Das Kollektive in der Kunst zwischen Autor*innenschaft, Arbeitsorganisation, Systemkritik und Gesellschaftsentwurf
Authors: Mader Rachel 
Published: April 2022

At the latest with the designation of Indonesian group of artists, ruangrupa, as collective co-directors of documenta fifteen in 2022, the collective has arrived at the centre of the art world. This notion includes not only the organizational form of a group, but also designates a specific mode of cooperating with outsiders, of reflecting and of cultivating appearances. In their curatorial approach, ruangrupa present an extremely comprehensive conceptualisation of the collective, in which the various collective aspirations observable in the art field, which have been spreading for some time now, are condensed. As early as the 1990s, there has been, in the art world, an increase in individual facets of the collective. This is evidenced not only by the growing differentiation between different forms of collective associations, which can hardly be represented in a typology anymore; the turn towards the collective is also reflected in its being addressed in exhibitions, which in turn often refer to theoretical considerations derived from the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, or sociology, interpreting the ›collective turn‹ as a ›sign of the times‹. Art-historically speaking, the examination of the collective is a relatively young phenomenon which exhibits a range of subject-specific peculiarities. While art-historical classification, in particular, retains fundamental reservations about this ›unconventional‹ artistic working mode (Thurn 1991, Stahlhut 2019), rather more recent, cultural studies approaches tend to put forward typologies based on such notions as complicity (Ziemer 2013) or collaboration (Schneider 2006). In all these contributions, authorship is the central ›axis‹ of analysis. However, the breaking up of individual authorship, which in the visual arts remained virtually unchallenged for a very long time, to make room for collective associations, has been neither the only nor the most important reason, in recent decades, for artists to associate collectively. The rejection of a ›singular‹ notion of creation is nevertheless often introduced as the most important theoretical-analytical reference; social factors, by contrast, which have accompanied or even promoted the spread of the phenomenon, are often pointed out only selectively, if at all. Well-founded discussions of select examples, or instances of reasonably systematic contextualisation, may only be found from the mid-2000s onwards (e. g. Lind 2007). And it was only in the 2010s that art historians and scholars from other disciplines became interested in collective working modes. In their attempts to clarify and classify this trend, whose reality can no longer be gainsaid owing to its omnipresence, most publications and events initially started from a rather broad, and thus vague, understanding of the collective. Nevertheless, the tension between the creative individual and the collective remained central to the narrative put forward in numerous contributions. Those texts originating from artistic and/or curatorial practice – i. e., from the art world itself – often were written in a legitimating style which, combined as it often was with inventive text and image elements, appeared intended confidently to position collective forms of organisation (cf. Baukrowitz 1994; Bianchi 1999; Block/Nollert 2005). Based on this, the diversity of the formats that have since been established was emphasised, as were the advantages of this mode of working and organising. So far, there has been hardly any question as to the social structure within which this mode of working has been able to gain its considerable resonance; neither have scholars investigated how the individual groups relate to their political and social framework, what kind of self-image they derive from this, or how they relate the ›we‹ they have created to the group’s individual members. Against this backdrop, the present article proposes an interpretation of collective authorship as a complex and dynamic constellation of elements that develops and positions itself within a field of tension generated by the various notions of authorship, the organisation of work, criticism of the prevailing system, and competing models of society. The notion of a ›constellation‹ appears particularly suitable here because it suggests a ›bigger picture‹, yet at the same time allows to crystallise, for concrete situations (such as specific collective associations), »the elements of their respective special relationship, and what may conceivably emerge from them in concrete terms« (Mersch 2015, 166). The present article outlines and traces these relationships based on a selection of such collective associations, intending to show where and how – despite specific contextual difference – common concerns and overarching trends may be identified. This, ultimately, results in a complex reading of those individual phenomena.