A Andreï Monastyrsky

Formed around Andrei Monastyrski in 1976, the Collective Actions group played a major role in the development of Moscow Conceptualism. Its actions took place in the countryside around the Russian capital. Metaphor for a consciousness emptied of all expectation, a snowy field by the forest’s edge would see the execution of an action, generally very simple, intended to draw participants’ attention to their own perceptions. Here eight stand in a line facing Monastyrski, responsible for pressing the buttons of a tape-recorder to play the instructions unknown even to him. The object of the action becomes plain only when it is over: hindered by the snow, participants’ footsteps have laid out a pattern different from that in theory expected.