Book
Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking
Ed. by
Eva Bentcheva
Annie Jael Kwan
Ming Tiampo
Annie Jael Kwan
Ming Tiampo
Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025
Scheduled for 28 October 2025
Scheduled for 28 October 2025
ISBN 978-3-96558-096-1 | Paperback | 14.5 EUR | vi, 118 pp. | 15 colour images | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-097-8 | PDF | Open Access | 15 colour images | 16 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-098-5 | EPUB | Open Access | 15 colour images | 14 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-097-8 | PDF | Open Access | 15 colour images | 16 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-098-5 | EPUB | Open Access | 15 colour images | 14 MB
Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking delves into the dynamics of collective artistic practices, and looks in particular at histories, personal experiences, and theories in the context of global Asias. Featuring contributions from artists, curators, and activists, it focuses on the diverse contexts that shape both making and researching art. This ‘Companion’ book aims to bridge historical and theoretical knowledge with first-hand experiences and serves as a resource for a ‘worlded’ art history and contemporary practice.
Dr. Eva Bentcheva is an art historian and curator with a focus on transcultural art histories between Europe and South/Southeast Asia. She is currently the Maria Reiche Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technical University of Dresden, where she is developing a research project on German-Asian relations in art. She has previously held research and curatorial positions at Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Tate in London, and has had academic positions at Heidelberg University, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University) and SOAS, University of London. She is currently the Managing Editor of the open-access book series, Worlding Public Cultures published by ICI Berlin Press.
Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher whose practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art and cultural and pedagogical activism. She has an interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative knowledge, collective relations, solidarity, and spirituality. She is the Director of Something Human, leads Asia-Art-Activism, and is the founding council member of Asia Forum. She was co-editor of the special issues of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art: Archives (2019) and Pathways of Performativity (2022), and the publication Asia-Art-Activism: Experiments in Care and Collective Disobedience.
Ming Tiampo is Professor of Art History and co-director of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University. Her current projects include Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms, which critically examines post-Imperial histories of migration in the former French and British Empires, and Intersecting Modernisms, a co-edited sourcebook on global modernisms. Her research collaborations include Asia Forum, the Canadian BIPOC Artists Rolodex, and Worlding Public Cultures, for which she is the co-lead. Tiampo’s previous books and projects include Jin-me Yoon (Art Canada Institute, 2023), Gutai: Splendid Playground (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2013), and Gutai: Decentering Modernism (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Looking out from some of the experimental methods of documenta fifteen, Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking is a marvellously exploratory book. From its insightful essays on past and current collectivity in Asia, to its image chapters that act as records of playful brainstorms in workshops in Kassel and Gwangju, this book is a generous invitation to reimagine art’s futures sustainably and together. — Anthony Gardner, Professor of Contemporary Art History, University of Oxford
Documenta 15 was, in many ways, a cautionary tale about the dangers of transplanting a localized paradigm of collaborative production into a scale that was not simply ‘international’ but also imbricated at the deepest levels with currents of global cultural and economic capital. This publication, drawn from a workshop held by Asia Forum and Worlding Public Cultures during documenta 15, offers a salutary correction, by re-grounding the insights that are unique to the experience of Asian engaged art in their specific context. This grounding isn’t necessary because these insights aren’t also relevant at a broader scale, but because the relationship between the local, or the regional, and the global can’t be induced through a simple act of spatial displacement. Rather, this relationship requires its own forms of creative, dialogical mediation. This book marks an important contribution towards that creative process. — Grant Kester, Professor of Art History at the University of California, San Diego, and the founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism
If one were to write a history of curating, it would be clear that self-organized artist collectives have had a significant influence on what we understand today as curatorial practice — and this history of the present would have to be written across different positionalities. With this in mind, Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking is dedicated to the possibilities, dreams, actions, and strategies of thinking and working together artistically, but also to the dangers and difficulties of such practices. Versatile, thoughtful, and situated, this book offers an insight into collectivity in the context of global Asia as an essential part of artistic and curatorial work today. — Nora Sternfeld, Professor of art education HFBK Hamburg
| Part of Worlding Public Cultures |
|---|
ICI Berlin Press print publications are available world-wide through various online sellers and at some Berlin booksellers.
