groys_aesthetic responsibility

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Boris Groys

Self-Design andAesthetic

Responsibility

These days, almost everyone seems toagree that the times in which art tried toestablish its autonomy successfully orunsuccessfully are over. And yet this diagnosisis made with mixed feelings. One tends tocelebrate the readiness of contemporary art totranscend the traditional confines of the artsystem, if such a move is dictated by a will tochange the dominant social and politicalconditions, to make the world a better place ifthe move, in other words, is ethically motivated.One tends to deplore, on the other hand, thatattempts to transcend the art system neverseem to lead beyond the aesthetic sphere:instead of changing the world, art only makes itlook better. This causes a great deal offrustration within the art system, in which thepredominant mood appears to almostperpetually shift back and forth between hopesto intervene in the world beyond art anddisappointment (even despair) due to theimpossibility of achieving such a goal. While this

failure is often interpreted as proof of artsincapacity to penetrate the political sphere assuch, I would argue instead that if thepoliticization of art is seriously intended andpracticed, it mostly succeeds. Art can in factenter the political sphere and, indeed, artalready has entered it many times in thetwentieth century. The problem is not artsincapacity to become truly political. The problemis that todays political sphere has alreadybecome aestheticized. When art becomespolitical, it is forced to make the unpleasant

discovery that politics has already become art that politics has already situated itself in theaesthetic field.In our time, every politician, sports hero,terrorist, or movie star generates a large numberof images because the media automaticallycovers their activities. In the past, the division oflabor between politics and art was quite clear:the politician was responsible for the politicsand the artist represented those politics throughnarration or depiction. The situation has changeddrastically since then. The contemporary

politician no longer needs an artist to gain fameor inscribe himself within popularconsciousness. Every important political figureand event is immediately registered,represented, described, depicted, narrated, andinterpreted by the media. The machine of mediacoverage does not need any individual artisticintervention or artistic decision in order to be putinto motion. Indeed, contemporary mass mediahas emerged as by far the largest and mostpowerful machine for producing images vastlymore extensive and effective than thecontemporary art system. We are constantly fedimages of war, terror, and catastrophe of allkinds at a level of production and distributionwith which the artists artisanal skills cannotcompete.

e-fluxjournal#7june-august2009BorisGroys

Self-Designand

AestheticResponsibility

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Barbara Visser, Detitled, EGG19992811/FT/L/c, 2000, color photograph.


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Now, if an artist does manage to go beyondthe art system, this artist begins to function inthe same way that politicians, sports heroes,terrorists, movie stars, and other minor or majorcelebrities already function: through the media.In other words, the artist becomes the artwork.While the transition from the art system to thepolitical field is possible, this transition operatesprimarily as a change in the positioning of theartist vis--vis the production of the image: theartist ceases to be an image producer andbecomes an image himself. This transformationwas already registered in the late nineteenthcentury by Friedrich Nietzsche, who famouslyclaimed that it is better to be an artwork than tobe an artist.1 Of course, becoming an artwork notonly provokes pleasure, but also the anxiety ofbeing subjected in a very radical way to the gazeof the other to the gaze of the mediafunctioning as a super-artist.

November 1, 2008: Natalie Portman was spotted wearing a mask as she left aparty in Beverly Hills.Source: Just Jared.

I would characterize this anxiety as one ofself-design because it forces the artist as wellas almost anybody who comes to be covered by

the media to confront the image of the self: tocorrect, to change, to adapt, to contradict thisimage. Today, one often hears that the art of ourtime functions increasingly in the same way asdesign, and to a certain extent this is true. Butthe ultimate problem of design concerns not howI design the world outside, but how I designmyself or, rather, how I deal with the way inwhich the world designs me. Today, this hasbecome a general, all-pervasive problem withwhich everyone and not just politicians, moviestars, and celebrities is confronted. Today,everyone is subjected to an aesthetic evaluation everyone is required to take aestheticresponsibility for his or her appearance in theworld, for his or her self-design. Where it wasonce a privilege and a burden for the chosen few,in our time self-design has come to be the masscultural practice par excellence. The virtualspace of the Internet is primarily an arena inwhich MyFace and MySpace are permanentlydesigned and redesigned to be presented on

YouTube and vice versa. But likewise in the real or, lets say, analog world, one is expected tobe responsible for the image that he or shepresents to the gaze of others. It could even besaid that self-design is a practice that unitesartist and audience alike in the most radical way:though not everyone produces artworks,everyone is an artwork. At the same time,everyone is expected to be his or her own author.Now, every kind of design including self-design is primarily regarded not as a way toreveal things, but as a way to hide them. The

aestheticization of politics is similarlyconsidered to be a way of substituting substancewith appearance, real issues with superficialimage-making. While the issues constantlychange, the image remains. Just as one caneasily become a prisoner of his or her own image,ones political convictions can be ridiculed asbeing mere self-design. Aestheticization is oftenidentified with seduction and celebration. WalterBenjamin obviously had this use of the termaestheticization in mind when he opposed thepoliticization of aesthetics to the

aestheticization of politics at the end of hisfamous essay The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction.2 But one can argue,on the contrary, that every act of aestheticizationis always already a critique of the object ofaestheticization simply because this act callsattention to the objects need for a supplementin order to look better than it actually is. Such asupplement always functions as a Derridean

pharmakon: while design makes an object lookbetter, it likewise raises the suspicion that thisobject would look especially ugly and repellentwere its designed surface to be removed.Indeed, design including self-design isprimarily a mechanism for inducing suspicion.The contemporary world of total design is oftendescribed as a world of total seduction fromwhich the unpleasantness of reality has

