On&nbsp;Saturday November 23 the 0+ Space will be&nbsp;closed.

Please note

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive

Garage Archive Collection (Trips Out of Town and MANI Buchgalterium archive)

Acquired from the artist

Works on display in Garage open storage include the first five volumes of Trips Out of Town by the group Collective Actions (founded in 1976; organizers of the actions included Andrei Monastyrsky, Nikita Alexeev, Nikolai Panitkov, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Sergey Romashko, Sabine Hänsgen, and others), a key representative of Moscow Conceptualism. Each volume is a form of report on the activities of Collective Actions that includes descriptions of the actions, photo documentation, participants’ impressions, and theoretical essays. The group's actions mostly took place in various places in Moscow and Moscow region, away from urban areas (hence the title of the volumes). The best‑known location for the actions was the Kievogorskoe field near Lobnya, which was not just a regular gathering place for participants but a hermetic metaphysical space where, as if on a blank sheet of paper, the outlines of new actions would be drawn time and again. By the end of the 1980s, after completing the fifth volume of Trips Out of Town, Andrei Monastyrsky was considering winding up the Collective Actions project. The basic discursive framework had been produced and participants' interest in organizing actions has waned. Nevertheless, after the compilation of the fifth volume, Collective Actions moved on to a new stage in their history and their actions, as well as work on new volumes of Trips out of Town, have continued until the present day. 
 
 At first sight, the Trips Out of Town books seem to be an intermediate, non‑independent artifact existing between archival evidence and the actions themselves. Usually, documentation of actions or performance art is seen as something secondary which only refers back to the original work, the implication being that the authentic experience in its entirety is only available to participants and viewers at the moment of the event itself. In the case of Collective Actions, however, the book format offers one of the most all‑encompassing ways of experiencing the actions. 
 
 Both role of each participant and the point of view from which they saw what was happening played an important part in the actions. Viewers came up with very different interpretations of the experience depending on their location within the space of the action, the emotional state and thoughts with which they arrived at the place, the extent to which the organizers had explained the action, and their knowledge of the history of the group's past activities. In fact, the group’s actions were not reduced exclusively to the performative part played out in the field. Receiving an invitation, traveling to the location, waiting for the action to begin, participants' experiences during the performance of actions, and the reflection on it that followed were all constituent elements of the work. A contemporary viewer holding a volume of Trips Out of Town and freed from their own existential experience of participation is presented with a different and, in a sense, broader picture than the immediate witnesses of the action, who are themselves the subject of contemplation and experience. Each module in the display is devoted to one Trips Out of Town volume. The materials presented are divided into several groups: descriptive (textual descriptions of the actions and the organizers' comments, photo and audio documentation), narrative (participants' stories), and discursive (articles, conversations, and essays by the participants).

 Works on display in Garage open storage include the first five volumes of Trips Out of Town by the group Collective Actions (founded in 1976; organizers of the actions included Andrei Monastyrsky, Nikita Alexeev, Nikolai Panitkov, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Sergey Romashko, Sabine Hänsgen, and others), a key representative of Moscow Conceptualism. Each volume is a form of report on the activities of Collective Actions that includes descriptions of the actions, photo documentation, participants’ impressions, and theoretical essays. The group's actions mostly took place in various places in Moscow and Moscow region, away from urban areas (hence the title of the volumes). The best‑known location for the actions was the Kievogorskoe field near Lobnya, which was not just a regular gathering place for participants but a hermetic metaphysical space where, as if on a blank sheet of paper, the outlines of new actions would be drawn time and again. By the end of the 1980s, after completing the fifth volume of Trips Out of Town, Andrei Monastyrsky was considering winding up the Collective Actions project. The basic discursive framework had been produced and participants' interest in organizing actions has waned. Nevertheless, after the compilation of the fifth volume, Collective Actions moved on to a new stage in their history and their actions, as well as work on new volumes of Trips out of Town, have continued until the present day. 
 
