February 2011
Artist’s apartment in Moscow
Transcript by Anastasiya Guseva
Initial editing by Oksana Voronina

Poems by Andrei Monastyrsky
Andrei Monastyrsky in Moscow Conceptualim website
Collective Actions in Moscow Conceptualim website
Andrei Monastyrsky’s channel on YouTube

What is your first work of contemporary art?

When I was a teenager, I tacked a sheet of paper to the wall. I took a paintbrush and black ink and started painting a circle until the paper was torn. It was a very black circle. I was a 9th or 10th-grade student at that time. It was my first artwork.

What is the first work of contemporary art you have seen?

It is interesting. The matter is that I was interested in science, i.e. astronomy, paleontology, etc., before I became concerned myself with art and poetry. Then I read a book on versification by Valery Bryusov. His 1919 Short Course in Versification described how to write poems. I read the book and wrote my first poems, using formulas of rhyming. It was a scientific approach. Later I was much interested in music. It is hard to say what work of contemporary art I have seen first.
Perhaps, it was Cage’s work. I think it was a piece of music rather than a visual artwork.

What artist do you carry on a dialogue with?

They are Panitkov, Vadim Zakharov, Leiderman, Igor Makarevich, Elena Elagina.

What is your education?

I graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Philology. I studied Russian literature. The theme of my Master’s thesis was Leskov’s paterikons. Leskov wrote the Skomorokh Pamfalon story, based on ancient plots. Since 1966, I attended a literature club in the Pioneer Palace on Leninsky Hills. There I met Rubinstein, and got acquainted with Gubanov. I met SMOGist poets a bit later. First, I was engaged in literature and poetry. My interest to visual arts appeared later. I first met Kabakov in 1973, when I was 23.

Who do you consider your teachers?

Cage and Kabakov.

How do you think it is necessary to teach art skills?

I am not sure that it is important to teach contemporary art. The main thing is a specific talent, world-view, inner interest to the world and forms of the world, which is laid in the youth. You ask who the teacher is. But the teacher appears later. At first, the person should be interested in the world. It is a process which is started in the childhood. And only later the teacher appears. It seems suspicious to me to teach asking aesthetic or philosophical questions. It is impossible to teach. An artist should be a little strange in nature. If a person is totally normal, he can be neither an artist, nor a poet. An artist should have a kind of the divided consciousness and some inner worlds.

How did you move from literature to art?

I was interested in research of the text. In 1975 or even earlier, I produced a series titled «Elementary Poetry». In 1974, I wrote the «Dotted Composition» poem with 18 small plots at the end. Then I read the poem to my friends, artists, poets. I read aloud these plots and hand out sheets of paper to them, so that they could illustrate these stories. It was a kind of the performance related to visual art. And gradually, by means of elementary poetry and research of the text, graphic, visual sculptures appeared.

What authors and what artworks are determinant for you?

In 1965, before I finished high school, I read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I bought the third volume of Kant’s collected works in a shop located in Stavrovo, a small village near Vladimir. I summarized it and was amazed. It was the beginning of my interest in philosophy. Later I became interested in music. First, I was admired with Scriabin’s music. I purchased almost all pre-revolutionary musical notations of his works in the antique department of a music store on Neglinka. They were very cheap. Then I concerned myself with music by the French Les Six, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and only then with Cage’s oeuvre. But after the French Les Six and before Cage, I was keen on the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg.

What should the viewer know to understand your works?

The viewer should be familiar with traditions of minimal art, general aesthetic discourse and aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, researching space and time as contemplation. Through understanding of these structures, taking into consideration the theory of perception, one can grasp the meaning of the practice that we have been engaged with.

Do you collect artworks by other artists?

I have only artworks, which I have been presented. I have never had money to buy. My collection mainly contains prints. It is a close circle of artists.

What do you want to have in your collection?

Absolutely nothing.

Are there artists who you consider your antagonists in art?

Recently, I’ve thought that my antagonists are Shilov, Nikas Safronov, Glazunov. But the interesting thing is that other personages of the 1990s may be added to this list. They are Mavrodi and Kashpirovsky. They are very conceptual, especially Mavrodi. They are interesting and important like counter-partners. I will never say his oeuvre is rubbish, it is not interesting. There are untalented artists. It is a different story, it is beneath all criticism.

Do you have followers?

Previously, Leiderman has claimed to be my follower. At present, I am not sure that he is ready to say so. Even the Voina street-art group has asserted that they are my followers. But it is totally ludicrous. I have never been interested in politics. There is no social or political message in my art.

Is there a border between your own art and the art of the Collective Actions group?

Almost no. The art of the Collective Actions is always wider that my own. If an action sounds non-understandable and is wide-sense, it is rather by the Collective Actions. If an action is narrow-sense and theme-oriented, it is more related to my own efforts.

There are few artists who have been engaged in performance art for more than 30 years. What is the secret of the Collective Actions?

