Artist Collectives Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

RESUMO: O coletivo Gran Fury, ativo entre 1987 e 1996, permanece disseminador de conteúdo através do domínio público, que tanto sequencia quanto define sua prática. Sua trajetória permite demonstrar uma dinâmica de formação de coletivos de arte, ordenada por fenômenos agenciadores de identidade, separatistas e identificatórios, que apontam indivíduos a partir de certas características atributivas. Posicionados vis a vis nesse exceto social, tais indivíduos reconhecem-se e agrupam-se em razão das mesmas características. A arte gestada nesses lugares de exclusão tende a tornar-se pública por seus próprios meios e atuar em sentido de resistência, manobrando linguagens, materiais, suportes e formatos veiculares de obras que tanto operem quanto sedimentem o conceito de publicação de artista. ABSTRACT: Active between 1987 and 1996, Gran Fury artist collective remains a spreader of public domain contents, which both sequences and defines its practice. Its existence enable to demonstrate an art collectives formation dynamic, ordered by identity’s agency phenomenon, designative and separatist, which point to individuals out certain attributive characteristics. Positioned face to face under this social
exception, such individuals recognize each other and group themselves due to that granted characteristics. The art created in these exclusion places tends to become public by its own resources, and act on a resistence sense, maneuvering artworks languages, materials, supports and placement formats that both operate and sediment the artist
publication’s concept.

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- HIV and AIDS education, HIV/AIDS, Artist Collectives, Artists Publications

Il paper è dedicato all'analisi delle vicende del Groupe de Grasse (1940-1942), variamente composto da perseguitati politici e artisti in esilio in attesa di un visto per emigrare negli Stati Uniti, trovatisi a condividere a stretto contatto un periodo stori-co estremamente travagliato e incerto. Dopo una breve introduzione sulla storia e la struttura di vari gruppi artistici creatisi nel Sud della Francia durante la Repubblica di Vichy, si passa ad analizzare il contributo dei singoli artisti e la loro idea di collettività artistica. Si intende pertanto riflettere sui problemi storici posti da una tipologia di opere difficile da inquadrare all'interno del percorso di ogni singolo artista del gruppo. Dal punto vista metodologico si è scelto di operare un taglio eminentemente storico, sulla base di documenti inediti e testi rari provenienti dalla Stiftung Hans Arp di Berlino.

- by Alessandro Ferraro
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- Contemporary Art, Abstract Art, Modern Art, Degenerate Art

The Ana Cha Collective is a coalition of feminist scholars, artists, and filmmakers formed to interrogate the cultural world through a feminist lens and engage in a creative practice that deconstructs violent power structures. This article outlines the feminist (her-)story and politics that contextualizes the formation and political praxis of the Ana Cha Collective. The Feminist Art Movement’s points of strength and limits can reveal effective feminist political practices in the contemporary cultural sphere. The Ana Cha Collective formed to utilize radical feminist practices in cultural production for the complete liberation of the marginalized by dismantling the structures that identify and
oppress these groups. By archiving the collective’s critical and creative pedagogy, this article serves as a form of feminist counter-discourse that will hopefully spark more
collective feminist art praxis.

- by Hankyeol Song
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- Women's Studies, Feminist activism, Feminist Art, Feminist Art History

A lot has been heard in recent years about contemporary art in Athens. In the international press it is often portrayed as a vibrant scene that resists the financial crisis. By now there is even a fetishism around experiencing Athens, boosted also by large-scale artistic events that mobilize a mix of international interdisciplinary professionals from the arts and the creative industries, art-activists and so on. In this lecture I will talk particularly about artists' groups and the rise of collectives since roughly 2000. Similarly to other phenomena that the ongoing anomalous social, political and financial situation has accentuated, collectivity in art has also its own continuities and discontinuities with the years before.