 At first sight, the Trips Out of Town books seem to be an intermediate, non‑independent artifact existing between archival evidence and the actions themselves. Usually, documentation of actions or performance art is seen as something secondary which only refers back to the original work, the implication being that the authentic experience in its entirety is only available to participants and viewers at the moment of the event itself. In the case of Collective Actions, however, the book format offers one of the most all‑encompassing ways of experiencing the actions. 
 
 Both role of each participant and the point of view from which they saw what was happening played an important part in the actions. Viewers came up with very different interpretations of the experience depending on their location within the space of the action, the emotional state and thoughts with which they arrived at the place, the extent to which the organizers had explained the action, and their knowledge of the history of the group's past activities. In fact, the group’s actions were not reduced exclusively to the performative part played out in the field. Receiving an invitation, traveling to the location, waiting for the action to begin, participants' experiences during the performance of actions, and the reflection on it that followed were all constituent elements of the work. A contemporary viewer holding a volume of Trips Out of Town and freed from their own existential experience of participation is presented with a different and, in a sense, broader picture than the immediate witnesses of the action, who are themselves the subject of contemplation and experience. Each module in the display is devoted to one Trips Out of Town volume. The materials presented are divided into several groups: descriptive (textual descriptions of the actions and the organizers' comments, photo and audio documentation), narrative (participants' stories), and discursive (articles, conversations, and essays by the participants). 

Trips out of Town, volume 4, part

Trips out of Town, volume 1

Trips out of Town, volume 3, part 1

Trips out of Town, volume 5

Trips out of Town, volume 4, part 2

Trips out of Town, volume 3, part 2

An architect by education, Misha Le Jen turned to perform‑ance art in 1990, inspired, as he says, by the Foucault pendulum in St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. He had the idea of making a painting using the movement of the Earth. To make it, he built a flying machine he called Leplane‑a suspension device that fixed the artist's body in the air, allowing him to assume a new position in relation to the painting surface. He later defined his performances as “consistent rejection of the superfluous in favor of pure action, a striking gesture.” 

Le Jen interacts with nature and life as a combination of forces that are beyond human control, yet fascinating to study and live. He inherited his interest in the world around him and his approach to creativity as a practice that is integrated into life and natural for a human being from his grandmother, the well‑known Saratov artist Valentina Chelintsova. A positive and active view of the world‑which means the artist is full of hope and enthusiasm in their cre¬ative impulse‑seeks simplification rather than complexity, which brings Le Jen's work closer to the craft of inventors than to a fundamentally hermetic conceptualism that manifests reality. 

 To date he has created over sixty actions, some of which were documented in the eight volumes of Catalogues of Actions covering the period from 1993 to 2007.

 An architect by education, Misha Le Jen turned to perform‑ance art in 1990, inspired, as he says, by the Foucault pendulum in St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. He had the idea of making a painting using the movement of the Earth. To make it, he built a flying machine he called Leplane‑a suspension device that fixed the artist's body in the air, allowing him to assume a new position in relation to the painting surface. He later defined his performances as “consistent rejection of the superfluous in favor of pure action, a striking gesture.” 

Le Jen interacts with nature and life as a combination of forces that are beyond human control, yet fascinating to study and live. He inherited his interest in the world around him and his approach to creativity as a practice that is integrated into life and natural for a human being from his grandmother, the well‑known Saratov artist Valentina Chelintsova. A positive and active view of the world‑which means the artist is full of hope and enthusiasm in their cre¬ative impulse‑seeks simplification rather than complexity, which brings Le Jen's work closer to the craft of inventors than to a fundamentally hermetic conceptualism that manifests reality. 

 To date he has created over sixty actions, some of which were documented in the eight volumes of Catalogues of Actions covering the period from 1993 to 2007. 

