya Kabakov. Zug thus became a meeting place for Russian artists and their friends, as well as an increasingly interested and enthusiastic audience--an excellent example of sustainable cultural exchange. Pepperstein himself normally painted without preliminary sketches and directly on museum walls, creating brilliant pictures that were painted over after each show. Only in a local schoolhouse, bank, and prison were walls made available for the creation of permanent works which would comprise an expanded, publicly accessible museum collection. Swiss photographer Guido Baselgia documented the successful project over a period of five years.

Peter Kogler

Edited by Stephan Berg. Essay by Boris Groys.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Peter Kogler's emblematic, computer-generated patterns--be they ants, as at Documenta IX, or tubes, as at Documenta X--run across wallpaper and then around site-specific installations, forming networks and structures, disturbing known spatial relationships. Included here are all works created by the artist since 2000.

Robert Lehman Lectures On Contemporary Art No.3

Edited by Lynne Cooke, Karen Kelly, Bettina Funcke. Essays by Lynne Cooke, Jonathan Crary, Russel Fergusson, Boris Groys, Pamela Kort, Bérènice Reynaud, Victor Stoichita, Elaine Showalter, Jan Tumlir and Peter Wollen. Foreword by Michael Govan.
Published by Dia Art Foundation

This third volume of collected theoretical and critical essays focuses on Dia's exhibitions from 1998 through 2000. As in the first two volumes, nine diverse contributors are included, ranging from art historian Jonathan Crary and philosopher Boris Groys to film theoretician Peter Wollen, from curator Russell Ferguson to cultural critic Elaine Showalter. These writers, among others, take on the challenges of illuminating, analyzing, and exploring the work of a disparate group of internationally recognized artists, including Joseph Beuys, Stan Douglas, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Bruce Nauman and Andy Warhol. Together, the essays in this book present a broad-based account of contemporary artistic practice, criticism, scholarship and theory.

Dream Factory Communism

The Visual Culture of the Stalin Period

Essays by Boris Groys, Oksana Bulgakova, Katya Djogot, Hans Günter, Annette Michelson, Alexander Morosov and Martina Weinhart Introduction by Max Hollein.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

The all-encompassing mass culture of today is not an invention of the late 20th century. Contrary to what might be assumed, given the capitalist under- and over-tones of contemporary mass media, our visual culture has its roots in the totalitarian regimes of the 20s and 30s. Back then, the main venue for visual communication was the reproduction and circulation of pictures via posters and films. Fascism and communism made radical use of these new opportunities for the consistent transformation of culture, even to the point of co-opting such traditional media as painting and sculpture. The centrally organized Soviet mass culture of the Stalin period is one of the foremost example of these highly effective propaganda machines. Beginning with the late realist works of Kasimir Malevich, Dream Factory Communism presents the macrocosm of Soviet art in the Stalin era--still little known in the West--as a unified aesthetic phenomenon that transcended individual media. The later works of Soz-Art, a style in which characteristics of socialist realism are combined with Pop Art, provides a running visual commentary and a critical take on the aesthetics of totalitarianism. The inclusion of works by contemporary Russian artists such as Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov and Komar & Melamid marks the chasm that separates today's artists both aesthetically and politically from their predecessors.

Information Is Alive

Art And Theory On Archiving And Retrieving Data

Edited by Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder. Essays by Manuel de Landa, Boris Groys, Winy Maas, Brian Massumi, Sadie Plant, Arjun Appadurai, Scott Lash, Simon Conway Morris, Antonio Damasio, George Dyson, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ingo Günter.
Published by nai010 publishers

The archive has of late proven to be a powerful metaphor: history is viewed as an archive of facts from which one can draw at will; our bodies have become a genetic archive since being digitally opened up in the human genome project; our language is an archive of meanings that can be unlocked using philological tools; and the unconscious is an archive of the traumatic experiences that mold our identity. More and more artists and architects are developing software systems in which data is automatically organized into complex knowledge systems, a process in which the user is only one of the determining factors. Databases, software and archives increasingly form the inspiration for artistic interventions. Information Is Alive considers the artistic potential of these couplings via a selection of essays, interviews and projects by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, philosopher Brian Massumi, writer Sadie Plant, paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, artists Margarete Jahrmann, Lev Manovich, Michael Saup, Jeffrey Shaw, Stahl Stenslie and others. Published on the occasion of the third Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF03).

Imagine You Are Standing Here In Front Of Me

Caldic Collectie

Edited by Jaap Guldemond, Sven Lütticken. Contributions by Brooke Alexander. Text by Jannet de Goede, Boris Groys.
Published by nai010 publishers

How does a museum build up its own collection? How do the choices made by an institution, and the eventual content of its collection, compare to that of a private collection? These questions and many more about the nature of art collecting are addressed in Imagine You Are Standing here in Front of Me, an attractive, generously illustrated overview of the Caldic Collectie, the sizeable, kaleidoscopic, and willfully accumulated private collection of Joop van Caldenborgh. Forming the collection are works by an exceptional array of contemporary photographers, including Rineke Dijkstra, Jeff Wall, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Inez van Lamsweerde. The collection also contains, as a quixotic treat, the complete graphic works of Marcel Broodthaers. Accompanying texts include philospher/art theorist Boris Groys's consideration of the artwork-artist-collector relationship; Dutch critic Sven Ltticken's close look at works in the van Caldenborgh collection; Jannet de Goede's tracing of its history and background; and Brooke Alexander's interview with the collector. Joop van Caldenborgh, chairman and director of Caldic Chemie in Rotterdam and chairman of the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce, was a member of the Dutch committee for Manifesta 1 and displays part of his collection to the public on a 50-acre wooded park near The Hague. Published in conjunction with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Democracy Unrealized

