Andrei Monastyrski's video diary

In 2019, Garage acquired the archive of Andrei Monastyrski, an artist, writer, art theorist, co-founder of Collective Actions group, and one of the founders of Moscow conceptualism. The archive includes videos made by the artist in the period 2013–2019, when he used a portable camera or car DVR to record what was happening around him. The materials in the archive include documentation of performances by Collective Actions and exhibitions visited by Monastyrski, as well as literary readings, meetings, conversations, and walks around the city with fellow artists and colleagues (including Vakana Kono, Sabina Hänsgen, Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, Vladimir Sorokin, Ekaterina Degot, and Anastasia Ryabova) and various events on the streets of Moscow (social protests, etc.). The collection contains over 5,000 items.

About the artist:

Andrei Monastyrski (b. 1949, Petsamo, Murmansk Region) is an artist and one of the founders of Moscow conceptualism. In 1980, he graduated in Philology from Moscow State University. In 1976, he became one of the founders of the group Collective Actions, as well as being the theorist and author of most of its actions. Since the 1980s, Monastyrski has authored and compiled 13 volumes of documentation of Collective Actions’ Trips Out of Town and the collections of MANI (Moscow Archive of New Art). Together with Vadim Zakharov and Yuri Leiderman, he was a member of the groups Kapiton (2008–2010) and Corbusier (2009–2010). Solo exhibitions include: Special Stories, Exhibition Hall in Peresvetov Lane, Moscow (with Konrad Atkinson, 1991); Branch, XL Gallery, Moscow (1997); Ground Works, Stella Art Gallery, Moscow (2005); Andrei Monastyrski, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010); Empty Zones. Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, Russian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); and Out of Town: Andrei Monastyrski & Collective Actions, e-flux, New York (2011). Group exhibitions include: New Art from the Soviet Union. An Unofficial Perspective, Biennale of Dissent, Venice (1977); Sowjetische Kunst um 1990. Binationale, Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Central House of Artists, Moscow (1991–1992); 50th and 52nd Venice Biennale (2003, 2007); documenta 12, Kassel (2007); and Russian Performance: A Cartography of Its History, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2014). Winner of the Andrei Bely Prize for Contribution to the Development of Literature (2003) and the Innovation Prize (Theory, Criticism, and Art History, 2009. He lives and works in Moscow.