Catalogues of actions

Trips out of Town, volume 2

1. Открытый доступ

Мастер

Collective Actions was founded in 1976 in Moscow. The initial group comprised Nikita Alexeev (until 1980), George Kiesewalter, Andrei Monastyrsky, Nikolai Panitkov and Lev Rubinstein. In 1979 Sergei Romashko, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich joined the group, followed by Sabina Hänsgen in 1985. The group took part in the Biennale of Dissent (Venice, 1977) and exhibited in the Russian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

Collective Actions

Misha Le Jen was born in Khvalynsk (Saratov Oblast). He graduated from the Architecture Faculty of Leningrad Engineering and Construction Institute. From 1987 to 1990 he was a member of the art group Zheltaya gora (Saratov) and from 2011 to 2024 was art director and curator of the museum and residencey Artkommunalka. Erofeev and Others. Selected solo exhibitions: Six Actions with a Ball, Pasinger Fabrik, Munich (1994), Horizon and Other Actions, Saratov Radishchev State Art Museum (1997).

Le Jen Misha

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia

2000s

Moscow Conceptualism

Unofficial art

Samizdat

Performance

1990s

Artist's book

1980s

Artist's Book

Да

Author

Open storage

7-9 years 

10-14 years 

15-17 years 

0-6 years 

Architecture

Photo

Journalism

Psychology

Music

Books in English

Family

Garage Dance

Garage.txt

Garage Screen

Stream

Contemporary Critical Thought

Directors’ series

The Garage Journal

Exhibition catalogues

Research

Children's books

Garage + Ad Marginem

Seminars, Workshops and Training

Lectures & Talks

Concerts & Performances

Film Screenings

Exhibitions

Courses

Tours

Concerts & performances

Conferences

Exhibitions & projects

News

Interview

Talks

Lecture cycles

Conferences and seminars

Book presentations

Art Guide

Garage publishing program

Sponsors, patrons, and partners

Information partners

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Artguide Editions

Garage International Publishing Program

Library events

Books in english

Russian

English

Bilingual (russian/english)

Film programs

GARAGE Club

Programs for exhibitions

Events

Garage Live

Academic program

Grants

Field research

Patronship

Garage Studios

Mosaic Music

GARAGE Student

Film festival

Film distribution

Sign language

Mental disabilities

Migration

Audio description

Tactile models

Accessibility guide

Physical accessibility

GARAGE Individual

Digital accessibility

Diversity

Events at Garage

Garage publishing program and Strelka Press 

Text

Audio

Video

Feature

Guide

GARAGE Individual +1

Research laboratories

Artistic research

Translation to russian sign language

Subtitles

Adapted tours

Quiet room

Translation to uzbek, tajik, and kyrgyz

GARAGE Premium

“We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams”

Space 1520

GARAGE Circle

Temporality

Disability

Affect

Overcoming

Body

Timelessness

Non-normative body

GARAGE Collectors Circle  

Experience of the other

Otherness

Developmental disabilities

Mental health

Trauma

Personal experience

Neural networks

Language

7-11 years

Plain language

Garage Café

The computer class schedule

Mediation

Oleg Baranov Going Down

Podcasts

Shelf of the Month. Theatrе

Publishing program page

Series of meetings with residents

Open call

Shelf of the Month. Cinema

Shelf of the Month. Modern Dance

Projects Oral History and Oral History 2.0

Visitors in a wheelchair

garage-txt

Public programs

Free

Registration required

Free for exhibition ticket holders

Paid

Booking required

Booking via phone or email is required

Booking on reception is required

Off-site projects

Architecture and design

Supervision

Museology

Philosophy

Economy

Cinematography

Critical biography

Memoirs and diaries

For Garage card holders

For children

GARAGE + Ad Marginem

GARAGE PRO

Minima

Paperback

Hardcover

Hardcover with dust jacket

Book review

Professional programs

Video review

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. GARAGE PRO Series

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. Minima Series

Catalogue of the Collection

Sort by