The Francis Effect

10. 10. – 11. 11. 2017 / Wed – Sat 2:00 p.m. – 07:00 p.m.
tranzit/sk
Beskydská 12
Bratislava, SK

Exhibition

Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation 

The project Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation explores the present-day crisis of the collection-based institution of contemporary art and identifies potential in a model of (art) collection that is simultaneously assembled, owned and run by artists and other cultural producers. A five-week-long exhibition with invited artists, a closed workshop and a public seminar with artists, lawyers, social theorists, economists, and academics are organized in an attempt to question how such a model could function.

The project considers the contemporary reciprocities between a collection’s usefulness without use and its market value, and between meaning-making and financial capitalization. It observes how institutions of contemporary art opt for blockbuster shows with high visitor numbers whilst their own collections lie in storage; or how private collections are revolving more and more around collectors whose fortunes are built on suspicious businesses or financial speculation. One could also point to the transnational collections kept secret in no man’s lands between borders, the hollow flow of images in Instagram-type collecting, the speculations of the auction houses, and the artists’ collections with works by other artists.

Collection Collective does not attempt to situate itself outside these parameters, but rather aims to change the position from which cultural producers and consumers negotiate their roles. In our proposal for articulating a collective collection we seek to de-privatize the collecting subject: to rethink the relationship between self-interest and collective goal, between individual addiction and group strategy, between private taste and collective socio-political tactic and between insular neurosis and therapeutic friendship. Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation seeks to understand the practical ways in which such a subject could be articulated within a collective collection. The type of collection we propose is owned, managed and maintained by its producers. It is not defined by national or geographic determinations; it recognizes the inherent subjective grounds of its constitution and does not attempt to grow indefinitely. The Bratislava instalment of Collection Collective is offered as a template that could be replicated in other circumstances, with other people, in other forms.

Once Collection Collective ends, all works will be returned to the artists. We hope and expect that the future will see Collection Collective effectively established, yet we are open to the possibility that, until then, it remains a conceptual proposal in progress, which we are inviting you to experience and discuss in Bratislava.

Curated by: Judit Angel, Vlad Morariu, Raluca Voinea

Participating artists: Vlad Basalici, Tania Bruguera, Fokus Grupa, Jana Kapelova, Dan Mihaltianu, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Ilona Nemeth, Lia Perjovschi, Martin Piacek, Martha Rosler, Martina Ruzickova & Max Lysacek, Peter Szabo

Further contribution: Andi Gavril, Alena Kunicova, Peter Lenyi, Dan Perjovschi, Alexandra Pirici