- by Eva Fotiadi
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- Public Art, Art and Activism, Artist Collectives, Greek crisis

SPACE PLAN began in November 1968 with a manifesto, and the members produced work that took on styles of Minimalism. While showing work at civic halls and galleries, the members also actively attempted to organize outdoor exhibitions in and around Tottori City, for example, the Aoshima Island, an islet in the Koyama pond, or the front garden of Jinpukaku, a French Renaissance style residence that dates back to the Meiji era. Noteworthy is the Second Exhibition, which showcased Minimalist works on a grand scale in the Tottori Sand Dunes. Although the group garnered local media attention at the time, their activities were restricted to the Tottori region and therefore never became nationally famous.
How did their style, which stemmed from a modern art movement like Minimalism, evolve in the latter half of the 1960s in the local region of Tottori? This paper examined the group’s activities while tracing the circumstances surrounding the culture of Tottori during the 1960s and the 1970s, and within various historical contexts—the age of youth rebellion, Gutai’s outdoor exhibitions, the open-air sculpture exhibitions of Ube (Yamaguchi) and Suma (Kobe), Fukushima Noriyasu and the Kitashirakawa Art Village in Kyoto, and the development from Minimalism to Post Minimalism.

- by Hiroki Tsutsui
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- Land Art, 20th century Avant-Garde, Minimalism (Art), Modern and Contemporary Art

The Free Art & Technology Lab art collective, who had been championing a free and participative culture through their support of open source software, announced their closure and ‘total defeat’ in 2015 in the face of a loss of a stake in the future of the Internet. In the face of the simulacrum’s logic, Baudrillard took a similar approach through his ‘fatal’ strategy. Is there possibility for the digital technology, the Internet, and the realm of representation to still serve as avenues towards political subversion within what Baudrillard terms ‘the hyperreal’? Has the political sphere, the social, the logic of fact and the order of reason, truly disappeared, or is Baudrillard’s own theory simulational in its creation of a ‘media theology’? Does democracy still have something to offer or does its functionality lay precisely in its failures? Have we truly lost all alternatives, are we stuck in a simulacrum, or does Baudrillard underestimate the subject’s own powers of mediation and agency? Did F.A.T. Lab’s hacktivist tactics wield the media’s own logic against itself, or reinforce the simulational logic of the system they were attempting to topple? F.A.T. Lab and Baudrillard’s strategies of total defeat are the only effective strategies in combating the simulacrum and the Internet as a structure of power. It is in the total defeat that we acknowledge the failure of democracy and capitalism, rather than petitioning to its moral framework which serves to shroud its functional dysfunctionality. As we face of an increasingly absurd sociopolitical reality, perhaps we must also take a stance of ‘total defeat’ and, as per Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard, find new ‘Master-Signifiers’.

- by Axelle Van Wynsberghe
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- Critical Theory, Media Studies, New Media, Art Theory

El siguiente trabajo se inscribe en el contexto argentino de la crisis socioeconómica del 2001, un punto clave en la historia del país. En unas pocas semanas, la convertibilidad peso- dólar había desaparecido, fugas masivas de capital ocurrían, los bancos habían bloqueado los retiros de dinero, el presidente de la nación se había retirado de la Casa Rosada en helicóptero y comenzaban a emerger manifestaciones, protestas, saqueos y robos en muchas partes del país. La situación económica permeó completamente la sociedad, que fue forzada a reformularse, adaptarse y organizarse a niveles mucho menores. La crisis afecto cada ámbito y esfera argentina; sufrió tanto la industria como la cultura y el arte, dejando a casi la mitad de los argentinos bajo la línea de pobreza. Un fenómeno particular en el sector anteriormente mencionado fue la conformación o solidificación de colectivos y grupos artísticos y el gran caudal de proyectos que los conectaban con públicos y espacios mucho más abiertos que los de épocas anteriores. Con el objetivo de abordar las problemáticas, los proyectos y el impacto de los colectivos artísticos en la esfera cultural argentina, en este trabajo se explorarán tres ejes que sostienen el marco en el cual se inserta el tema.
El primer eje abordará las consecuencias de las situaciones de crisis en las manifestaciones artísticas y culturales a nivel general y luego focalizándose en los efectos en diferentes países latinoamericanos. Esto resulta importante para plantear una base de elementos o secuelas en común que se pueden manifestar en una variedad regiones y épocas. Asimismo, podremos explorar los casos argentinos antes de su última crisis en el 2001, para nuevamente trazar paralelos entre las dos situaciones.
El segundo eje busca explorar las relaciones entre los artistas y las audiencias adentrándose en los albores de la estética relacional y el arte participativo. Este eje conceptual, permitirá abordar textos de crítica de arte, incorporando al proyecto vocabulario, referencias y nociones que servirán para describir e interpelar al tema central de la tesis, los colectivos artísticos, de manera más precisa. Si bien no todos los grupos se involucran en prácticas participativas, podemos encontrar una vasta cantidad que sí lo hacen. El cambio paradigmático en este sistema de producción también modifica la concepción de la obra de arte: el resultado final no es lo único valorado, sino también se puede tomar en cuenta el proceso. Para comprender las acciones de los colectivos artísticos argentinos del 2001 es importante tener en cuenta las nociones de autoría como también las relaciones con el
público/participante: ambas provistas por el bagaje teórico de la estética relacional. El énfasis reside en estudiar la manera en la cual los artistas colaboran con una variedad de personas en diferentes disciplinas tales como la música o la ciencia e inclusive con aquellos fuera de cualquier campo artístico o cultural.
El eje final se adentra en la conformación de los colectivos en sí. Trazando un panorama general de los primeros grupos artísticos en la historia, se repasan una serie de prácticas colaborativas y se ejemplifican en una variedad de proyectos de trabajo común. La idea es tener una idea clara de las distintas maneras de producir grupalmente para luego examinar bajo esta luz a los colectivos artísticos argentinos.
Mediante estos tres ejes, se busca tomar en cuenta la producción critica, literaria e histórica del tema para lograr un mayor entendimiento de esta nueva era de elaboración artística, colaboración y vinculación aún más profunda del arte con la vida cotidiana. Las ideas servirán como un apoyo para luego analizar detenidamente las acciones, identidades, objetivos y procesos de cuatro colectivos argentinos que surgen en el periodo que rodea a la crisis del 2001. Se busca, mediante los lineamientos generales, dejar un mapa de lecturas, conceptos, contextos y situaciones que nos permitan abordar el tema principal del trabajo desde un punto de vista interdisciplinario, variado y claro.

