Kabakov

Kabakov challenged the status of paint as “an exception realm of manual mastery” when he pierced a big nail through the surface of a painting call Who Hammered This Nail? (1970)…For the first time in alternative Soviet art these anti-aesthetical works by Kabakov challenged the notion that art has to reflect the sublime and that there is no place in it for the profane….Instead of promoting the idea of action as a sufficient creative gesture, he would ask Moscow artists, poets, and friends to come to a vast, empty country field to blow up balloons, appear and disappear in forest or lie down in a ditch.  These “voyagers into nothingness” or “empty actions” served as remedies from urban pressures and identified emptiness as the main characteristic of Soviet existence.

In a different essay:

How do the inhabitants of these places relate to this feeling of emptiness, to this restlessness?

Something like four forms of relations can be distinguished.  The first is to attempt, in general, not to notice emptiness with one's consciousness, to live "naturally" in it and to consider all events, causes, and connections of life in emptiness simply "as they are," natural and necessary.

The second is to consider this void-like state unworthy and unacceptable for a person, for human life.  In this case, all possible projects and reforms, from economic to legal, are necessary in order to change this place and the living conditions of the local people by a path of construction, displacements, labor, and new reforms.

The third relationship is mystico-religious, according to which this place of emptiness and insecurity is extremely useful for the human soul.  Precisely here, in this existence-less place -- the place of "evil, lies, and non-existence" -- it is easier to be save to experience "heaven heights," to search for and find high truth.

The fourth is simply to see this place as it is in face and describe it as a doctor might describe the history of an illness with which he is terminally afflicted.

Medical Hermeneutics - Soviet Conceptualism

One of this dialogues was translated and published in german, so you can read it, it was about freedom, it is called "contraceptive conversation about freedom". In this dialogue we were discussing one idea of performance. The Performance was: we make big balls of snow in wintertime, then we move with big balls, each man and woman has one ball, [sitting and] holding in a flat in a room, around big table, each has a ball in front of him or her, and then we must speak, only one rule: we do not speak like men, but we have to imagine us to be gods. And in process of speaking, each of participants must observe the process of melting of the snowball. (illustrates) Because: form of ball is absolute form, ideal, at first we identify with this ideal form, in the beginning we are gods, we created our own worlds, like each of us had created the universe. But, because we are sitting in a warm room, the balls will melt and we have to think about this. And speak [about melting]? No, the question is, how this process willl influence our speech. And of course, at the end, when balls are absolutely melted, when we have only dirt in our hands and this uncomfortable feeling in our trousers, we are men, not gods anymore, we have lost our divinity.

We didn`t realize this performance, because thinking about it we deeply meditated about this idea, so it was not neccessary to realize. But the idea of this not realized performance did absolutely influence our work. You can read it in the catalogue of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, it is a book edited for our exhibition in 1990.