32nd Seminar. Moscow Conceptualism and its Audience: toward the Sociology of Marginality

June 21, 2023

Speaker: Anna Pismanik (HSE University)

The historiography of Moscow Conceptualism, in its current form, practically avoids the question of the mechanisms of its canonization. The attempts made very often are biased and do not take into account either the orientation of conceptualism towards constructing its audience or the role of this audience in the process of artistic production. At the same time, those features seem to have the same origin  the marginal community's craving for structuring through self-description that legitimizes this community. This paper is an attempt to reflect on the emergence of such collective auto-definitions.