Particular Cases is not a theory about artists and artwork, but a response to art. Philosopher, art critic and media theorist Boris Groy s responds to 20th-century artworks and artists that have pushed his thinking and writing in a new direction. His striking, original and lucid arguments do not look for an artwork’s singular content or message but treat art as a mind-changing practice—as if contemporary artists can inspire a sort of conversion in the soul of the spectator. Focusing on artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, David Fischli/Peter Weiss, Olga Chernysheva and Pawel Althamer, Groys writes about topics ranging from the readymade to (digital) video art and Soviet and post-Soviet artistic practices. A Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NY U and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, Groys has authored several books including the e-flux publication Moscow Symposium (2010).

The leading art theorist takes on art in the age of the Internet
In the early twentieth century, art and its institutions came under critique from a new democratic and egalitarian spirit. The notion of works of art as sacred objects was decried and subsequently they would be understood merely as things. This meant an attack on realism, as well as on the traditional preservative mission of the museum. Acclaimed art theorist Boris Groys argues this led to the development of “direct realism”: an art that would not produce objects, but practices (from performance art to relational aesthetics) that would not survive. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art’s distinction.
In this major new work, Groys charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, and explores art in the age of the thingless medium, the Internet. Groys claims that if the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present.
Reviews
“In the Flow not only aptly describes Boris Groys’ brilliantly astute state of mind when writing this book, but also signals the incredible journey the reader will take around some of the most pervasive cultural constructs of our time: the museum, the archive, and the Internet. In the process of articulating the rheology—or fluidity—of art, each chapter elucidates a new potential for contemporary terminologies and concepts such as activism, participation, aestheticization, infection, and transgression. In the Flow offers a refreshing approach to art theory that opens up the possibilities for ideas to remain mutable while being put into practice.”
– Kate Fowle, Chief Curator, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
“Most writing about the intersections between contemporary art and contemporary life surrenders, almost instantly, to the seductions of with-it presentism, or, more slowly but inevitably, to melancholy for a lost modernism. Not these essays by Boris Groys. In the Flow tracks the complex dialogue across a century and more between art and philosophy, politics, mass media, lifestyle, museums, and, recently, the Internet. Some flows are familiar, but most are not: from the avant-gardes of the Russian Revolution to the Stalinist state as a total work of art, from Clement Greenberg to Google, and Martin Heidegger to Julian Assange. Written with Groys’ signature penchant for outrageous provocation, breathtaking associative leaps, and productive paradox, these essays are a challenge, and a delight, to read.”
– Terry Smith, author of What Is Contemporary Art?

