Boris Groys, Self-Design and Aesthetic Responsibility / Journal / e-flux.

Boris Groys brings up that ‘fear’ (on the part of practitioners in particular) that instead of actually changing the world, art only makes it look better “causes a great deal of frustration within the art system, in which the predominant mood appears to almost perpetually shift back and forth between hopes to intervene in the world beyond art and disappointment (even despair) due to the impossibility of achieving such a goal.

Groys resonse to this begins with “The problem is not art’s incapacity to become truly political. The problem is that today’s political sphere has already become aestheticized” (here he moves into the territory of the public face of politician generating large amounts of visual mnaterial – as do Hollywood stars…