For this year's Turner Prize, for the first time the nominees are made up of
collectives which the organisers have helped to inspire social change
through art. Hi everyone we are young Hae-Chang
Heavy Industries. Thanks for tuning in today as we
answer that burning question: What is an art collective?
There is within I think many different societies an idea of like
the artist as somehow genius or somehow separate from the rest of society.
But I feel that what's important is actually to recognize the artist as part of society.
I think that the term collective
is really helpful when we're sort of describing how we want to reverse the
traditional power dynamics. I think that the word collective is really a nod to
that idea of … ...equity
We're the kind of people who you wouldn't expect to be an art collective.
If they're expecting us to call
ourselves “Art Boyz” with a 'z”. We will put it in there, we will put 'z' in.
The thing is we've always worked together or been around each other
because it's a family first. It was always that first
and then it kind of developed into “hold up we're doing a lot of things together”.
We need to make this kind of like a collective and work more under one umbrella.
We met in London back in 2013 and we started working together, developed a
collaborative platform and through that also started working with so many other
people from different disciplines and from marine biology to botanics, economy...
The act of working collaboratively is also kind of generating the space
that can bring many forms of expertise to the table,
because we do not have all of the expertise it
takes or the answers to kind of tackle these questions.
We all felt a shared experience that our heritage and our positionality wasn't
really represented so much in the art world around us.
When there's collective energy involved, there's actually more
momentum to change things, especially where equitable representation in the
art world is concerned. So I think that the main
aim is always to uplift each other.
Any vision I've ever had has been actualized, but also been elevated
by working with these two and working with other people and I think when
you're working with your brothers it's like you're just confident.
The vision was for an egalitarian collective and it was there right from the beginning.
Amber had this kind of principle that's often talked about of
you know the person that paints the door chooses the colour.
And I think there was a real respect for for individual craft, so like if you were
the camera person or if you were the editor you were given incredible freedom to
make those decisions.
I recognize, you know the role of individual artists.
I think what's really brilliant when we think about
collectives or collaborations or socially engaged practice
is to recognize an artistic practice which is dialogic.
We're in dialogue with our influences in the past. We're in dialogue with the work
we've made in the past. We're in dialogue with the work that each other is making
and hopefully other people then dialogue with us, dialogue through us
and that's kind of the intention really.
A lot of different people bring a lot of
different skills and it is through that sort of merging of
different people's experiences, different people's perspectives, different people's
abilities and talents that we're able to create everything that we do create.
So the individual within that is is really really special and important.
You have your own drive obviously. You come here because of the vision that
you share but you're not expected to give up
yourself in order to merge into some sort of a collective pot.
One of the biggest benefits of being in a collective is like: As much as and
I was saying that you're doing the design and the colour
palettes and I'm doing the visuals. I'm actually just learning from
both of them all the time.
It's a very particular kind of character I think that can work in a collective
you have to have a certain kind of degree of confidence in your own
identity, but you also have to not have a big ego.
Why make art together? Why be an art collective?
As opposed to making it alone?
You always have someone to tell that you're an artistic genius and since
you're all on the same team that someone seconds you.
It makes for a joyous collective!
It's not just that when you come together with other people that you're
automatically a collective.
I think there's definitely the processes of going through the agreements and the disagreements
and feeling those tensions, but the commonality being that you feel that
there's a benefit of a collective practice.
I think there are all different reasons why people get together and work collectively.
The whole reason for being involved in those communities, those of us who recognized
aspects of life that we found important to celebrate.
That way of celebrating working-class communities was very important for us.
We were there for the long haul and people knew that.
And we were there during the minor strike.
We made films there and people will come to us now if they have
something that they think needs to be made a film about.
They come to us to ask us if we're interested to do it
and I think that, in that sense there is a collective, there is a wider collective.
Before we go further. We wonder:
Aren't we explaining this art-collective thing arse-backwards?
Yeah, why start and stop with the question of art collectives?
Why give you our take on what an art collective is before giving you the
prequel?
Yeah, how about a little context?
For me, it would be hard to say whether there are less collectives or more
collectives than I've operated previously.
There have been artistic collectives from, if I think
about the different movements and the way in which art, let's say traditionally
is understood through collective movement. So signing up maybe to an
artistic manifesto of, “this is what we believe art can do in the world”.
It's nothing new. There's been a long trajectory of these kinds of work
collectives or collaborative platforms that have been going on for like decades
or even centuries or it's at the very base of humanity if you want. We've
always lived together.
I feel that also sometimes collective activity
can be invisible activity and it's not always documented
or recorded and that they can come and go as well as the need to sees fit I think
There was definitely more understanding of collectives and
cooperatives and different ways of working in the 70s and 80s.
And I think it became unfashionable post Thatcher. The kind of rise of yuppiedom and people
having to sell. I mean partly just to survive,
people had to sell their individual practice.
If you're not in the right race you almost feel like you're not in the scene.
There's almost like a pressure to be like constantly presenting work or
constantly telling people that you're working or even constantly being out at
events and doing social things when really as an artist there's a million
and one things to me done at home in your studio.
It is challenging to do all of these projects without funding essentially for
us to grow and build and make this reach more people and do more good.
There is a reality to the fact that you do need money to do that.
We pooled all the income. So whatever we were doing, however well paid
we may be for certain jobs, everything went into the pot.
I think the first wage you had was eight pounds a week.
You could live perfectly with on eight pounds a week.
But I think even when we had the best years in terms of funding, like
the Channel 4. We would always overextend ourselves we would take on more and
bigger projects and do them for less and you know I think that self-exploitation
is one of the common problems in collectives.
As a collective we want to work with each other but sometimes we don't have
the funds to do that.
And so we have to do a lot of individual work which we'll bring each other in on,
to allow ourselves to do stuff which we can do together.
Like you're trying to learn new things, you're trying
to make new things and you're trying to
work with your brothers and.. Also survive!
The last sort of 18 months has really profiled and sort of raised the profile
of care and this idea of community and people looking after each other which I
think is really important i think that's a very big motivator for artists and different
groups.
I think we need to remember that,
as humans we haven't achieved much on our own, but much more through
collaboration and kind of setting up frameworks in societies that enabled
kind of big movements to happen throughout history.
I believe in humanity's capacity for change. Almost, like weirdly, it's kind of grown in the
last few years despite everything happening around me.
You look at the world that we are within arm's distance
from being in and you look at where we are and it does take people being bold
to say actually “this is what I believe, this is what I see, this is what I feel”.
Hopefully it can spark a conversation where we decide that actually we're
stronger together and let's try and make a world where we all have a place in it.
Stronger together!
We thought that we would probably just
fade out once the kind of old guard were gone, then it would fade away because
there wasn't anyone coming along in the next generations that were interested.
But now it's very different because there is definitely that interest.
The work of the collective I think is never really done. Because it could be the case that
you have a collective that kind of comes together. You know finds the impetus and the
energy to work together, to produce things together.
But it feels as if there is a kind of lifespan.
And so where one collective might disband and go on to do other things and
that happens for many different reasons. You often find another collective emerging.
Many times we are working with things and then you realize
how much input you are getting from other people, other things around you.
So it's also interesting to think like, maybe you are already a collective
without knowing it or without realizing it.