- by Carolina Repetto
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- Contemporary Art, Argentina History, Economic Crisis, Artist Collectives

Clowns always speak of the same thing, they speak of hunger; hunger for food, hunger for sex, but also hunger for dignity, hunger for identity, hunger for power. In fact, they introduce questions about who commands, who protests, and who laughs, all necessary dispositions in a precarious age of neoliberal, enterprise culture. This 2011 essay is a chapter in the book Imagining resistance: Visual culture and activism in Canada, edited by Kirsty Robertson and J. Keri Cronin (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2011). pp 38-59.
ISBN 9781554583119

- by gregory sholette
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- Political Economy, Aesthetics, Social Sciences, Art Economics and Markets

With the advent of psychedelic rock the medium of choice of musicians is not strictly sonic anymore; musicians of the Sixties begin to show a vibrant vocation towards a wider, more complex and ductile interaction with art forms and the very concept of Art. In this brief era visual artists become interested in rock music, they start to produce art inspired by music and, viceversa, musicians become more and more involved in the visual aspect of their work. The mid and late Sixties then represent a period of seminal renaissance for Album Cover Art and Poster Art: LP covers strive to translate the message of the music they wrap in visual terms. Conversely, psychedelic rock tries to put the amazing visions triggered by psychedelic drugs into music. Focusing on posters, album covers and the innovative experimentations of light shows, this article brings to light an often unsung, but definitely essential, trait of psychedelic culture: its holistic and synesthetic disposition - a sort of mission: to bring art forms back together, to put Art in everyday life and in the lives of everyone. Psychedelic rock and psychedelic visual arts then become ideal platforms for an innovated and innovative language that does not indulge with art’s artificial categorizations, but embraces the synergetic possibilities of all its different forms.

- by Camilla Aisa
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- Music, Performing Arts, Popular Music Studies, Popular Music

Sohl Lee's "Realism for Democracy in the Global Cold War: South Korea's Minjung Art" was written as part of the exhibition catalogue From Vietnam to Berlin, held at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju in 2018. It charts the concept of "realism" as manifested in two related but distinct concepts of "hyonsil (reality)" and "hyonjang (site)" during the 1980s.

