Collective Creativity
May 1st – July 17th, 2005
Opening Weekend: Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st, 2005
Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18
D-34117 Kassel
office [at] fridericianum-kassel.de
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 11 am – 6 pm, Closed Monday and Tuesday
www.fridericianum-kassel.de
www.siemensartsprogram.com
A cooperation between Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel and Siemens Arts Program, Munich. Curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW.
“The Collective Work cannot be foreseen as a form, only as an effort. The final appearance of the Collective Work is of no consequence at all.”
-Djuro Seder, Gorgona, 1963
Includes: “Saturday Swap Shop”: a series of conversations with participating artists, organized by B+B (London), the Singing Action “Fast Songs of Hard Work” by HORKESKART (Belgrade), the concert “Rocque Rocque” by Urucum (Macapa), the film and discussion by kleines postfordistisches Drama (Berlin/Zurich) and the lecture by Victor Mazin, Freud’s Dreams Museum (St. Petersburg).
On the 1st of May 2005 opens the exhibition Collective Creativity in the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel. Until the 17th of July it will present the works of more than 40 international artist groups – mostly from Eastern Europe, Latin America, Russia and the USA.
Collective Creativity deals with different forms of collective artistic creativity, whose protagonists share common programs, ways of life, methodologies or political standpoints. The exhibition is focused on specific kinds of social tensions that serve as a common axis around which various group activities are being organized. It is interested in the different emancipatory aspects of collective work where collaborative creativity is not only a form of resisting the dominant art system and capitalist call for specialization, but also a productive and performative criticism of social institutions and politics.
By moving away from visions of the collective understood as a homogenous, unified body in which singularities are irrevocably drawn into an anonymous mass, collective creativity is inscribed in a field of exciting, creative interactions and multidirectional and unpredictable group dynamics. Through collective and group ways of operating and their relating to each other and toward the world at large, a complex terrain is being shaped in which projects of concrete social transformations are fused with ideas of radical individuation. These overlappings and intersections are exactly what makes the unique spaces of collectivism so attractive – it seems that only within them we can imagine the realization of our potentialities. Formed in the background of accomplishing tasks which are not possible to accomplish individually, experiences of collectivity are imposed as crucial transformational forces of individuals and society.
Groups / Artists:
3NOS3 | AA Bronson | Allegoric Postcard Union | Pawel Althamer in collaboration with Artur Zmijewski and Nowolipie Group | Art & Language | B+B | BankMalbekRau | Joseph Beuys | BijaRi | Bokhorov/Gutov/Osmolovsky | Collective Actions | Contra File | Escape Program | Etcetera… | flyingCity | Freud’s Dreams Museum | General Idea | Gilbert & George | Gorgona | Group of Six Artists | Grupo de Arte Callejero | Gruppo Parole e Immagini | Guerilla Art Action Group | Dmitry Gutov | IRWIN | kleines postfordistisches Drama | Maj 75 | Moscow Portraits | Neue Slowenische Kunst | Oda Projesi | OHO | Pages | Radek Community | Mladen Stilinovic | Superflex | SKART | Taller Popular de Serigrafia | Temporary Services and Angelo | The Revolution Will Not Be Televised | Tucuman Arde Archive (Graciela Carnevale) | Urucum | Zagreb – Cultural Kapital 3000 | What is to be done?…
The exhibition will be accompanied by a reader, published by Revolver, with contributions by: Art & Language, Collective Situaciones, Charles Esche, Ljiljana Filipovic, Jon Hendricks, Brian Holmes, IRWIN, Ana Longoni, Viktor Misiano, Angelika Nollert, WHW and Stephen Wright. Designed by Dejan Krsic. German/English edition, 350 pages, two colours with illustrations, ISBN: 3-86588-089-4
Collective Creativity is a cooperation between Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel and Siemens Arts Program, Munich. Artistic directors: Rene Block and Angelika Nollert.
Curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic). WHW is an independent curatorial collective that organizes different publication, exhibition and publishing projects and also directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb, Croatia.