Product Description: Since Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society...read more

Product Description: Empty Zones is a sensitive exploration of Andrei Monastyrski's contemplative and complex work, starting from his foundation and involvement in the Collective Actions in the 1970s all the way to his more recent work. This volume includes original visual and textual documentations of Trips out of Town and selected video-stills from Podjachev's YouTube Channel as well as the artist's photographic Earth Works...read more

The fictitious hero of this 1984 installation is a lonely dreamer who develops an impossible project: to fly alone in cosmic space. But this dream is also an individual appropriation of a collective Soviet project and the official Soviet propaganda connected to it. Having built a makeshift slingshot, the hero apparently flies through the ceiling of his shabby room and vanishes into space. The miserable room and the primitive slingshot suggest the reality behind the Soviet utopia, in which where cosmic vision and the political project of the Communist revolution are seen as indissoluble.The Man who Flew into Space from His Apartment also raises questions of authorship in modernity. All of Kabakov's work is made in the name of other, fictitious artists. This reveals a hidden rule of the modern art system: only an artist who doesn't want to be an artist or who doesn't even know that he is an artist is a real artist--just as only an artwork that does not look like an artwork is a real artwork. The installation is a narrative, the documentation of a fictitious event.Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press.

Product Description: This publication presents the first comprehensive overview of the German collaborative Fischer/El Sani. Nine of their most important films, installations and photographic works are featured, all of which emphasize the duo’s ongoing commitment to dismantling and re-appropriating Modernist architecture...read more