Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

distributed a statement of protest, passed off as a statement by the entire
group even though the other members disagreed with the tactic. 106
In a bitter irony, the group’s identity was by then well established
in the public’s mind and, despite the poor relations among them, ABTV
cynically decided to proceed as a collective in order to participate in the
various important exhibitions to which they had begun to be invited. The
actual collective process of working, however, was abandoned: ABTV was
now four artists in collective drag. “We were apart from each other for about
a year without having any relationship at all, but what happens? Now we
were somehow ofWcially a group, and from a practical point of view we began
to appreciate the beneWts that that brought us, cynically . . . so then it was
a much more pragmatic relationship in that each of us took whatever artistic
opportunities were offered to us but excluded the others as authors. And
that way, for example, ‘ABTV’ participated in various ways when in fact
they were individual participations. It went on like that for some time . . .
we committed hara-kiri you might say, we pushed aside all the personal problems
and we concentrated on the professional reasons and we did the projects.
The personal relations were not good but . . . it was an example of discipline,
and of love for the work.” 107 As the confrontation with power became
more protracted, as moderate ofWcials were replaced with enforcers, as individual
positions among artists became more clearly delineated, things began
to fall apart, and the only glue left was the career beneWt of the group’s
brand name. The collective that, perhaps even more than the others, had
evolved Xuidly out of friendship and artistic afWnities, dissolved into a cynical
maneuver.
A COLLECTIVE OF COLLECTIVES
Performing Revolution 135
What happened in the second half of the 1980s resembled in many ways what
Thomas Kuhn has described as the structure of scientiWc revolutions: 108 a
normally slow and gradual evolutionary process, stable in its environmental
adaptation, is suddenly accelerated into a “revolution” when that environment
is disturbed by the emergence of new ideas powerful enough to overthrow
the prevailing theory. According to this analogy, the rupture came
with Volumen Uno, and what developed in the latter half of the decade constituted
a body of ideas sufWciently strong to sustain that rupture beyond
a momentary convulsion into an authentic and signiWcant change in the environment.
Arte Calle, Grupo Provisional, and other groups Xourished between
1984 and the end of the decade, producing not only an extraordinary number
of exhibitions and events but also, more broadly, a supercharged and superenergized
atmosphere. By 1988, the accumulated impact of it all brought