- by Sohl Lee
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- Cold War and Culture, South Korea, Art Theory and Politics, Art and Politics

Rethinking Collective: Mapping on the Development of Woodblock Printing Collective in Inter-Asian Context / The Editorial Board 再思「集體」：圖繪亞際木刻版畫集體的發展／編輯部 The Left-Wing Spirit of the Indonesian Artist Collective Taring Padi / CHEN Wei-Lun... more

- by Krystie Ng and +2
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- Self-Organization, East Asia, Printmaking, Zines

Selama 10 tahun menegaskan keberadaannya sebagai sebuah ruang alternatif yang mempopulerkan gagasan-gagasan segar dengan medium fotografi, sebagai kelompok seniman MES 56 juga menciptakan proyek-proyek kolektif yang mampu menerobos ke dalam wilayah seni rupa kontemporer di Indonesia. Menelusuri kembali karya-karya yang mereka ciptakan, kita dihadapkan pada pertanyaan mendasar tentang relasi kita kita dalam kehidupan modern dengan terpaan produk-produk visual dalam kehidupan masyarakat kontemporer, juga bagaimana menyikapi mesin-mesin pencipta produk tersebut.

- by Alia Swastika
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- Artist Collectives, Urbanisme, Seni Rupa, Fotografi

The internationally known phenomena of Slovak conceptual art is not only the case of Július Koller, Alex Mlynárčik and Stano Filko. As I show in my study it could be seen as the compact movement between 1963-1993, closely attached to the urban and cultural growth of Slovak capital city Bratislava, connecting not less than 30 underground artists. This text was presented as keynote speach during the international conference entitled "Could We Speak of Bratislava Conceptualism?" organized by Kunsthalle Bratislava (November 2nd, 2015). The text book which includes all the papers, round table and transcripts of discussions is published in 2021 by The Peter Michal Bohúň Gallery in Liptov Region and Kunsthalle Bratislava and can be ordered through www.galerialm.sk.

A small yet influential strain of independent contemporary curatorial practice has emerged in Southeast Asia, which is performing (expanded) art historical functions. This mode of independent curating now constitutes an important base for exciting new research—making use of diverse archives as well as other methodologies—to study the often little-known histories of the region's modern arts, including its architecture, cinema, and photography. That such research is taking place in the context of independent contemporary curatorial practice is significant because it locates modern art history largely outside of large and state-funded institutions, including museums and universities, thus enabling the development and proliferation of art historical research in areas of Southeast Asia, including its mainland sub-regions, which have comparatively little funding and official infrastructure for the arts. This article explores the emerging practice of independent curating as (expanded) art history in Southeast Asia, through comparative discussion of three case studies: the Roung Kon Project in Phnom Penh, which researches histories of cinema in Cambodia; the Buddhist Archive of Photography in Luang Prabang, which researches histories of photography in Laos; and Spirit of Friendship in Ho Chi Minh City, which researches histories of artist groups in Vietnam.

- by Roger Nelson
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- Southeast Asian Studies, Contemporary Art, Modern Art, Cambodia

Unlike post-communist Europe that underwent a similar process of economic reform, the emergence of independent and alternative art spaces in post-dol moi Vietnam, as well as the development of contemporary art in general, had a gradual... more

Much has been written about the disruptive effect of digital technologies on the music industries since the emergence of the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Napster in 1999. This literature review takes as its starting point that the challenge facing the music industries – an example of what Christensen and Raynor (2003) call ‘disruptive innovation’ – is primarily one of business models, rather than technology. In reviewing the literature on collaborative, co-operative and collective business models, I aim to identify and define key terms; to cite the various collective, co-operative and collaborative models in the music industries that have been cited by journalists; to analyse their underlying business models as far as possible; and to define the parameters of future research. Although it is only in its early stages, I identify Imogen Heap’s Mycelia – a new collaborative model that, with its pioneering use of blockchain technology, represents a new economic model – as perhaps the most promising possibility for the future.

- by Marcus O'Dair
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- Entrepreneurship, Business Models, Co-operatives, Artist Collectives

