03 Oct 2017

Collection Collective at tranzit/sk in Bratislava

Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation


10.10.–18.11. 2017


Curated by:
Judit Angel, Vlad Morariu, Raluca Voinea

Participating artists:
Vlad Basalici, Tania Bruguera, Fokus Grupa, Jana Kapelová, Dan Mihaltianu, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Ilona Németh, Lia Perjovschi, Martin Piaček, Martha Rosler, Martina Růžičková & Max Lysáček, Péter Szabó

Further contributions: Andi Gavril, Alena Kunicová, Peter Lényi, Dan Perjovschi, Alexandra Pirici



Opening: 10 October, 2017 at 6 pm
Address: tranzit/sk, Beskydská 12, Bratislava, 81105
The exhibition is open from Wednesday to Saturday from 2 to 7 pm.


Collection Collective. In the Future All Our Homes Will Be Museums
Seminar with:
Dave Beech, Valeria Graziano, Alenka Gregorič, Rado Ištok, Mira Keratová
followed by discussion with the artists and the curators of the exhibition

11 October, 2017 at 5 pm
Kunsthalle KLUB, Namestie SNP 12, 81106 Bratislava


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.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the seminar 'Collection Collective. In the Future All Our Homes Will Be Museums' proposes further reflection on topics associated with our project, with contributions from both practitioners and academics. This public event is born of a forward-thinking proposal: if museums are homes where artworks can be safely collected, deposited and valued, then perhaps unfair hierarchies of cultural consumption can be de-structured when all our homes become museums. The seminar aims to be generative both of the labour of imagining the possibility of such a future and of devising concrete strategies for appropriating it. To initiate these dual processes, the seminar will revisit a range of themes such as resource sharing as autonomous organisation; instituting and organizing – artists as institutions; art's economic exceptionalism and cultural practices of decommodification, and the often neglected but lengthy work of decolonizing art collecting.




The project is realized by tranzit/sk in partnership with tranzit/ro/Bucureşti and Middlesex University London.
ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit.
We thank Kunsthalle Bratislava for the collaboration and support. We also thank the Slovak National Gallery and Ivan Gallery for their collaboration and help.