Victor Tupitsyn, The Museological Unconscious: Communal (Post)Modernism in Russia (MIT Press, 2009), 20.
Boris Groys, Sabine Vogel, and Branislav Dimitrijević, Privatisierungen: Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Osteuropa (Revolver Verlag, 2004).
See →.
Erik Bulatov, Espace de Liberté: Écrits (Nouvelles Éditions Place, 2017).
Nicoletta Misler, “Postfazione” (Afterward) to Pavel Florensky, Lo Spazio e il Tempo nell’Arte (Adelphi, 2007), 367–402.
“The key concept was the thought that composition is a way of organizing time. The function of time in geometry comes under close study in Florensky’s work, also.” Kirill Sokolov and Auril Pyman, “Father Pavel Florensky and Vladimir Favorsky: Mutual Insights into the Perception of Space,” Leonardo 22, no. 2 (April 1989): 237.
E. A. Nekrasova, “The Life, Writings and Art of Vasiliy Chekrygin,” Leonardo 17, no. 2 (April 1984): 119–23.
See Arseny Zhilyaev, “Factories of Resurrection: Interview with Anton Vidokle,” e-flux journal 71 (March 2016) →.
Russian Thought After Communism: The Rediscovery of a Philosophical Heritage, ed. James P. Scanlan (Routledge, 1994), 30n3.
Groys’s influence on Russian contemporary art in general deserves detailed study. He was in touch with the Moscow art scene starting in the 1970s and went on to write important texts on its protagonists. He later participated actively in the scene as a curator and scholar, and in sporadic cases even as an artist.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, who are also partners in life, have worked together and jointly sign their works.
Collective Actions was founded by Andrei Monastyrski, Nikolai Panitkov, Nikita Alexeev, and Georgy Kiesewalter. They were later joined by Igor Makarevich, Elena Elagina, Sergei Romashko, and Sabine Hänsgen. Alexeev left the group in 1983, and Kiesewalter left in 1989. With a different composition, the group is still active in Moscow today under the supervision of Monastyrski. Nest consisted of Mikhail Roshal, Victor Skersis, and Gennady Donskoi.
Following the idea of Andrei Monastyrski, the first editor of the project, MANI Papki (“MANI” was an acronym for “Moskovskiy Arkhiv Novogo Iskusstva,” or “Archive of Moscow New Art”) was conceived as a folio containing photographs, texts, and artworks. Other editors would go on to release four more issues of MANI Papki. Their vision was to create a platform for the exchange of ideas, as well as to preserve a history that no institution was recording. Victor Skersis and Vadim Zakharov (as the duo “SZ”) realized the second issue of MANI Papki. Later, Zakharov and Georgy Kiesewalter published Po Masterskim, collecting interviews and photographs about Moscow artists, their works, and their studios.
Kitup was running the space at the time. That same year he also published a book of poetry titled Mamka Kosmos.
The three artists also founded the art group Inspection Medical Hermeneutics in 1987. They worked together until some months before the exhibition’s opening.
“Мы неоднократно говорили о том (это известная вещь), что внутри идеологии марксизма в плане его реализации в России присутствовало в качестве идеологий-паразитов множество местных вещей. Вещей крайне варварских и опасных в смысле дилетантизма, как, например, федоровская идеологема, которая чущовищно фонила, не говоря о Циолковском, который был прямым учеником Федорова и все это начал (это уже достаточно навязло в зубах: обсуждение влияния идеологии Федорова на советские дела и т.п.).” Sergey Anufriev, Dmitry Gutov, and Pavel Pepperstein, “Пожилые иллюстрации на черном холодце,” in Mamka Kosmos, ed. Ilya Kitup (1991).
“Если для Кабакова коммунальность была мамкой, то мамка-космос есть фигура посткоммунального распада.” Anufriev, Gutov, and Pepperstein, “Пожилые иллюстрации на черном холодце,” in Mamka Kosmos.
Cosmic Shift: Russian Contemporary Art Writing, eds. Elena Zaytseva and Alex Anikina (ZED, 2017), 69–90.
“Noma” was just one of many invented names used by the Moscow conceptualists throughout the decades. Others included “MANI” and “Moksha” (short for “the Moscow conceptual School.”) Dictionary of Moscow Conceptualism, ed. Andrei Monastyrsky (Ad Marginem. 1999).
“Можно даже сказать, что нома в не котором смысле очень похо ка на космические исследования, потому что это закрытая экспериментальная лабораторная деятельность, которая обычно возникает после великого поражения.” Mamka Kosmos.
“Таким образом тема преодоления физической смерти оказывается главной движушей силой технического прогресса. Все жившие и временно ушедние из этого мира подталкивают человечество в космос. Огонь всех когда-либо бывших кремаций сливается в едином пламени ракетных люб. Ракета как бы оказывается наполнена человеческим прахом, уносяшимся в космос для последуюшего воскрешения.” Typewritten text on a piece of paper from Leiderman’s project, 1991.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Monism of the Universe. Quoted in an untitled work by Zakharov published in Pastor no. 4 (1994).
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Penguin, 2014), 187.