Andrei Monastyrski (b. 1949, Russia)
Collective Actions / Discussions, 1976-

“In a typical Collective Actions performance, participants would be summoned by telephone or word of mouth, much like a modern-day rave party, to a field or a forest clearing outside Moscow where, often in the biting mid-winter cold, they would wait, shivering, for something to happen. The happening itself, surreal, sometimes pranksterish, often on the periphery of vision, might last only a few minutes; then the participants would go home again, to record and debate what they had seen or heard: A man with a balloon-head that he burst before himself disappearing? A singing kettle buried steamily in the snow? A bark without a dog?” (“A Russian Guru at Work in Venice” by Claudia Barbieri, The New York Times, June 13, 2011)

Collective Actions’ – also known as Moscow Conceptualists – approach to art provides many parallels to my projects and methods. It would seem that the final product or aim (if there is anything “final” in this context) is sensemaking and meaning generation that may be more or less durably manifested. There are recordings and transcriptions of some of the discussions, while others may be stored only in the participants’ memories that, in turn, may or may not have affected any further works, thoughts or actions. There is also some kind of happening, a trigger event, that launches the sensemaking and discussion – that could be framed as an “artwork”, e.g. as performance or happening or a piece of photo documentation etc. But it would seem to be a major reduction to consider that as a complete self-sufficient autonomous artwork, regardless of the individual interpretations and meaning exchanges that follow.

I think that my many of my works – from the most ephemeral ones like “Find The Art Piece” to more materially articulated like photographic series, are functioning in the same manner. There is a pre-conceived trigger, but it is what it triggers in the audience that is the most interesting part of the work.