Empty Zones is a sensitive exploration of Andrei Monastyrski's contemplative and complex work, starting from his foundation and involvement in the Collective Actions in the 1970s all the way to
his more recent work. This volume includes original visual and textual documentations of Trips out of Town and selected video-stills from Podjachev's YouTube Channel as well as the artist's
photographic Earth Works.
Monastyrski's groundbreaking engagement with participatory art in the context of socialist Russia laid the scene for decades of Russian performance art that followed. His influence in Russia
cannot be overemphasised and, while his work resonates internationally, there are parallels as well as important differences between his artistic practice and those that characterise Western
performance art.
To explore this difference is to probe the underlying ethos of Monastyrski's performances, rooted in the Collective Actions' necessary mediation of the socialist reality against which they
operated. These themes are pondered and investigated through specially commissioned essays written by the foremost authorities on the subject as well as by Monastyrski himself.
Edited by Boris Groys, curator of Monastyrski's exhibition in the Russian Pavilion at the 54th Biennale di Venezia, Empty Zones proudly presents the work of Andrei Monastyrski and manifests its
continuing relevance in the contemporary context.