Documenta 11_Platform1

Edited by Ute Meta Bauer, Mark Nash, Okwui Enwezor, Octavio Zaya. Contributions by Stefano Boeri, Susanne Ghez. Text by Carlos Basualdo, Marta Calsina, Isolde Charim, Gerald Eibegger, Michael Hardt, Elsa LÄpez, Robert Misik, Antonio Negri, Rudolf Scholten, Upendra Baxi, Homi Bhabha, Akeel Bilgrami, Iain Chambers, Zhiyuan Cui, Manuel De Landa, Enrique Dussel, Boris
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Recently democracy has been the watchword for a range of disparate, yet apparently convergent contestations and negotiations within the global order. Democracy Unrealized, detailing the results of Platform1, the first of four conferences held in conjunction with Documenta 11, presents a context within which the interpretive and conceptual regimes surrounding democracy can be reargued against the claims of a neoliberal ideology. From this globalist viewpoint, democracy described as an unfinished project requires no structural changes, for it is complete in all its foundational features, requiring only small technical adjustments and minor tinkering. This is how the main Western democracies have seen themselves--at best as "incomplete implementations" of equality and justice, rather than as limited, flawed, dead-ended, and problematic. In response to this presumption, this book proceeds from the idea that realizing democracy is partly a matter of bringing to light what liberal democracy has promised but failed to deliver. The emphasis here is on the potential for revision, a reevaluation of values, and the extension and creative transformation necessary to keep in step with 21st-century globalizing processes. This is democracy as an ever open, essentially unfinishable project that in principle has fallen short of its ideals.

Ilya Kabakov: A Universal System For Depicting Everything

Essays by Boris Groys and Ilya Kabakov.
Published by Richter Verlag

In this album, Ilya Kabakov adopts the position of a fictive artist whose "Universal System for Depicting Everything" constitutes what he describes as "an exploration of some sort of fantastic system, namely, a system for a view from the fourth dimension. It is an elaboration, in several sketches, of how our reality, the different qualities of our reality, can be seen from this dimension."

The Discursive Museum

Edited by Peter Noever. Interview with Vito Acconci by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Artists include: Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Bazon Brock, Boris Groys, Magdalena Jetelova, Gerhard Merz .
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Can the museum be viewed as a conceptual structure capable of liberating itself from visual and imaginary content? To address this question, a group of well-known philosophers, theorists, and artists undertook a critical examination of collection and exhibition concepts, especially of those that are orientated toward market success. With current trends toward global museum mergers, large-scale exhibitions, and "art light," the participants of this symposium, held at the MAK in Vienna, discuss the possibilities for daring curatorial policies dedicated to presenting art within critical aesthetic contexts and point the way to possible future forms of the museum. Participants include Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Bazon Brock, Boris Groys, Magdalena Jetelova, Gerhard Merz, Peter Noever, and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Ilya/Emilia Kabakov

Public Projects

Contributors include Giairo Daghini, Anna Daneri, Emilia Kabakov, Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov, Giacinto Pietrantonio, Angela Vettese.
Published by Charta

During the summer of 2000 Ilya Kabakov was visiting professor at the Corso Superiore di Arte Visiva at the Ratti Foundation in Como. Together with his wife, Emilia, he offered the students his ideas on total installations, exploring their poetry and meanings. This volume documents the students' end-of-course exhibition and Kabakov's public space installation.

Ilya Kabakov: Installations Catalogue Raisonne 1983-2000

Edited by Toni Stooss. Essays by Robert Storr, Rod Mengham, Boris Groys and Oskar Bätschmann
Published by Richter Verlag

The struggle with one's own memories, especially those of an unofficial artist in the last decades of the Soviet Union, has been the dominant theme of the work of Ilya Kabakov (born 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), since his 1987 move to the west. Kabakov invites us to enter a private sphere and reminds us of the ugly, depressing aspects of Russian Communism's decline into paranoia and oppression. The driving force behind Kabakov's artistic production has remained a recapitulation of his own past under the disintegration of Soviet civilization.

Mike Kelley - Peter Fischli, David Weiss

Essays by Bice Curiger, Patrick Frey, Boris Groys, Mike Kelley, Daniel Kothenschulte.
Published by Sammlung Goetz

This volume considers the work of Mike Kelley alongside the collaborations of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Kelley's works are firmly anchored in an ironic, detached attitude towards his Irish Catholic upbringing; he makes use of the pictorial language of specific subcultures and the aesthetics of ‘low culture,’ to probe such concerns as the representation of childhood and the social construction of sexual behavior and cultural identification. Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been making art together since 1979, addressing various theoretical and philosophical explanations of the world with their subtle and humorous manipulations of common objects. The work of the American Kelley and the Swiss Fischli and Weiss resonate with each other in curious ways, most significantly in their exploration of everyday consciousness and ‘low' materials. This publication documents the work of Peter Fischli and David Weiss in the Goetz Collection during a recent exhibition, along with interviews, essays and two texts by Kelley himself.

Beat Streuli

City

Photographs by Beat Streuli. Edited by Bernhard Mendes Bürgi. Contributions by Rupert Pfab. Text by Boris Groys.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers