The goal of this paper is to investigate the ways in which artistic communities generate joint artistic visions and form collective identities through communication. We examine three cases of St. Petersburg artistic communities, members of which intensely interact and strive for unique collective identities important for their positioning in the contemporary art scene, though are not always able to construct such. Comparing different patterns of the day-to-day communication process of the communities, the study shows that to develop artistic ideas together it is not enough for artists to join in one place and to regularly interact with each other. Certain communication properties are crucial, including types of emotional ties, volume of collective reflexion and narration, extent to which norms of communication in the art-world are followed, character of spatial localization. Consideration of ongoing micro-level communication activities gives more insight into the logics of joint artistic vision and identity d