Artists’ Collectives and Collectivities: A Curatorial Investigation into Assembling the Social

This thesis begins with an examination of collective art practices in Cuba in relation to the wider collectivised society. This acts as a counterbalance for engaging with the strategy of artists’ groups in the United Kingdom and the differences between political thinking in Cuba and the West. Practice-based research in the form of curatorial activity has constantly responded to the theoretical underpinnings of this thesis. The multi-platform project 'Assembling' (2013-2015) understands the exhibition to be collaborative from the moment of inception. Through the circulation of material in a process of gathering, electing and making visible objects and ideas, 'Assembling' has brought together artists previously unknown to each other from Cuba and the United Kingdom to find and cluster around a shared sense of social imaginary, a shared issue of concern.

A 'Typology of Association' runs throughout the thesis to trace thought on grouping found in political theory, art history, exhibitionary practice and sociology to produce a nuanced interpretation of how it is that we envisage ourselves in relation to group identifiers. Concomitantly, the main text of the thesis asks, ‘Does the “social” exist in and of itself at all?’. Although this is a wide-reaching question, it is key for understanding artists’ groups as the social becomes a composed (Latour, 2005) space in which elements can be actively distributed (Rancière, 2000) to form temporal assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) making the social 'a practice'. Rather than enquire for example, what is ‘community art’, this research removes an assumptive meaning and asks what is ‘community’ and how does art practice activate its composition? Shifting social space is understood in terms of consistency: solid, fluid (Berman, 1982; Bauman, 2010) and foam (Sloterdijk, 2007, 2011).

Additional (restricted access) material related to this thesis is available upon request to UAL Research Online.