Unity makes strength, and it also makes the difference – these are the first reasons for being part of a collective. In it, individuals bring their practices to perform one or multiple actions together. In the construction of a process, ways of doing and common visions, their efforts combine to achieve distinct artistic objects an isolated member would not manage to produce. From the Renaissance workshops of Verrocchio and Ghirlandaio, which allowed for size and quantity, to the continuous metamorphosis of the Nsumi collective, what is done collectively generates an increase of visibility and voice for authors and works – or, on the contrary, the possibility of indistinction, of dilution in the collective. Whatever the option, there is a social impact of the collective that, in turn, projects and preserves its members. Not infrequently their influence is exponentiated, hastening changes that would take more time. However, by a mechanism of compensation, perhaps intrinsic, its duration is not usually long. There is a time for collective adventure before the vicissitudes of personal life, the complexities of group interaction, and the clash with the artistic milieu and society begin to disjoin the union.
Of the collectives evoked in this issue of Wrong Wrong, dynamics were born that last beyond the existence of their participants. It is sometimes difficult to understand the role that an evolving project, multiplied but also shared, until the inevitable extinction, exerts on the artists involved and the perception of their work. The vocabulary and grammar of modern collective art propose nuances not always appreciated among the many affirmations, exclamations and denials that give it body. And this body, besides the ideals that animate it, is also made of what results from the meeting of its elements. What will Beuys and Spoerri share in their passage through Fluxus, or Christo and Lourdes Castro in the KWY? Each individual's anecdoted topography of chance might propose alternative contacts, what-if-isms that could match Spoerri and Michaux, Moholy-Nagy and Vertov, and even loners like Cornell and Pessoa, all freed from geographical and ideological constraints. The world as a bunch of collectives waiting to exist: the idea hints at the difference achieved by any collective whose legacy endures.
In the useless trinket factory that daily art has become, the collective may often succumb to the economics of market-created needs, a part of the rather intentional history of Western art. In its combative side, however, a collective fills itself with brio and occupies galleries and museums, its activism opening doors that would only yield by force. The metaphor takes place (or begins to take place) when one no longer notices, when the collective's existence and space become normal, oblivious of how it came to occupy a place which was different before its arrival. Again, this difference is what excites us. From a reflection on the scope of thinking and acting collectively in the world of art and in society, this issue of Wrong Wrong aims to revive the experimental role of community intervention in the artistic territory. Authors and creators will be invited to work in collaborative processes and shared identities in the contemporary arts; and to recall how primordial an activity collective creation is, from the moment man discovered the recreation, developed the language and began to deal with the forbidden: death and desire, confused in ritual — which is always collective in its essence.
Marcelo Felix & Bruno Humberto
