Are artist collectives collaborative?

Collaboration has become a buzzword among contemporary art’s cultural bureaucrats and market operatives. This officialdom appears out of step with the non-institutional forms of collaboration suggested by the term “collectivity.” And yet artist collectives, as closed-loop systems, are antithetical to the collaborative wellness mantra we are used to hearing in the global high-end culture industry. In this world, “collectives” of cultural, corporate, and market partners collaborate with artist collectives — often awkwardly, as seen at documenta fifteen, curated by Indonesian-based ruangrupa. Without centralised curatorial power, the mega-exhibition’s bureaucratic structures were not prepared for democracy in practice, despite their virtue signalling.