Co-Authorship, Collaboration, and Other “Counter-Archival” Gestures in Late Soviet Moscow Conceptualism

Descriptions of the supposed compulsion to catalogue and archive artistic experience are commonplace in discussions of Moscow conceptualism. Yet a significant branch of the late twentieth-century art movement focused instead on notions of unscripted collaborative work that purposely frustrate attempts to systematize artworks, identify authorship and proprietary rights, or delineate participation in artistic discussions. Abandoning modernist ideas of artistic autonomy and ethereal spirituality in favor of a more broadly engaged postmodern approach to art, Moscow conceptualists of the “analytical” branch of the movement undermined the archival impulse in their work of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often even as they seemed to be organizing and cataloguing their activity. Using material from MANI, other archives, and other works by these conceptualists, this chapter explores current limits to our narrow understanding of the movement and argues for an expanded definition of collaboration, co-authorship, and performance in late Soviet unofficial art.