-编辑推荐-
○ 在民主与平等观念日益深入人心的今天，保藏昔日艺术的博物馆体制正遭受猛烈抨击
为什么有些被博物馆赋予特权的东西被我们称为艺术品，得到我们社会的精心保护和修缮；但另一些东西则被交付给时间的摧枯拉朽之力，没有人在意它们最终的瓦解和消失？
● 艺术抵挡时间的流动 VS 艺术进入时间的流动
过去，人们通过艺术去搁置行动生活的流动，抽出时间去沉思图像。然而，如果我们今天将艺术品推入时间的洪流，使其命运与其他寻常事物没有任何区别，我们还能够谈论艺术吗？
○ 艺术的流变学：顶级艺术理论家对互联网时代的艺术的真知灼见
在我们的时代，博物馆已不再是一个永久收藏之地，互联网成为艺术作品（实践）生产和传播的主要场所，更多人将艺术作为流动的事物来讨论。今天，互联网上处于流动中的艺术比以往任何时候都能得到更好的记录和保存。
-内容简介-
20世纪早期，艺术及艺术体制在民主与平等的新精神之下受到批评。艺术作品是神圣之物，这一观点遭到公然反对，随后艺术作品被理解为只不过是物品。这是对现实主义的一种攻击，也是对博物馆传统的保护性使命的攻击。备受赞誉的艺术理论家鲍里斯•格罗伊斯认为，这种情况导致了“直接现实主义”的发展：这种艺术不生产物品，而生产不会留存下来的实践（从行为艺术到关系美学）。但一个多世纪过去了，这个方向上的每一次进步都迅速带来了保存艺术独特性的新方法。
在这部重要的著作中，格罗伊斯描绘了这种张力产生的悖论，探索了无物品媒介（互联网）时代的艺术。格罗伊斯断言，如果说机械复制给了我们没有灵晕的物品，那么数字复制生成的便是没有物品的灵晕，其所有物质性都转化成当下之短暂易逝的标志。
-专家推荐-
《流动不居》不仅切实记述了鲍里斯•格罗伊斯在写作这本书时敏锐的思考状态，还预示了读者将围绕着我们时代最普遍的一些文化结构——博物馆、档案馆、互联网——展开不可思议的旅程。在阐述艺术的流变学（或流动性）的过程中，本书的每一章都阐明了一些当代术语与概念（比如，“行动主义”、“参与”、“审美化”、“感染”、“越界”）的新潜力。《流动不居》提出了令人耳目一新的艺术理论方法，为观念在付诸实践时保持可变开辟了可能性。
凯特•富勒（Kate Fowle），莫斯科车库艺术博物馆前首席策展人、纽约MoMA SP1前馆长
大多数关于当代艺术与当代生活之间的交集的文章，往往都会立刻屈服于时髦的现在主义（presentism）的诱惑，或是缓慢却不可避免地屈服于失落的现代主义的感伤。格罗伊斯的这些文章并非如此。《流动不居》追踪了一个多世纪以来艺术与哲学、政治、大众媒介、生活方式、博物馆和近年来的互联网之间的复杂对话。书中谈到的有些流动是我们熟悉的，但大多数是我们不熟悉的：从俄国1917年前后的先锋派艺术到其后1924—1953年时期的总体艺术作品，从克莱门特•格林伯格到谷歌，从马丁•海德格尔到朱利安•阿桑奇。格罗伊斯以异于常人的挑衅、令人叹为观止的联想跳跃和富有成效的悖论等标志性倾向写就的这些文章，阅读起来是一种挑战，也是一种乐趣。
特里•史密斯（Terry Smith），《什么是当代艺术？》（What Is Contemporary Art?）的作者

作为当代西方文艺理论家和社会理论家的新生代领军人物之一，鲍里斯·格罗伊斯（Boris Groys）先后受聘于众多世界知名学府和机构，如国际艺术批评家协会、哈佛大学、加州大学、纽约大学、维也纳国际文化研究中心等，其学术贡献尤其是俄国和斯拉夫研究的成果饮誉全球。1992年以来众多涉及俄国或苏联文学、艺术领域的研究都会提及格罗伊斯。为此，本书旨在从六个方面对格罗伊斯的文艺理论进行系统、深入的研究。

The leading thinker retraces the philosophical discussions around care
We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but our culture tends to thematise the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care—ill bodies in need of self-care and social care.
The discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. Philosophy of Care retraces some episodes in this tradition—beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov, having passed through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question is who the proper subject of care is? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.

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 raisonne follows the publication of a two-volume catalogue raisonne 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 and Melamid--who also immigrated to the U.S.--and Oleg Vassilyev and Ivan Chuikov, who remained."

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.

Modern history is a history of aesthetizations – and every aesthetization raises a claim of protection. We aestheticize and want to protect almost everything, including Earth, oceans, the atmosphere, rare animal species and exotic plants. Humans are no exception. They also present themselves as objects of contemplation that deserve admiration and care. For some time, artists and intellectuals struggled for the sovereign right to present themselves to society in their own way – to become self-created works of art. Today everybody has not only a right but also an obligation to practice self-design. We are responsible for the way we present ourselves to others – and we cannot get rid of this aesthetic responsibility.
However, we are not able to produce our own bodies. Before we begin to practice self-design, we find ourselves already designed by the gaze of others. That is why the practice of self-design mostly takes a critical and confrontational turn. We want to bring others to see us in the way we want to be seen – not only during our earthly life but also after our death. This is a complicated struggle, and the aim of this book is to describe and analyze it.