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disappeared. But I would argue, rather, that theworld of total design is a world of total suspicion,a world of latent danger lurking behind designedsurfaces. The main goal of self-design thenbecomes one of neutralizing the suspicion of apossible spectator, of creating the sincerityeffect that provokes trust in the spectators soul.In todays world, the production of sincerity andtrust has become everyones occupation andyet it was, and still is, the main occupation of artthroughout the whole history of modernity: themodern artist has always positioned himself orherself as the only honest person in a world ofhypocrisy and corruption. Let us brieflyinvestigate how the production of sincerity andtrust has functioned in the modern period inorder to characterize the way it functions today.One might argue that the modernistproduction of sincerity functioned as a reductionof design, in which the goal was to create ablank, void space at the center of the designedworld, to eliminate design, to practice zero-

design. In this way, the artistic avant-gardewanted to create design-free areas that would beperceived as areas of honesty, high morality,sincerity, and trust. In observing the mediasmany designed surfaces, one hopes that thedark, obscured space beneath the media willsomehow betray or expose itself. In other words,we are waiting for a moment of sincerity, amoment in which the designed surface cracksopen to offer a view of its inside. Zero-designattempts to artificially produce this crack for thespectator, allowing him or her to see things as

they truly are.But the Rousseauistic faith in the equationof sincerity and zero-design has disappeared inour time. We are no longer ready to believe thatminimalist design suggests anything about thehonesty and sincerity of its designing subject.The avant-garde approach to the design ofhonesty has thus become one style among manypossible styles. Under these conditions, theeffect of sincerity is created not by refuting thisinitial suspicion, but by confirming it. This is tosay that we are ready to believe that a crack in

the designed surface has taken place that weare able to see things as they truly are onlywhen the reality behind the faade shows itselfto be dramatically worse than we had everimagined. Confronted with a world of totaldesign, we can only accept a catastrophe, a stateof emergency, a violent rupture in the designedsurface, as sufficient to allow for a view of thereality that lies beneath. And of course thisreality too must show itself to be a catastrophicone, because we suspect something terrible tobe going on behind the design cynicalmanipulation, political propaganda, hiddenintrigues, vested interests, crimes. Following thedeath of God, the conspiracy theory became theonly surviving form of traditional metaphysics asa discourse about the hidden and the invisible.Where we once had nature and God, we now have

design and conspiracy theory.Even if we are generally inclined to distrustthe media, it is no accident that we areimmediately ready to believe it when it tells usabout a global financial crisis or delivers theimages from September 11 into our apartments.Even the most committed theorists ofpostmodern simulation began to speak about thereturn of the real as they watched the images ofSeptember 11. There is an old tradition inWestern art that presents an artist as a walkingcatastrophe, and at least from Baudelaire on modern artists were adept at creating images ofevil lurking behind the surface, whichimmediately won the trust of the public. In ourdays, the romantic image of thepote maudit issubstituted by that of the artist being explicitlycynical greedy, manipulative, business-oriented, seeking only material profit, andimplementing art as a machine for deceiving theaudience. We have learned this strategy ofcalculated self-denunciation of self-

denunciatory self-design from the examples ofSalvador Dal and Andy Warhol, of Jeff Koons andDamien Hirst. However old, this strategy hasrarely missed its mark. Looking at the publicimage of these artists we tend to think, Oh, howawful, but at the same time, Oh, how true.Self-design as self-denunciation still functionsin a time when the avant-garde zero-design ofhonesty fails. Here, in fact, contemporary artexposes how our entire celebrity culture works:through calculated disclosures and self-disclosures. Celebrities (politicians included) are

presented to the contemporary audience asdesigned surfaces, to which the public respondswith suspicion and conspiracy theories. Thus, tomake the politicians look trustworthy, one mustcreate a moment of disclosure a chance topeer though the surface to say, Oh, thispolitician is as bad as I always supposed him orher to be. With this disclosure, trust in thesystem is restored through a ritual of symbolicsacrifice and self-sacrifice, stabilizing thecelebrity system by confirming the suspicion towhich it is necessarily already subjected.

