The workshop addresses cooperative forms of working together in the arts from the early 19th century to the present day. The focus will be on groups of artists across all disciplines who question hierarchical structures and experiment with egalitarian forms of artistic work. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary forms of cooperation are likewise considered. We will explore how organisational structures and decision-making processes play out in these groups of artists. How is responsibility distributed? In what ways are hierarchies consciously reduced, subverted, or reconfigured? And what does this imply for collective creative processes and individual responsibility (and for individual artistic responsibility within them)?
Contributions will examine the conditions under which such forms of collaboration emerge and evolve, how they shape artistic practice, and how they are reflected in artistic outcomes across the period under investigation. We will seek to interconnect case studies from different historical contexts by addressing, among other aspects, questions of historical reference and of historical awareness of earlier artistic cooperatives, as well as the possible transmission of practical knowledge of
cooperation specific to the arts. The period of investigation was chosen because sociopolitical changes in many (European) regions around 1800 made free associations – an important precondition for autonomous, egalitarian artistic groups – both common and widely discussed. The workshop aims to highlight both historical and contemporary examples of cooperative artistic practice and to reflect their aesthetic, social, and institutional implications.

Organisation: Research Group Cooperative Ensemble Practices in the 19th Century 
Annette Kappeler, Martin Danneck, Iseult Andreani and Hannah Eßler

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