KOLLEKTIVNYE DEYSTVIYA (COLLECTIVE ACTIONS). THE DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE ACTIONS, Photo and Video

JOURNEYS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE. VOLUME ONE

12. PLACE OF ACTION

1. Field work

The invited guests (30 persons) gathered on a field’s verge and were offered to pose for a slide film in process of their sequential advancement along a straight line across the field towards a forest on its opposite side (path length 350 meters). The line was marked with small cardboard circles on the ground, each having numbers of appropriate position (#1 being the nearest, #15 the farthermost from original position for shooting). These positions divided the line into equal sections of approximately 23 meters each. After approaching these positions, the viewers were to turn and face the initial position (where the camera was located), hold for 5 seconds and proceed (for detailed plan of field work see appendix #2). Filming of each viewer began after the previous one had disappeared in the forest on the opposite side of the field. After 15 viewers had been filmed this way, an additional shooting was undertaken (partially on the same day, partially on the 13^th of October, 1979).

1. The Curtain

Before the shooting began, a curtain of purple cloth (2 x 3 m) had been set between positions 13 and 14 (i.e. 300 meters away from the initial position). When the first viewer was to approach the curtain, it remained folded and shifted leftwards. The viewers were instructed to approach and unfold the curtain in order to hide the initial position from sight (i.e. a viewer behind the curtain is invisible to the audience). On the curtain’s inside there was an attached inscription which prompted to replace the previous viewer in the pit (it had been dug beforehand near position 14; one of the action’s participants had been lying there with a camera when the viewers arrived). Therefore, a viewer behind the purple curtain, invisible to others at initial position, replaced another man lying in the pit, while the latter returned to the curtain and folded and moved it back to the left again (there was another inscription on the curtain’s inside prompting to do so). Then he photographed the one lying in the pit, gave him the camera and proceeded to the two remaining positions (14 and 15).

After being photographed at each of 15 positions and partaking in the Curtain action, the viewers in turns proceeded to the forest. There, on a scoreboard attached to a tree, they found a schemed plan of viewers’ filming, plan of additional filming, and also a sequence of slide films and setting of black-and-white exposition to be compiled after the filming (see appendix 2 for full text). One of the action’s participants stood by the scoreboard with a recorder and taped viewers’ words.

Moscow region, Savyolovskaya railway line, near village Kyevy Gorky.

7^th October, 1979

2. Slide film

The photographic material collected in course of filming was compiled into slide film (see appendix 3) and a black-and-white exposition (see appendix 2, section 7). After the demonstration of the slide film audio commentaries were auditioned (see appendix 4). Then additional sequence of slides and audio commentaries collected on the 7^th of October followed.

Moscow.

31^st October, 1979

A. Monastyrski, I. Makarevich, N. Alexeev, N. Panitkov, E. Elagina.

I. Kabakov, I. Bakstein, V. Mironenko, D. Prigov, O. Vasilyev, E. Bulatov, V. Nekrasov, V. Mochalova, I. Pivovarova, I. Yavorsky, I. Chuikov, S. Gundlakh, A. Anikeev, L. Rubinstein, S. Romashko M. Elagina, L. Bazhanov, A. Filippov, K. Zvezdochetov, V.Makarevich, P. Pepperstein, N. Shibanova + 7-10 others.

ANDREY MONASTYRSKI. Preface to Volume One

MOSCOW CONCEPTUALISM