According to the economy of symbolic exchangethat Marcel Mauss and Georges Batailleexplored, the individuals who show themselvesto be especially nasty (e.g., the individuals whodemonstrate the most substantial symbolicsacrifice) receive the most recognition and fame.This fact alone demonstrates that this situationhas less to do with true insight than with aspecial case of self-design: today, to decide topresent oneself as ethically bad is to make anespecially good decision in terms of self-design(genius=swine).But there is also a subtler and moresophisticated form of self-design as self-sacrifice: symbolic suicide. Following this subtlerstrategy of self-design, the artist announces thedeath of the author, that is, his or her ownsymbolic death. In this case, the artist does not


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Wall paintings in the monasteries of Lake Tana. Debre Maryam.

proclaim himself or herself to be bad, but to bedead. The resulting artwork is then presented asbeing collaborative, participatory, anddemocratic. A tendency toward collaborative,participatory practice is undeniably one of themain characteristics of contemporary art.Numerous groups of artists throughout the worldare asserting collective, even anonymousauthorship of their work. Moreover, collaborativepractices of this type tend to encourage thepublic to join in, to activate the social milieu inwhich these practices unfold. But this self-sacrifice that forgoes individual authorship alsofinds its compensation within a symboliceconomy of recognition and fame.The modern state of affairs in art can bedescribed easily enough: the artist produces andexhibits art, and the public views and evaluateswhat is exhibited. This arrangement would seemprimarily to benefit the artist, who shows himselfto be an active individual in opposition to apassive, anonymous mass audience. Whereas

the artist has the power to popularize his or hername, the identities of the viewers remainunknown in spite of their role in providing thevalidation that facilitates the artists success.Modern art can thus easily be misconstrued asan apparatus for manufacturing artistic celebrityat the expense of the public. However, it is oftenoverlooked that in the modern period, the artisthas always been delivered up to the mercy of

public opinion if an artwork does not find favorwith the public, then it is de facto devoid ofvalue. This is modern arts main deficit: themodern artwork has no inner value of its own,no merit beyond what public taste bestows uponit. In ancient temples, aesthetic disapproval wasinsufficient reason to reject an artwork. Theirstatues were regarded as embodiments of thegods: they were revered, one kneeled downbefore them in prayer, one sought guidance fromthem and feared them. Poorly made idols andbadly painted icons were in fact part of thissacred order, and to dispose of any of them outwould have been sacrilegious. Thus, within aspecific religious tradition, artworks have theirown individual, inner value, independent of thepublics aesthetic judgment. This value derivesfrom the participation of both artist and public incommunal religious practices, a commonaffiliation that relativizes the space betweenartist and public.By contrast, the secularization of art entails

its radical devaluation. This is why Hegelasserted at the beginning of his Lectures on

Aesthetics that art was a thing of the past. Nomodern artist could expect anyone to kneel infront of his or her work in prayer, demandpractical assistance from it, or use it to avertdanger. The most one is prepared to do nowadaysis to find an artwork interesting, and of course toask how much it costs. Price immunizes the

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artwork from public taste to a certain degree had economic considerations not been a factor inlimiting the immediate expression of publictaste, a good deal of the art held in museumstoday would have landed in the trash a long timeago. Communal participation within the sameeconomic practice also weakens the radicalseparation between artist and audience,encouraging a certain complicity in which thepublic is forced to respect an artwork for its highprice even when that artwork is not well liked.However, there still remains a significantdifference between an artworks religious valueand its economic value. Though the price of anartwork is the quantifiable result of an aestheticvalue that has been identified with it, the respectpaid to an artwork due to its price does not byany means translate automatically into any formof binding appreciation. This binding value of artcan thus be sought only in noncommercial, if notdirectly anti-commercial practices.For this reason, many modern artists have

tried to regain common ground with theiraudiences by enticing viewers out of theirpassive roles, by bridging the comfortableaesthetic distance that allows uninvolvedviewers to judge an artwork impartially from asecure, external perspective. The majority ofthese attempts have involved political orideological engagement of one sort or another.Religious community is thus replaced by apolitical movement in which artists andaudiences communally participate. When theviewer is involved in artistic practice from the

outset, every piece of criticism uttered becomesself-criticism. Shared political convictions thusrender aesthetical judgment partially orcompletely irrelevant, as was the case withsacral art in the past. To put it bluntly: it is nowbetter to be a dead author than to be a badauthor. Though the artists decision to relinquishexclusive authorship would seem primarily to bein the interest of empowering the viewer, thissacrifice ultimately benefits the artist byliberating his or her work from the cold eye of theuninvolved viewers judgment.

A version of this text was given as a lecture at FriezeArt Fair, London, on October 16, 2008.

Boris Groys (1947, East Berlin) is Professor ofAesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at theCenter for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Global

Distinguished Professor at New York University. He isthe author of many books, including The Total Art ofStalinism,Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Spacefrom His Apartment, and, most recently,Art Power.


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1Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth ofTragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann(New York: Vintage, 1967), 37.

2Walter Benjamin, The Work ofArt in the Age of MechanicalReproduction, in Illuminations:Essay and Reflections, ed.Hannah Arendt, trans. H. Zohn(New York: Schocken Books,1969), 242.


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