A presente dissertação é fruto de uma investigação sobre formas e possibilidades de atuação política na cidade contemporânea. Em contraponto direto à crise de projeto e da representatividade política instaurada na contemporaneidade, as ações de urbanismo tático pareciam inicialmente responder aos anseios desta investigação. Tratam-se de atos apropriativos e de ativação de espaços da cidade movidos pelas próprias populações. Mas uma análise dos discursos políticos produzidos pelos agentes do caso de urbanismo tático desenvolvido no Largo da Batata (SP), dão a ver a fraqueza de atos baseados na oposição entre sociedade civil e Estado. Explicitamos de que forma estas ações são atravessadas pelo poder biopolítico e pelas estruturas da cidade neoliberal. Mas se a cartografia complexa e microfísica das relações de poder contemporâneo incide sobre os corpos e vidas de todos e de cada um, então uma ação política não necessariamente deve se dar em afronta ao aparelho de Estado. Assim vemos emergir de uma miríade de práticas sua potência micropolítica, dentre elas, a arte no regime estético. Seu caráter eminentemente dissensual produz fissuras na partilha do sensível e, em contato com o espectador emancipado, possibilita a produção de singularidades, a contrapelo das experiências massificantes que predominam nas grandes cidades contemporâneas. Ao final desta dissertação nos debruçamos sobre as relações entre corpo, política e cidade nos trabalhos artísticos do coletivo Opavivará!, apresentados de forma ensaística.

- by Jacopo Galimberti
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- Guy Debord, Antonio Negri, Pop Art, Individuation

מאמר המסכם את פעילותה של קבוצת 'הם' והדאדא הפסיכיאטרי

- by TAL SLUTZKER
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- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Art Theory, Contemporary Art

An economic rationality, dating back to the early days of capitalism in the 18th Century, has since the financial crisis 2007-08 reached new dimensions: across work and life, we are counting hours, optimising our profiles, investing in an uncertain future.
In the arts, the production conditions have changed due to austerity policies, a thorough reform of artistic education – the Bologna Process – and an increasing number of professional artists in the field.The dissertation departs from an analysis of how, since the implementation of the Bologna Process, young artists in Denmark and its neighbouring countries are educated to become workers of the future. Based on a reading of assessments, schedules and documentation of ECTS-points given at higher artistic educations, the dissertation displays a rationality of self-accountancy and economisation of life, but also an expanded notion of what we can perceive as artistic work.
Furthermore, the dissertation interprets the way performance artists currently organise in collectives as a form of response to increased economisation and individualisation. Artists restructure their everyday together: make schedules for freelance lives, include ‘private’ maintenance work or redistribute money beyond the nation state. These art workers are here understood as both living in precarity and on the same time being politically agile subjects - especially when signing ‘in concert’.
By synthesizing theory from both historical materialism and feminist theory about unrecognised work, the dissertation contributes to Cultural Studies with its own theory on a materialist aesthetics of production; it proposes that the artwork is co-created by economical, temporal and social circumstances. On the same time, the dissertation affirms that production conditions within the arts are performative; that artists are powerful worker subjects who do have influence on their own conditions.

- by Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt
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- Feminist Theory, Performance Studies, Performance Art, Bologna Process

Artist collectives and other forms of collaborative work - unions, workshops, circles, groups, partnerships or teamwork - are by no means new in art practices around the world. Yet artists' contemporary practices display a renewed interest in these working methods. In my Master’s thesis, I concentrated on the phenomenon of artists working together on a long-term basis, under one collective name, in forms that they call collectives or studios. What unfolded through a discourse analysis of a collection of interviews was an understanding of contemporary collectivity from the perspective of the artists – defining their practices as locally situated and simultaneously globally connected.

near Sidoarjo, East Java, the world's largest mud volcano began to erupt. This eruption, the result of the blowout of a natural gas well owned by PT Lapindo Brantas, led to a mudflow that at its peak spewed mud at rates as high as 160,000 cubic meters per day. The devastation caused by this disaster damaged thousands of houses, agricultural areas, plantations, and over twenty factories. With no place to work or live, tens of thousands of people were forced to leave behind their homes. While thousands have been affected by this disaster, little compensation has been given to victims due to Lapindo's unwillingness to admit fault and the government's failure to intervene. [1] In May 2010, in order to help the people of Sidoarjo commemorate the fourth anniversary of this disaster, Taring Padi, a political art collective from Yogyakarta, Central Java joined the people of Sidoarjo for a four-day collaborative project. Known as "Reflection in the Mud," this project focused on reviving the collective memory of the Sidoarjo community. Taring Padi invited participants to communicate their feelings about the loss and sorrow caused by the Lapindo disaster while encouraging individuals not to dwell on their pain but rather to Art Map!