Jeff Wall (b.1946) adopts the nineteenth-century poet Baudelaire's famous description of one of his contemporaries as 'a painter of modern life' to describe his own very different work: huge transparencies mounted on to light boxes that diffuse a brilliant glow of white light evenly through his photographs of contemporary urban scenes and 'constructed' social situations. Wall is foremost among the pioneering artists who since the late 1960s have brought photography to the forefront of contemporary art. His constructed images employ the latest sophisticated technology in the creation of compelling tableaux, which are evocative of subjects ranging from Hollywood cinema to nineteenth-century history painting. When exhibited in their glowing light boxes they evoke both the seduction of the cinema screen and the physical presence of minimalist sculptures such as Dan Flavin's fluorescent light installations or Donald Judd's metal and Perspex wall reliefs. All of these elements - traditional figurative painting, cinema, Minimalism, Conceptual art, documentary photography - are consciously evoked and explored in Wall's work. Associated closely since the late 1960s with Conceptual artists such as Dan Graham, with whom he collaborated on The Children's Pavilion (1988-93), Wall has engaged at a sophisticated level with theories of representation and its social dimensions both as an artist and as a theoretical writer on contemporary art and culture. The survey by Thierry de Duve, author of "Pictorial Nominalism" and "The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp", proposes an alternative history of modernism. Critic and curator Arielle Pelenc talks with the artist on themes ranging from storytelling to cinematography. Boris Groys, author of "Contemporary Art from Moscow", focuses on the meaning of light in Wall's work. The update section by French art critic and historian of photograpy Jean-Francois Chevrier surveys Wall's work from 1995 to the present. The artist has chosen texts by Blasie Pascal and Franz Kafka for the "Artist's Choice", and the "Artist's Writings" celebrate Wall as an art historian and theorist by including key essays and important interviews.

Not only is there a boom in international art biennials, but they are also increasingly deployed for developing and marketing cities and regions. In order to compensate for this, political issues are more and more often put on the agenda. Can biennials really represent an alternative political voice? This extra anniversary issue of Open contains a number of lectures delivered at the debate on this issue in October 2008 in connection with the first Brussels Biennial. Together with supplementary texts, a ‘reader’ has been created in which the biennial as a global phenomenon is analysed and approached not only in terms of an art theoretical discourse or curatorial practice, but also on the basis of more sociological and politico-philosophical points of view.
Pascal Gielen analyses the problematic sides of the art biennial as a global phenomenon.
Michael Hardt questions the role of the artist in disseminating communality.
Chantal Mouffe reveals how artistic practices can break through existing power structures.
Thierry de Duve wants to restore aesthetic values to the viewing of art in a globalized world.
According to Boris Groys, the biennial, just like the installation, creates a space that serves as a model for a new political world order.
Simon Sheikh employs the notion of ‘politics of transition’ in order to escape neoliberal ideology.
Brian Holmes focusses on the striking concept of the Sixth Biennial of Taipei.
Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova explain their own contribution to the Brussels Biennial.
Irit Rogoff’s project 'Geo-Cultures' examines the biennial as a site where local knowledge is exchanged with conditions elsewhere.

Shopping--the word nowadays signifies more than the mere purchasing of goods. From the Paris arcades to the suburban mall, buying has been an essential part of urban life throughout the 20th century. As a ritual, shopping has both created and transformed our identities. For artists, consumer meccas and all their forms of presentation have long been a source of inspiration and criticism. If Walter Benjamin's description of the flaneur in turn-of-the-century Paris was the turning point in our understanding of the complex interchanges between consumer society and art, the cultural productions that followed his theorizing hardly proved him wrong. Consider only Pop Art, a mode of art making created by a generation of artists who themselves were designers of advertising materials, and who used those same products as source material for work that now hangs in museums. Shopping is the first publication to be extensively devoted to this topic. It documents and analyzes the fascination and influence of the fine arts, architecture, film, and music on the aesthetics, structure, and environment of consumer culture. Numerous illustrations reveal the crossover work of artists like Eugéne Atget, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, Duane Hanson, Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons, Andreas Gursky, and others, as well as pieces conceived by fine artists, architects, and film makers. Complete with contributions by internationally renowned authors, Shopping serves as a diversified basis for the discussion of a topic more dear to us than most of us would admit. You simply must buy this book.
When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums. --Andy Warhol
Edited by Christoph Grunenberg and Max Hollein.
Essays by Chantal Béret, Donna
deSalvo, Christoph Grunenberg, Robin Hunt, Max Hollein, Thomas Kellein, Rem
Koolhaas, Rudolf Schmitz, Mark Taylor
and Slavoj Zizek.
Hardcover, 9.75 x 11 in., 256 pages, 200 color