Empty Action: Labour and Free Time in the Art of Collective Actions (Image)

Collective Actions is one of the most significant artistic practices to emerge from Moscow Conceptualism. The group's enigmatic idea of 'Empty action' is the focal point for Marina Gerber's exploration of this practice in relation to labour in the late Soviet Union. Based on interviews with members of the group (Monastyrski, Panitkov, Alexeev, Makarevich, Elagina, Romashko, Hänsgen and Kiesewalter) she exposes the relation between their jobs, their individual art practices and their contribution to the collective in the context of post-Stalinist debates on labour and free time. Departing from the mundane fact that Collective Actions' practice took place in free time from work for the Soviet State, Gerber identifies Empty action as a form of 'art after work'. The first monograph on the artists group "Collective Actions", one of the most significant enterprises of modern and contemporary Russian art, studies their guiding esoteric principle of 'Empty action'. Departing from the seemingly mundane fact that their practice emerged in their free time from full-time employment for the Soviet State in a period of stagnating industrialisation, Marina Gerber identifies Empty action as a form of "art after work". The result is a comprehensive and profound investigation of the artistic and socio-historical context of Collective Actions' practice that bears some significance for contemporary debates on art and labour in a post-industrial age. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Interlude: A Participant’s Report on the Action SUMMA (2015) 1. Empty Action 2. Collective Actions’ Concept of Art 3. Free Time in Trips out of Town 4. Free Time, Labour and Art: A Theoretical Contextualisation 5. Collective Actions Members ‘at Work’ and ‘after Work’ 6. The Production of (Collective) Actions 7. Empty Action as the Suspension of Work Bibliography List of Illustrations