You can use our webshop to purchase them directly from us. The green buttons below will transfer you to PayPal, placing the selected item in a shopping cart. Use one of the checkout options to pay via PayPal or credit card and enter a shipping address.
The volume is not yet published, but you can already order it. We expect our distribution to begin by 28 October 2025. You will receive an email confirming the shipment and providing a bill for your records. If you have any concerns or questions, you can contact us at publishing@ici-berlin.org.
If you have published with ICI Berlin Press, you are eligible for a 50% author’s discount. Please use the buttons below.| Title |
Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking
|
| Editor(s) |
Eva Bentcheva
Annie Jael Kwan
Ming Tiampo
|
| Bio(s) |
Dr. Eva Bentcheva is an art historian and curator with a focus on transcultural art histories between Europe and South/Southeast Asia. She is currently the Maria Reiche Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technical University of Dresden, where she is developing a research project on German-Asian relations in art. She has previously held research and curatorial positions at Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Tate in London, and has had academic positions at Heidelberg University, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University) and SOAS, University of London. She is currently the Managing Editor of the open-access book series, Worlding Public Cultures published by ICI Berlin Press.
Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher whose practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art and cultural and pedagogical activism. She has an interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative knowledge, collective relations, solidarity, and spirituality. She is the Director of Something Human, leads Asia-Art-Activism, and is the founding council member of Asia Forum. She was co-editor of the special issues of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art: Archives (2019) and Pathways of Performativity (2022), and the publication Asia-Art-Activism: Experiments in Care and Collective Disobedience.
Ming Tiampo is Professor of Art History and co-director of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University. Her current projects include Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms, which critically examines post-Imperial histories of migration in the former French and British Empires, and Intersecting Modernisms, a co-edited sourcebook on global modernisms. Her research collaborations include Asia Forum, the Canadian BIPOC Artists Rolodex, and Worlding Public Cultures, for which she is the co-lead. Tiampo’s previous books and projects include Jin-me Yoon (Art Canada Institute, 2023), Gutai: Splendid Playground (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2013), and Gutai: Decentering Modernism (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
|
| Identifier | |
| Description |
Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking delves into the dynamics of collective artistic practices, and looks in particular at histories, personal experiences, and theories in the context of global Asias. Featuring contributions from artists, curators, and activists, it focuses on the diverse contexts that shape both making and researching art. This ‘Companion’ book aims to bridge historical and theoretical knowledge with first-hand experiences and serves as a resource for a ‘worlded’ art history and contemporary practice.
