The topic of these videos by art historian and philosopher Boris Groys is, actually, video as a medium: the use of the image within the video, the analogy between video and essay, the difference between private and public use of the video, the video running in loop as a contemporary form of ritual. The film footage is not used here as a mere illustration to make the text more comprehensible, or to make certain theoretical positions more evident. Rather, these video lectures thematize the gap between what we hear and what we see, and reflect on the relationship between image and word in our media-driven world.

Boris Groys, Global Professor at New York University, is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media theorist and an internationally acclaimed expert on late-Soviet Postmodern art and literature, as well as on the Russian avant-garde. Dr. Groys' writing engages the wildly disparate traditions of French Poststructuralism and Modern Russian philosophy.