Artist Collectives: History, Organization, and Politics

Alan Moore and I will be running a two-day workshop on artist collectives tomorrow and Friday. Here's the information on it.

You wanna know about artist collectives? We can tell you all about em... even better if over beers at Ruigoord

Artist Collectives: History, Organization, and Politics
September 26-27th, 2013

Artists work in groups. These contingent collective formations change shape according to the necessities of artists’ lives. Collective process then is a key question in political and economic organization, facilitating autonomy from the art system and resistance to dominant market mechanisms. Despite the commonsense understanding of artists as independent entrepreneurs, the economy of artistic production does not conform to the model of most kinds of business. Artistic production is supported by a mixed economy of which the market for commodity art is only part. While the organizational structure of artistic work in groups has not been much studied, this workshop engages with the question of collectivity among artists. Working collectively is about making a living. But modalities of collectivity are also a prime concern of those who want to remake the world, to join the great issues of the day, and to find a reason to work at all. 

The first day of this course will take place at firstsite in Colchester and will focus on approaches for studying artist collectives and historical examples. The second day will take the form of a drifting seminar in London, engaging with collaboratively run artist spaces and collectives.

More information / background
Art Spaces Archives Project
Groups & Space 
Art Gangs
Minor Compositions