On "Plural Aesthetics"

Fellow Author(s)

Research Project

collectivise (culture)
mapping collaborative practices in arts and culture

Plural Aesthetics

Collectivity often produces its own recognizable way of solving things, as many people collaborate with their ideas. This process values the contributions of each individual, where diverse perspectives come together through shared goals and continuous dialogue.

But to be honest, I mean – yes, there is this hierarchy. But we can’t do something without the other, you know? Like: we have to gather us, think out loud and come up with the idea, you know. And then we’ll ask the guys, the Djs and the artists. Sometimes you’ll ask them about making decisions. You always get everyone’s input on it. And make sure we’re all on the same page. (Yellow Tape Records)

She has a different – um, like – you can say, objective, compared with all the group. But her objectives are something that completes the one that each one works on here. So that’s why she found herself here. (DEBO)

An artistic evaluation that focuses on the outcome of collective work only, risks reducing collectives to a mere trend for art audiences to consume, overlooking the organisational, cultural, and policy transformations that such spaces generate. It also risks missing the core reasons collectives engage in their work, by absorbing their practices back into frameworks of competition and objective evaluation. With this paper, we advocate that collective work is much rather to be seen as a practice of engagement, situated in a specific cultural environment.