|
| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
|
| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
|
| Date |
28 October 2025
|
| Subject |
collective
communal experiences
global Asias
art history
worlding
documenta fifteen
artistic practice
joint equality
positionality
decentralized
|
| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
|
| Language |
en-GB
|
| number of pages |
vi, 118
|
| Table Of Contents |
Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking: Introduction | EVA BENTCHEVA, ANNIE JAEL KWAN, AND MING TIAMPO
Questionnaire on Collective Practices: December 2022–March 2023 | GUDSKUL: COLLECTIVE STUDY AND CONTEMPORARY ART ECOSYSTEM, MAI LING, NHÀ SÀN COLLECTIVE, PROJEK RABAK, REPUBLIC OF THE OTHER, AND TOMORROW GIRLS TROOP
what kind of we can we be? collective futures | VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
what kind of we could we be? the poetics of we | VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
Thinking Operationally: Collectivism in Modern Japan and Its Contemporary Evolution | REIKO TOMII
Artist-Curator Collectives in Southeast Asia | EVA BENTCHEVA
‘The Only Art Form that Works’: Reflections on Collectivity from South Korea [2023] | SOYOON RYU
what kind of we could we be? collective thinking by collectives | VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
References
Notes on the Contributors
|
| has manifestation |
ISBN 978-3-96558-096-1 | Paperback | 14.5 EUR | vi, 118 pp. | 15 colour images | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-097-8 | PDF | Open Access | 15 colour images | 16 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-098-5 | EPUB | Open Access | 15 colour images | 14 MB
|
PRINT ISBNS IN DIFFERENT FORMATS
978-3-96558-096-1 · 9783965580961 · 3-96558-0965 · 3965580965
- Afro-Asian Networks Research Collective, ‘Manifesto: Networks of Decolonization in Asia and Africa’, Radical History Review, 131 (2018), pp. 176–82 <https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-4355317>
- Bentcheva, Eva, ‘From Ephemeral Experiences to Lasting Legacies: Discourses on Experimental Art in the Philippines during the 1960s and 1970s’, Tate Papers, 32 (Autumn 2019) <https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/32/discourses-experimental-art-philippines-1960s-1970s> [accessed 17 March 2023]
- Bentcheva, Eva, ‘ Three Kings and Sound Bags: Revisiting Three Kings and Sound Bags (1979) as Philippine “Experimental Art” of the 1970s’, Southeast of Now, 6.2 (2022), pp. 187–94 <https://doi.org/10.56159/sen.2022.a871499>
- Berg, Karen van den, ‘Fragile Infrastructures for an Art of Conviviality: Learning from documenta fifteen’, Field: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism, 25 (October 2023) <https://field-journal.com/issue-25/fragile-infrastructures-for-an-art-of-conviviality-learning-from-documenta-fifteen> [accessed 13 May 2024]
- Butt, Zoe, ‘Spirit of Friendship: Artist Groups in Vietnam since 1975’, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 2.2 (2018), pp. 145–79 <https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2018.0005>
- Chong, Doryun, et al., Tokyo, 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, 2012
- Cristóbal, Geronimo, ‘Pushing Against the Roof of the World: ruangrupa’s Prospects for documenta fifteen’, Third Text (26 October 2020) <http://www.thirdtext.org/cristobal-ruangrupa> [accessed 10 August 2024]
- Deml, Lisa, ‘Lumbung Will Continue (Somewhere Else): Documenta Fifteen and the Fault Lines of Context and Translation’, Third Text Online, 27 January 2023 <http://thirdtext.org/deml-documenta15> [accessed 21 May 2025]
- Documenta. Politik und Kunst (2021–22) at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin
- Enwezor, Okwui, ‘The Production of Social Space as Artwork: Protocols of Community in the Work of Le Groupe Amos and Huit Facettes’, in Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, ed. by Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 223–51
- Flores, Patrick, Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (NUS Press, 2008)
- Frigeri, Flavia, and Kristian Handberg, eds, New Histories of Art in the Global Postwar Era: Multiple Modernisms (Routledge, 2021) <https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367140854>