- by Katherine Bruhn
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- Art and Politics, DIY culture, Artist Collectives, Indonesian contemporary art

Based on a pamphlet published by Temporary Services in 2002 titled "Group Work: A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices," this publication provides a multitude of perspectives on the theme of Group Work by practitioners of artistic group practice from 1960s to the present. The publication presents interviews with Canadian collective General Idea; Chicago collective Haha; the dutch punk band The Ex; the Vienna-based Wochen Klausur; Croatian curatorial group What, How & for Whom (WHW); Funkadelic album designer Pedro Bell; and Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D); along with essays on The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Womens Liberation Union (better known as Jane) and the anarchist Guerilla street theater group The Diggers. A list of words used to describe group practices and a working list of hundreds of collectives from the last four decades rounds out the publication.

- by Brett A Bloom
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- Group work, Artist Collectives, Printed Matter

Let’s ponder the picnic. Most of us take this form of frivolity for granted, spontaneously dashing out to the park with a blanket and a few provisions whenever we fancy it (as long as the weather complies). Not so in Tokyo. It happens that this modest activity is revered here, which is not all that surprising considering that green patches are scant in the metropolis. With this in mind, a whole movement sprang up and after more than a decade is still going strong. Approaching the subject from various angles and sometimes involving the positioning of small, mobile tracts of lawn (of often wondrous shape) in different places, it is all simply about facilitating the glorious act of picnicking.

- by Francesco Spampinato
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- Architecture, Contemporary Art, Urban Studies, Art And Ecology

Circling the Square documents the landscape of the recent uprising and the political climate that engendered it from many perspectives, ranging from an architectural analysis of Maidan, to documentation of an overtly criminal personal performance of solidarity in the Russian Federation, to an account of the occupation and attempted re-organization of the Ministry of Culture by a horizontal assembly of cultural workers. Despite the confusion in much of the world media and international left, these artists, writers and organizations are decidedly radical, negotiating a strange but critical position that recognizes the rising tide of jingoism that accompanies the threat of invasion as well as the opportunities opened up by Yanukovich’s collapse. The result has a decided lyricism that extends beyond a dry headline or inky propaganda.

- by Matthew Whitley and +2
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- Social Movements, Anarchism, Communism, Protest

Frente 3 de Fevereiro (São Paolo, Brazil, 2004) Frente 3 de Fevereiro is a collective founded in 2004 following the murder of Flavio Sant’Ana, a young black student, by São Paulo police. Based in São Paulo, the group comprises 21 members... more

- by Daniel Lima
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- Contemporary Art, Racism, Racismo, Artist Collectives

Artists' Association and Don Blanche. The social scientific scholarly literature on arts funding, precarious employment and community economies provides an entry point for our critique of the creative class theory for its neglect of grassroots struggles to produce and fund spaces of collective artistic experimentation. We argue, that local, non-capitalist and collectivist spaces, where artists can share resources, collaborate and build an alternative community cultural economy, are essential for sustaining the cultural sector because they assist individual creatives to performatively resist neo-liberal tendencies naturalized in the creative city script.

- by Zara Hussain
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- Creative City, Artist Collectives, Artists

The timeline that you will find in the following centrefold charts a history of Australia’s women-only collective and collaborative art projects, locating contemporary practices within a fertile landscape of women’s galleries, curatorial initiatives, publications, discussion networks and group art practices.
The dates and names listed here are drawn from my doctoral thesis on women’s art collectives and collaboration in Australia (1970–2010) that was completed at Sydney’s UNSW Art & Design in 2014, and from the deep awareness that this history is largely unwritten and inaccurately recorded. Additions and amendments are warmly welcomed (send to: Louise R Mayhew: l.mayhew@unsw.edu.au).
A parallel timeline of Australian feminist art history, with a greater focus on exhibitions and solo practices, exists on Wikipedia. More entries, and more contributors, are always welcome to the project (Australian feminist art timeline: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feminist_art_timeline).

