Streaming: Art in the Internet Age

The privileged position attributed to art, artists, and art institutions has been criticized with a democratic and egalitarian spirit since the beginning of the 20th century. The boundary between art and non-art has blurred, and the artist and their work have descended from the heavens to the earth. We no longer see art as a creative activity reserved for a few talented individuals and a glorified status: everyone can be an artist, and everything can be art.

In his book "In the Flow," renowned art theorist Boris Groys states that this 20th-century adventure led to an attitude he calls "direct realism": producing practices, not objects. This new art, which does not try to resist time and is content to be carried away by the current flow, clearly contradicts the museum institution, which adheres to the principle of freezing time by preserving objects. However, far from disappearing or even diminishing, museums maintain their dominance in the art world in an even stronger and more widespread manner.

Groys addresses this contradiction and the tensions it creates by touching upon many topics, from the Russian avant-garde to conceptual art, from Ilya Kabakov's installations to contemporary phenomena like Google and WikiLeaks that require discussion.

Boris Groys is a professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe and a full professor at the NYU Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2005.