- Gandhi, Leela, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Duke University Press, 2020) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822387657>
- Gendai bijutsu no paionia-ten [ Pioneers of Contemporary Art], exh. cat. published as a special issue of Furusawa Iwami Bijutsukan geppō [Furusawa Iwami Museum monthly newsletter], 25 (1977)
- Green Papaya Art Projects, in Roundtable on Collective Work, pp. 275–78
- Hanaga, Mitsutoshi, Mitsutoshi Hanaga 1000 (1000BUNKO, 2017)
- Hausladen, Catharina, and Geneviev Lipinsky de Orlov, eds, ‘Collectivity’, Texte zur Kunst, 124 (December 2021)
- Ikegami, Hiroko, and Reiko Tomii, Shinohara Pops! The Avant-Garde Road, Tokyo/New York, exh. cat. (SUNY Press, 2012)
- Juliastuti, Nuraini, Commons Museums: Pedagogies for Taking Ownership of What is Lost (ICI Berlin Press, 2024) <https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-ca-04>
- Juliastuti, Nuraini, ‘Ruangrupa: A Conversation on Horizontal Organisation’, Afterall (2012) <https://www.afterall.org/articles/ruangrupa-a-conversation-on-horizontal-organisation/> [accessed 20 August 2024]
- Juneja, Monica, and Jo Ziebritzki, ‘Learning with documenta fifteen: Principles, Practices, Problems’, Grey Room, 92 (Summer 2023), pp. 94–105 <https://doi.org/10.1162/grey_a_00380>
- Kim Mi-kyung, and Oh Sangghil, ‘Jigeum, dasi — Hanguk hyeondaemisul’ui hyeonjanggwa bipyeong’ [‘Now, Again — The Hyeonjang and Critique of Korean Contemporary Art’], Wolgan Misool (November 2000), pp. 88–131
- König, Claudia, ‘documenta fifteen: Awaiting ruangrupa. A Performative Walk through Kassel, September 2021’, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 6.1 (2022), pp. 211–20 <https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2022.0012>
- KuroDalaiJee, Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan = Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960 nendai Nihon bijutsu ni okeru pafōmansu no chika suimyaku (2010), ed. by Jason M. Beckman (Leuven University Press, 2023)
- Marcon, Federico, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
- Marotti, William, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Duke University Press, 2013)
- Minoru Hirata: Action, the 1960s, exh. cat. (Taka Ishii Gallery, 2013)
- Noriaki, Kitazawa, ‘Kindai Nihon bijutsu no seiritsu: Bunten no sōsetsu’ [The Formation of Modern Japanese Art: The Beginning of the Bunten], in Nihon yōgashō-shi [The History of JADA], 1st edn (Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1985)
- Oh Sangghil, ed. Hangukyeondaemisul dasi ilggi — 80nyeondae sogeurup undongui bipyeongjeok jaejomyeong [Re-reading Korean Contemporary Art — The Critical Re-examination of Small Group Movements in the 1980s] (Cheongeumsa, 2000)
- Quijon, Carlos, Jr., in Roundtable on Collective Work, special issue of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 5.1 and 2 (October 2021), pp. 259–60 <https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2021.0009>
- Rath, Amanda Katherine, and Wulan Dirgantoro, ‘Editorial Introduction in the Making: Experiment and Experimentation in Southeast Asian Art’, special issue of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, ed. by Amanda Katherine Rath and Wulan Dirgantoro, 6.2 (October 2022), pp. 2–9 <https://doi.org/10.56159/sen.2022.a871489>
- Ryūta, Ushiro, Katsudō geijutsu ron [Theory of Action Art] (East Press, 2022)
- Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, ‘Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South’, Africa Development, 37.1 (2012), pp. 43–67 <https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ad/article/view/87540> [accessed 20 August 2024]
- Sternfeld, Nora, ‘Para-Museum of 100 Days: documenta between Event and Institution’, in Documenta: Curating History of the Present, ed. by Nanne Buurman and Dorothee Richter, special issue of OnCurating, 33 (2017), pp. 165–70 <https://www.on-curating.org/issue-33-reader/para-museum-of-100-days-documenta-between-event-and-institution.html> [accessed 13 March 2023]
- Stimson, Blake, and Gregory Sholette, eds, Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (The University of Minnesota Press, 2014)
- Stimson, Blake, and Gregory Sholette, eds, Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, NED-New edition (University of Minnesota Press, 2007)