- by Louise R Mayhew
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- Art History, Women Artists, Feminist Art History, Artist Collectives

This article explores what alternative, or artist-led, spaces are in Mumbai today and their role within the city's artworld. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two alternative spaces, it argues that these are artist attempts to exercise agency in their work for an uncertain market context. In other words, these spaces are a strategy for artists to exercise control over their work in an uncertain art market, and a means to counterbalance their dependence on galleries in their careers. Furthermore, artists do so through collectivist practices. These spaces, I argue, challenge models of artistic and neoliberal work that privilege autonomy, independence, and isolation, as if artists were self-contained silos of productive creative activity and will. Artists instead, in these spaces, insist on the importance of social bonds and connection as a challenge to the instrumentalization and divisive nature of market-led demands on art practice and the model of the solo genius artist-producer. At the same time, their collective activities are oriented towards supporting artists' individual future market success, suggesting that artist-led spaces are not separate from the art market, and should be considered within the same analytical frame.

- by Olga K Sooudi
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- Anthropology, Contemporary Art, Sociology of Arts, Artistic Research

Relatoría del primer evento Boomerang, el cual fué realizado bajo el método del Open Space en el espacio independiente La Quiñonera.

- by Boomerang Red and +1
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- Latin American Art, Artist Collectives, Community Art, Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano

During the twentieth century, two movements in Cuban art played a critical role in creating an expanded space for societal debate and cultural expression: the artistic avant-garde and the Afro-Cuban movement. Initially flourishing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these collective efforts took on new forms in the changed environment after 1959. After the Revolution, conditions for cultural production changed with the official position that art should serve ideological functions, but both avant-garde and Afro-Cuban production continued, at the risk of conflict with the state. In the face of a restrictive state that sought to control such expressions, the Afro-Cuban movement and avant-garde art collectives developed along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, lines.

- by Zoya Kocur
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- Cuban Studies, Artist Collectives, Cuban art, Estudios Afrocubanos

This paper examines Hizz, a collective started in Cairo, Egypt, that
acts as record label, venue, gallery and artist residency. Through
analysing the music that Hizz produces, its spaces and
distribution methods, its organisation as a collective, and its
international connections, it argues that Hizz creates new forms
of social engagement and defiant politics in Cairo, thereby
disrupting engrained aesthetic and social patterns. Hizz reflects a
post-revolution creativity, pitted against an authoritarian regime
and an elitist neo-liberal dance music scene. The aesthetic of Hizz
incorporates ambient, noise and post-punk, Sufi mawlid music,
mahraganat, and chaabi, in a way that enacts a conversation
between different sonic elements in their surroundings. Such
local relevance sees Hizz defying the strict class boundaries that
define Egyptian society. This paper combines two years of field
work in Cairo following the Hizz collective since their inception in
2017, further interviews, and literature on sound and space.

- by Tucker Wiedenkeller
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- Ethnomusicology, Soundscape Studies, Resistance (Social), Music Aesthetics

In conjunction with the exhibition ‘Carving Reality: Contemporary Woodcut Exchange Exhibition from East Asia’, the publication you hold in your hands is being issued as a compilation of research on the development of printmaking and... more

- by Krystie Ng
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- Art History, History of Printmaking, Collectivism, Artist Collectives
- by Jacopo Galimberti
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- Communism, Sociology of Arts, Giorgio Agamben, Authorship

In late 1968, a collective from the Lower East Side of New York City started to distribute self-published pamphlets and magazines that outlined the operations of what Alan W. Moore has called an “art gang”. Based upon a redefinition of identity to serve a radical anti-capitalist purpose, the avant-garde group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAWMF) and one of its splinter successors, the International Werewolf Conspiracy (IWWC), articulated an intuitive discourse about how to alter the existing conditions of the world. Against the nationalist notions of what it meant to be ‘American’, they mobilized a collage of images that included Native Americans, hippie aesthetics, and futurist-inspired militancy. Along with the development of the organizational concept of “affinity group”, UAWMF attempted to redefine the American identity as an individual and collective category, its hybrid cut-up resulting, at first, in the ‘motherfucker’ as an honor-bound member of a gang and, finally, as a monster represented by the figure of the werewolf. At first, the ‘motherfucker’ attempted to enact an open confrontation with the nation state, tying identity to a certain territory and a certain people, but after police crackdowns on gang activity led to the dissolution of UAWMF, some of its ex-members reformulated the confrontation in conspiratorial terms. The IWWC described its members as revolutionaries in disguise, coming to involve the body in the transformation of an identity whose key elements would be fundamentally opposed to those given by society. This essay will focus on the critiques implied in redefining the identity of an “American” within the framework of avant-garde rejection of society at large, tracing the different implications and limitations of creating a new identity wholly opposed to capitalism.