Paesaggi naturali e digitali nelle azioni di "Kollektivnye Dejstvija"

The present article examines the aesthetic evolution of liminal spaces in the actions of the Moscow Conceptualist group Kollektivnye Dejstvija (Collective Actions), analysing them as material semiotic borders between different communicative domains. The initial Soviet phase of the group began in 1976, while in 1989 the collective broke up. In 1995, some of its members reunited under the name [KD], and they have remained active since then. The aim of the group is to understand the nature of art beyond any socio-political conditioning. Each of the actions involves the staging of a minimalist performance, attended by a group of selected spectators-participants; most of these events are enacted outdoors, with the Kievogorskoe pole—an untilled field on the outskirts of Moscow bordered by woods—representing the main setting in the Soviet phase. Since 1980, the group’s actions have been archived through the samizdat project Poezdki za gorod (Trips out of Town), of which fifteen volumes have been produced to date. Marginal spaces prove to be particularly significant in the aesthetics of Kollektivnye Dejstvija, as their transcendence allows the artists and spectators-participants to access new theoretical and perceptual conceptualizations of reality. At the same time, semiotic borders appear as material sites where meaning is interpreted and creatively produced through sensorial dialogues with the artistic environment. While in the group’s initial phase the liminal zone is often represented by the woods separating the field of action from the ideologized urban area, since the late Eighties several digital devices have been used to amplify human possibilities of transcending conventional perception modes in the field of art. In my study, the material significance of semiotic borders in Kollektivnye Dejstvija’s actions is investigated through the theoretical frameworks of Timo Maran’s ecosemiotics and Giuliana Bruno’s research on projection in digital art.