Andrey Kovalev: Russian Actionism, 1990-2000 (2007–) [RU, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1990s, action art, art, art criticism, contemporary art, happening, performance, performance art, politics, russia
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
Российский акционизм. 1990-2000 (Russian, 2007, 21 MB)
Gestures of an Era, or the Era of Gestures (English, 2008)
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