Stewardship in the Artistic Practice of the Collective Actions Group

The author examines the discursive creative practice of the conceptual performance art group Collective Actions (Kollektivnye deistviia, abbreviated “KD”) during the post-Stalinist Soviet era with a focus on the group’s activities between 1976 and 1981. For KD, documents evidencing and arising out of its performance-based actions co-constituted the works rather than merely representing and documenting them. Subsequent acts to preserve and present these documents for unknown future audiences represent the introduction of stewardship as part of the group’s art practice. This article traces the development of this stewardship practice by reviewing the role of documents in three of the group’s significant early actions and examining the group’s multi-volume self-published history Trips Out of Town. The author argues that compiling the first volume of Trips Out of Town in 1980 codified KD’s interest in the veracity of documents and a desire to use its “unofficial” art practice to explore the relationship between documents, archiving, and institutionalization.