Clear and powerful contemplations of space-time can be ensured only in huge forests and large fields. The account goes for miles, it is a different scale. It is difficult to feel these contemplations in a studio or at home. Nature supports vitality.

Do you divide your art into any periods?

Curiously enough, there are only two periods. The first period was before 1989, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second period was after 1989. The Kievogorsky field, where we have always organized our actions, is built up now. It is impossible to hold large-scale field actions there. We are to carry out actions in the forest. Thus, there are two periods, a field one and a forest one. Field actions are post-modernist, forest actions are modernist. At first, it was Post-modernism, which forcedly transformed into Modernism. The forest implies Modernism. It is cosmos, research, missiles. The forest is a modernist space, which is difficult to overcome. The field space is rhizomatic. We have started from field performances, empty spaces in fields. Sure, it is a post-modernist activity. Then we’ve been forced to go to difficult forest spaces. It seems to me that it reminds of a human life. When a man is young, everything is easy. A body works perfectly. When the man grows old, the body accumulates toxins. The man is difficult to move. He has to overcome the life. When the man is young, it is not necessary to overcome the life. I think our art is mimetic towards the process of life. The life goes from good to bad. And our activities go from good, post-modernist, easy to bad, hard, dark forest spaces, like a terrible, unhealthy life of an aged man. Our strategy goes from good to bad, like the life does.

What is your prevailing theme? What is your art about?

It is emptiness in the Buddhist sense. Any sign, any symbol, any achievement, any possession is a false thing. It should be destroyed by emptiness. Any stiffened form, which prevents from breathing, existing, moving in the space, should be brought to emptiness. It is reduction of any symbol to emptiness.

What are your political views?

I have no political views at all. I have never been much interested in this question. It is difficult to say something on the issue. Of cause, I don’t like any totalitarian things. I think it is awful. I have experience of existing in the large totalitarian country like the Soviet Union. It is unpleasant. In this sense, I am a person oriented to the Western way of life.

What is your attitude towards religion?

Religion is a very personal matter. I am very religious. But it is my own business. I try not to discuss this.

What events, happened on your memory, do you consider the most important?

30 years ago, when I lived on the 2nd floor of a panel five-storied apartment building in Tsandera Street, my neighbor upstairs, a quiet elderly man, suddenly died. After that a family of his children with a grandson settled there. It was a nightmare. Every day they did exercises, jumped and tapped above my head. Later I wrote a short novel about the events. It was the biggest incident in my life. After I had suffered for two years, I moved to the building next door. But it turned out worse. The neighbors upstairs had two kids there. A group of hooligans gathered in the courtyard and sang awful songs too loud. There I suffered for another two years, until I settled on the last floor. It was the hardest experience in my life.

Does technological progress influence upon your art?

Technology has been always important for me. I like different gadgets, information media. It has started with tape recorders, video recorders, computers, YouTube. They are like new spaces, new discourses.

What are you occupied with at present?

I am always inventing some space-time images, which can be implemented. I have always thoughts in my head. I am always thinking over some aesthetic gestures to be realized, some messages to be defined. I don’t have any stages. It is like poetry. I consider our practice like the ancient Chinese poetry. They are contemplative, as if out of society, abstract and extremely private. They are private contemplations, they are not collective.

Is there any standard?

Yes. First, some mental structure is laid in each artwork, and then the artwork is created according to this structure.

What art movement do you belong to? How do you identify the movement?

It is Moscow Conceptualism. It is wider than a standard concept art. There are some surrealist connotations. Minimal art is also very important. My last good aesthetic experience is an exhibition by Irina Shtenberg. I like her art because it is just a space-time experience, not burdened by political, social, psychopathological messages. It is an aesthetic message rather than philosophic one. But it is not burdened by any images, any textures. There is only an expositional sign field as I call it. It is a space of the Olivier hall of the Fabrika Project and a work with this space.

What is the difference between Moscow Conceptualism and the international concept art?

I think that international concept art was finished long ago. It was no concept art in the 1990s, and even in the 1980s. In the 1980s, it was Simulationism. After neo-expressionists, after Kiefer and etc., Steinbach and Koons appeared. They were simulationists. It was long forgotten about conceptualists. In Russia the so-called Moscow Conceptualism are still in progress. It is a relative Conceptualism, the would-be Conceptualism.

What do you need for work?

To feel well. I have everything in my head. I need nothing, I don’t need a studio.

What exhibitions that you have participated in do you consider the most important?

I believe the Documenta exhibition was the most considerable. The Goethe Project of 1976 was exhibited there. Teresa Mavica organized an exhibition at the MMOMA’s building in Gogolevsky pereulok in Moscow. It was very good. The Koridor KD and other installations were shown. I think it was a very important exhibition. The exposition in the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale was also very interesting. Have you been there? I think it was curious though the installation with plank beds was much criticized.