Book Section
Asking ‘What kind of “we” can we be?’, this introduction outlines histories and methods of collective practice addressed in the book Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking. Departing from discussions around documenta fifteen, the editors situate Asian genealogies of collaborative practice in a global context. They discuss how artistic, curatorial, and activist modes of collaboration challenge individual authorship, enabling new structures of working, thinking, and world-making, as well as the difficulties this presents.
Keywords: collective practices; worlded histories; global Asias; documenta fifteen; ruangrupa; Venice Biennale; Gwangju Biennale
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.
Part of Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking Containing:
Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking: Introduction / Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan, 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, 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
Title
Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking
Subtitle
Introduction
Author(s)
Eva Bentcheva
Annie Jael Kwan
Ming Tiampo
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-co-01_01
Description
Asking ‘What kind of “we” can we be?’, this introduction outlines histories and methods of collective practice addressed in the book Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking. Departing from discussions around documenta fifteen, the editors situate Asian genealogies of collaborative practice in a global context. They discuss how artistic, curatorial, and activist modes of collaboration challenge individual authorship, enabling new structures of working, thinking, and world-making, as well as the difficulties this presents.
Is Part Of
Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
October 28, 2025
Subject
collective practices
worlded histories
global Asias
documenta fifteen
ruangrupa
Venice Biennale
Gwangju Biennale
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.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Language
en-GB
page start
1
page end
12
Source
Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking, ed. by Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan, and Ming Tiampo, Worlding Public Cultures (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 1–12

References

  • 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>
  • 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]
  • 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]
  • 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
  • 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>
  • Hausladen, Catharina, and Geneviev Lipinsky de Orlov, eds, ‘Collectivity’, Texte zur Kunst, 124 (December 2021)
  • 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>
  • Tiampo, Ming, ‘Gutai Chain: The Collective Spirit of Individualism’, Positions: Asia Critique, 21.2 (2013), pp. 383–415

Cite as: Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan, and Ming Tiampo, ‘Thinking Collectives/Collective Thinking: Introduction’, in Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking, ed. by Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan, and Ming Tiampo, Worlding Public Cultures (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 1-12 <https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-co-01_01>