The Artist as an Institution. Self-Organization—Institutional Practices of Moscow Conceptualism

In this essay, I share my experiences of artistic self-organization in the Soviet era and after the collapse of the Soviet Union—in Russia and in the West. The first theme is the self-organization by artists of apartment and group exhibitions, one-day shows, creation of the MANI museum as well as my organization of apartment exhibitions in the West. The second theme is related to samizdat, a small-circulation publishing organized by artists, which hosted our artistic archive МANI Folders. One of the most important questions I pose is how the mechanism of artists’ self-organization and the activity of self-archiving, well-known from the experience in the hermetically sealed Soviet space, turned out to be both relevant and in demand in a free Western society as well as in contemporary Russia.