In celebration of our inaugural issue, we asked our writers to respond to the following questions: Reflect / give your thoughts on the concept of “collective.” What does it mean to collectivize? What are the benefits of collectivity? What transformative change is possible within a collective?
The collective, as well as collectivize, calls to mind both positive and negative associations of communism and worker power. It is far past time that knowledge and art workers understand themselves as workers, with all the rights and obligations therein, and hopefully more self-conscious forums centered around the concept of collectivizing will help spark that self-understanding, and the actions that should come from that.
Andrew Schumacher Bethke
The collective is what we make of it. A moving event; you, me, mwe together.
Chloe Chung
Each of us is a collection of star dust organized by nature and nurture. When we come together intentionally or unintentionally as a collective, we bring all the richness of our raw matter and experience to form a greater whole, and the possibilities grow exponentially. Even when we work alone we are contributing to the collective consciousness.
Lauryn Gould
Trust difference and champion critique
Create commotion through co-motion
Accept resting space as sacred
Affect noise into social reciprocity
Accommodate juxtaposing cosmologies
Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena
A new collective
gathers a disp’rate army
of sharp, bright thinkers
proudly rises up
with minds and will as weapons–
upends the system.
Elisa Moles
Whatever metaphorical model floats your collective boat — garden, tapestry, constellation, mosaic — collectivizing hinges on that precise, radical moment when a long-frustrated “what if” becomes a determined “let’s.” In this rhizomatic coalescence of selves, with all our wars and dreams, we tend to this moment again and again so that it is born and reborn until something entirely new emerges.
Dani Nutting
A dream deftly thwarted by neoliberalism – a terrifying sum far greater than its parts. Chemically speaking, the movement from atom to molecule, and from molecule to (politically) volatile compound. A reminder to not forget the lessons of identity politics – erasure of the atom from conceptual focus is an easy violence.
Ian Nutting
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing a line somewhere,” said G.K. Chesterton. I believe that completely. It’s just a short hop from “collective” to “collective bargaining”; when you’re shouting into the abyss of society, trying to provoke change, you only have a chance in hell if you stand alongside people who are willing to make a stand at the same place as you. A strong collective is different people–with different voices from different backgrounds–all nevertheless drawing the same moral line.
Vijay M. Rajan
Gathering ideas for the sake of their uniqueness, not because they are the norm.
Treasuring thoughts hard to come by, not the most common.
Imperfections valued.
Beauty in variety; we don’t hunt for the same thing repeatedly.
Jill Burlingame Tsekouras
*Cover photo above by Charlota Blunarova on Unsplash
