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A native of Saint Petersburg, Boris Groys is what one would call a member of “intelligentsia”, the Russian intellectual class. Art critic, media theorist, philosopher, Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU, Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Germany, author of Logic of the Collection, recently published by Sternberg Press – the list goes on.

Interviewed by the Founder of .ART Ulvi Kasimov, Boris Groys shares his insights on the importance of information that surrounds the creative process in the modern age, the way artists are adapting to this increased interest in their lives and the idea of myths behind the biggest brand names.

This interview is excerpted from Ulvi Kasimov’s book The Art of the Possible, a series of interviews that explore the ways Internet technology can remake the art world. Follow this blog and Artnet to catch the next talks over the coming months.

How are artists adapting to this almost religious interest in documentation?

The artist more and more understands himself as a figure in the public space. It’s not so much about what he’s producing – objects and so on – as his total behaviour in the public space: his political and social positioning; his commitments to this and that; his political attitudes; his general self-styling. The artist today is “self-designing”. The work is only part of it. Maybe an even more important part of it is his publicly recorded behaviour. And almost everything that the artist does today is publicly recorded.

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