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BAK Schematic itinerary made by Alexandre Kojve depicting his travels through the Netherlands in 1946.*

BAK presents After History: Alexandre Kojve as a Previous BAK Next Photographer
20 May15 July 2012 Opening: 19 May 2012, 17 BAK, basis voor actuele kunst Lange Nieuwstraat 4

After History: Alexandre Kojve as a Photographer

Release of Rabih Mrou: A BAK Critical Reader in Artists

3512 PH Utrecht Hours: WednesdaySaturday 1217 Sunday 1317 T +31 (0)30 2316125 F +31 (0)30 2304866 info@bak-utrecht.nl www.bak-utrecht.nl Share Curated by Boris Groys

Practice and new publication line

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BAK, basis voor actuele kunst proudly presents the research exhibition After History: Alexandre Kojve as a Photographer, which for the first time unveils to the public the unique visual work of Russian-born French philosopher BAK and diplomat Alexandre Kojve (19021968). Curated by philosopher and art historian Boris Groys, the exhibition includes nearly 400 photographs that Kojve took in the 1950s and 1960s while traveling in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), China, The India, Iran, Japan, Nepal, Russia, and throughout Western Europe, as well as over 1,700 postcards that he collected exhibition during his lifetime. This image collection captures the essence of both Kojves philosophical thinking and his political practice. Spacecraft Kojves influential reinterpretation of philosopher Hegels writing inspired a generation of French thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan. Kojve thought history ended with the French Revolution, as it BAK had achieved particular individual freedoms and the universal recognition of human desires. This notion of the end of history was later famously transformed and popularized by political scientist Francis Fukuyama to explain the loss of Irene the ideological antagonisms after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Yet in Kojves concept, rather than lamenting Kopelman, impossibility of changing the status quo, the post-historical condition meant that the imagined ideals of the French Revolution must finally become political reality; this would not be achieved by thinking or dreaming of The another revolution, but through the practical implementation of these ideals by the sage. True to his beliefs, Kojve abandoned Molyneux philosophy to work for the French Ministry of Economic Affairs and in the service of the European Commission Problem following WWII.

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BAK Remarkably, after this shift from deliberation to action Kojve started to develop his own obsessive photographic practice in order to register the post-historical world. The many generic postcards he collected show what inspired his Olga artistic style. The collection of both photographs and postcards portrays the world as Kojve articulated it through his philosophical thinking: an aesthetically harmonious and exotic East; a stiflingly complete and hollow West; and Russia, Chernysheva: Kojves rapidly changing homeland, is shown mainly through old churches frozen in time. Through its In premiere the Middle presentation, the exhibition questions the critical capacity for change in our contemporary reality and shows us a world of Things stage waiting to be filled with activism in anticipation of another tomorrow. BAK by Accompanying the research exhibition After History: Alexandre Kojve as a Photographer is a public lecture exhibition curator and FORMER WEST research advisor Boris Groys on 25 May 2012 at Het Utrechts Archief, Group Hamburgerstraat 28, Utrecht. The lecture focuses on Kojves multifaceted biography, his renowned philosophical positions, and the developments in his work and thinking over the course of his eventful life. Departing from reflections exhibition on Kojves biography, Groys explores the remarkable relationship between Kojves writing and his photographic Vectors of the practice, linking them to the field of contemporary art today. A video recording of this lecture will be archived on the Possible FORMER WEST Digital Platform at www.formerwest.org. BAK within The exhibition After History: Alexandre Kojve as a Photographer and the accompanying lecture are organized the framework of the project FORMER WEST, an international research, education, publishing, and exhibition Rabih Mroue undertaking (20082014). The exhibition has been made possible by Bibliothque nationale de France, Paris; Institut Franais, Amsterdam; and Undersigned Nina Kousnetzoff. BAK *Image above: Schematic itinerary made by Alexandre Kojve depicting his travels through the Netherlands in 1946. Courtesy expo zro Bibliothque nationale de France. Copyright Nina Kousnetzoff. BAK

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