- Takenori, Inoki, ed., Senkan-ki Nihon no shakai shūdan to nettowāku: Demokurashī to chūkan dantai [Social Organizations and Networks in Interwar Japan: Democracy and Intermediate Organizations] (NTT Shuppan, 2008)
- Teh, David, ‘ Baramee. Thai Relational Art and the Politics of Withdrawal’, Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary (MIT Press, 2017), pp. 109–44
- Tezuka, Miwako, ‘Experimental Workshop and Tradition: An Avant-Garde Play Pierrot Lunaire by Jikken Kōbō and Takechi Tetsuji’, Art Journal (Fall 2011), pp. 64–85 <https://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=2349> [accessed 15 March 2025]
- Tezuka, Miwako, ‘Jikken Kōbō and Takiguchi Shūzō: The New Deal Collectivism of 1950s Japan’, Positions, 21.2 (2013), pp. 351–81 <https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-2018283>
- Tiampo, Ming, ‘Gutai Chain: The Collective Spirit of Individualism’, Positions, 21.2 (2013), pp. 383–415 <https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-2018292>
- Tiampo, Ming, ‘Gutai Chain: The Collective Spirit of Individualism’, Positions: Asia Critique, 21.2 (2013), pp. 383–415
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘After the “Descent to the Everyday”: Japanese Collectivism from Hi Red Center to The Play, 1964–1973’, in Collectivism After Modernism, ed. by Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 44–75
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘Collectivism in Japan Reconsidered: Exploring Its Operational DNA in the Spirit of DIY in the Prewar and Postwar Periods’, Between Collectivism and Individualism: Japanese Avant-Garde in the 1950s and the 1960s, exh. cat. (Zachęta — National Gallery of Art and The Japan Foundation, 2021)
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘An Experiment in Collectivism: Gutai’s Prewar Origin and Postwar Evolution’, in Gutai: Splendid Playground, exh. cat., ed. by Ming Tiampo and Alexandra Munroe (Guggenheim Museum, 2013)
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘Introduction: Collectivism in Twentieth-Century Japanese Art with a Focus on Operational Aspects of Dantai’, Positions, 21.2 (Spring 2013), pp. 225–67 <https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-2018256>
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘Localizing Socially Engaged Art: Some Observations on Collective Operations in Prewar and Postwar Japan’, FIELD, 7 (Spring 2017) <https://field-journal.com/issue-7/localizing-socially-engaged-art-some-observations-on-collective-operations-in-prewar-and-postwar-japan/> [accessed 14 March 2025]
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘Psychophysiology Research Institute (1969–1970): Envisioning an “Invisible Museum”’, in Charting Space: The Cartographies of Conceptual Art, ed. by Elize Mazadiego (Manchester University Press, 2023), pp. 158–81
- Tomii, Reiko, Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (MIT Press, 2016)
- Tomii, Reiko, ‘“A Test Tube” of New Art: Naiqua and the Rental Gallery System in 1960s Japan’, Afterall, 47 (Spring/Summer 2019)
- Wang, Victor, Performance Histories from East Asia: 1960s–1990s, exh. cat. (David Roberts Art Foundation, 2018)
- Yang Jungae, ‘80nyeondae Hyeonjang-jihyang Minjungmisul’ui jaeguseong: 1985nyeon Hangugmisul, 20dae’ui himjeon sageon’e eolkin misuldongin Dureong’ui hwaldongeul jungsimeuro’ [‘Restructuring hyeonjang-Orientated Minjung Art of the 80s: The Case of Dureong in the Korean Art in 1985, Power of the Twenties Exhibition’] (Korea Democracy Foundation, 2018)
- Yoshida Yoshie, ‘Matsuzawa Yutaka: Yami o tōtetsu suru kyōdōtai’, Bijutsu techō, 360 (November 1972), pp. 5–11; in English as ‘A Community That Penetrates the Darkness’, trans. by Reiko Tomii <https://artplatform.go.jp/resources/readings/R202228> [accessed 15 March 2025]
- Yoshiko, Shimada, William Marotti, and Peter Alexander van der Meijden, Niruvāna kara katasutorofī e: Matsuzawa Yutaka to kyokūkan no komyūn = From Nirvana to Catastrophe: Matsuzawa Yutaka and his ‘Commune in Imaginary Space’, exh. cat. (Ota Fine Arts, 2017)
- Zarobell, John, ‘Global Art Collectives and Exhibition Making’, Arts, 11.2 (2022), 38 <https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11020038>