Moscow Concept 1985

Moscow Concept 1985
Performance| Poetry| Studios
Video Pieces / Re-Edition Günter Hirt / Sascha Wonder

Video pieces with

Nikita Alexeev, Joseph Backstein, Erik Bulatov, Ivan Chuikov, Collective Actions / Kollektivnye deistviya, Ilya Kabakov, Andrei Monastyrski, Irina Nakhova, Vladimir Naumets, Dmitri Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, Toadstool/Mukhomor, Oleg Vassiliev, Vadim Zakharov

Günter Hirt & Sascha Wonders: MOSCOW CONCEPT 1985

PERFORMANCE /POETRY/STUDIOS Re Edition, Wuppertal: EDITION S PRESS 2021

In the 1970s and 1980s, an alternative art scene emerged in Moscow which developed its activities beyond censorship and the state's cultural establishment: Most notably these activities took place in apartments, studios and in nature. A "domestic culture of the avant-garde" developed within this circle of friends and artists. It drew an imaginative and creative energy from this paradoxically intimate publicity. Texts, images and objects provided the occasion for a constant artistic exchange which in turn assumed the charac ter of a performative self-staging

The re-edition at hand makes the video pieces -which were recorded in 1985 - accessible again in a digital format and likewise en ables a new examination of these historical recordings. Poets and artists who have since achieved international renown are once more to be seen in the artistic milieu in which they began their work.

In addition to two DVDs subtitled in English and German this S PRESS mediabox contains three accompanying booklets with transcripts of the video tracks and brief biographies of the artists.

More than 30 vears after the first edition of these video pleces on tape the editors Günter Hirt and Sascha Wonders reflect not only on their significance for the aesthetics of Moscow conceptuallsm, but also upon the principles of their own documentary approach. It was their aim to archive these specific artistic situa tlons that otherwise would have been excluded from the official cultural memory.

A postcard with video stilla from each of the artistio pieces shown on the DVDs is added as a publisher's reminiscence of the original promocard published by 8 PRESS in 1987.
EDITION S PRESS An Editorial Reprise

o/o Verlag Wolfgang Mohrhenn, Wuppertal S PRESS, founded in the late 1960s as an independant publishing project for audio art on tape, finished business in 2005 after the sudden death of Michael Koehler who had been running S PRESS since the mid-1970s. Today, the 8 PRES8/Michael Koehler Archive can be visited c/o Akademie der Künste/Berlin. Several of the original S PRESS titles were published by Wolfgang Mohrhenn/Wuppertal who had been S PRBS8 partner since 1980. Apart from the video book "Allen Ginsberg on Tour" (1983) a special mention should be giventotitles such as “Kulturpalast"by Günter Hirt and Sascha Wonders comprising of a book, an audio cassette plus a card antholory of poetic taxts (1985).Subsequently "Moskau Moskau" a video documentation was pub lished on VHS tape with an accompanying booklet (1987). The latter consisted of re cordings from the contemporary, avant garde Moscow art and literary scene. In 1992, a fur ther package came out entitled "Lianosowo" It dealt with the fore- runners of conceptu alistio aesthetios in the unofficial culture during the 1980s and 1960s.

The resoundindly positive response to the historie Moscow video recordings at inter national exhibitions and conferences coupled with the encouragement given by Sabine Hänsgen and the research project on perfor ance art in Eastern Burope at the Univer sity of Zurich prompted 8 PRESS co-publish er Wolfgang Mohrhenn to digitalise these historic recordings and publish them in an enhanced form as a trilingual mediapackage -thus reviving S PRE8S as a label for re-edi tions of historical S PRESS publications.