Andrey Kovalev: Russian Actionism, 1990-2000 (2007–) [RU, EN]

A survey of 450 performances, actions and happenings held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and elsewhere. Descriptions and photo documentation are accompanied by press coverage and testimonies of participants and witnesses.

A ten-page English summary published in Artchronika magazine is introduced as follows:

“The phrase “performance in the 1990s” immediately evokes several images: Oleg Kulik slaughtering a pig at Regina Gallery; Anatoly Osmolovsky sitting on the shoulder of the Mayakovsky monument; Oleg Kulik again, this time attacking passers-by like a rabid dog; Alexander Brener masturbating on the diving board at the Moscow swimming pool or calling out Boris Yeltsin to fight on Red Square; the barricade erected on Nikitskaya Ulitsa; members of the Radek group on top of Lenin’s mausoleum; the crucifixion of Oleg Mavromatti; and so on. These stories have become pure myth, retold with breathy excitement and longing for glory days lost to the past, or cited in various criminal court cases.”

Special issue of WAM (World Art Музей), 28-29, Moscow, 2007.
ISSN 1726-3050
416 pages

English excerpts
Published in Artchronika, Spring-Summer 2008, pp 108-117

Related forum on Vkontakte

Российский акционизм. 1990-2000 (Russian, 2007, 21 MB)
Gestures of an Era, or the Era of Gestures (English, 2008)

Garnet Hertz (ed.): Critical Making (2012)

“Critical Making is a handmade book project by Garnet Hertz that explores how hands-on productive work ‐ making ‐ can supplement and extend critical reflection on technology and society. It works to blend and extend the fields of design, contemporary art, DIY/craft and technological development. It also can be thought of as an appeal to the electronic DIY maker movement to be critically engaged with culture, history and society: after learning to use a 3D printer, making an LED blink or using an Arduino, then what?

The publication has 70 contributors ‐ primarily from contemporary art and academia ‐ and its 352 pages are bound in ten pocket-sized zine-like volumes. The project takes the topic of DIY culture literally by printing an edition of 300 copies on a hacked photocopier with booklets that were manually folded, stapled and cut. The 300 finished copies were primarily given away for free to project contributors, individuals and institutions important to them. Some of the handmade copies were traded for reviews, photographs, videos, lectures and were given to library archives.

Due to the large demand for this content, the entire collection had been scanned and released on conceptlab.com/criticalmaking and through the Twitter account @criticalpdfs.”

Publisher Telharmonium Press, Hollywood/CA, November 2012
Open Access
10 booklets, 352 pages total

Reviews: Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2013), Blue (Engine Institute, 2013).

single PDF (36 MB)
PDF contributions (67 pieces)

IRWIN (ed.): State in Time (2014)

“The NSK State in Time emerged in 1992, evolving in the context of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the transformation Neue Slowenische Kunst. Existing both as an artwork and a social formation, a state that encompasses all time but holding no territory, the NSK State in Time has for two decades pushed the boundaries of artistic and political practice. This volume collects together, for the first time, analyses of the NSK State in Time including its relationship with the changing context of Eastern Europe, the connection between aesthetics and the state, the rise of NSK folk art, and documents the First NSK Citizen’s Congress in 2010.”

Includes essays by Inke Arns, Huang Chien-Hung, Eda Čufer, Marina Gržinić, Irwin, Tomaz Mastnak, Viktor Misiano, Alexei Monroe, Ian Parker, Avi Pitchon, Stevphen Shukaitis, Slavoj Žižek, and Jonah Westerman.

Publisher Minor Compositions, Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson, 2014
Open Access
ISBN 9781570272769
178 pages

NSKState.com
Publisher

PDF, PDF (9 mb)