Appearance – action by the Collective Actions Group

1/5Viewers and participants at the edge of the field waiting for the action Appearance to begin in 1976. (courtesy of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions)

1/5Lev Rubinstein and Nikita Alekseev approaching the viewer-participants at the action Appearance in 1976. (courtesy of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions)

1/5"Documentary Certificate attesting that _____ was a witness to APPEARANCE, which took place on March 13, 1976." The document was distributed and signed by participants during the action. (courtesy of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions)

1/5Organizers pulling a rope across the field for the action titled Time of Action in 1978. (courtesy of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions)

1/5Viewer–participants holding up factographic objects from the action Pictures in 1979.

Appearance was the first action organized by the group of artists and poets who would later become the Moscow Conceptualist performance art group Collective Actions.[1] A group of around thirty fellow artists and friends received invitations to attend Appearance. These viewer–participants included: A. Abramov, M. Saponov, I. Golovinskaia, V. Chinaev, N. Panitkov, N. Nedbailo, R. Gerlovina, V. Gerlovin, N. Lepin, and twenty other people. As instructed, they traveled just outside of the city and gathered on the edge of a field to wait for the action to start. After a short time two figures—Lev Rubinstein and Nikita Alekseev—appeared from the forest on the opposite side of the field. Crossing the field to meet the audience, they distributed documents for viewers to sign as testimony that they were present at Appearance. In the following years, other actions were staged where viewers were invited to listen to a bell ringing in the snow (Lieblich, April 2, 1976), to pull a rope out of the forest for hours (Time of Action, October 15, 1978), or to have their pictures taken as they crossed a field (Place of Action, October 7, 1979). Inspired by the work and writings of John Cage, by Zen Buddhism, and by the philosophies of Kant and Heidegger, these actions explored the limits of viewer perception, while also serving as social meeting places for the Collective Actions group and the circle of Moscow Conceptual artists. Over time, hand-bound volumes documenting the actions were produced and called Poezdki za gorod (Trips Out of the City). The representational and aesthetic qualities of photographic and textual documentation themselves became subjects of the group’s further investigations.

Document:

Irina Pivovarova, viewer recollection from Lieblich (1976), The Lantern (1977), and Time of Action (1978), November 1980.