Focus on Brazil: "We are one more collective"

"We are one more collective," one of us said with a tone of irony as we thought in about the Ágata presentation text for Old magazine, a Brazilian publication specialized in photography in which, for a year, we published a column about the creative process. It was 2012 and to assume this position was not easy or comfortable as the collective format was trending and starting to gain different meanings within the photographic universe.

Nowadays, writing about photography collectives, for Ágata, is talking from an inside perspective. In other words, from our own experiences and impressions about this production method and also the dialogues with other collectives, bringing their voices to this debate.

History teaches us that we need to have a detachment from the studied object to then understand its implications in the world. Of course, we do not have this distance, but to our relief, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says that the more "contemporary" we try to be, less we are able to be a part of this classification. Thus, free from the ambition of tracing any treaty on active photography collectives in Brazil, we give birth to an overview of experiences around a practice that strengthens from the beginning of the year 2000 and that has not stopped generating models and varied working formats.

In fact, there is no uniform discourse that takes into account all that is called collective here in Brazil. Who said that, before us, was Ronaldo Entler, researcher and photography critic. This also became our understanding from interviews we had with other collectives: Trëma (SP), Sô Foto Coletivo (MG), R.U.A Foto Coletivo (SP, RJ, PE, France) SCO2 (BH), Pandilla Coletivo (RJ), Garapa (SP), Erro99 (MG), 7 Fotografia (PE) and Cogito Coletivo (RS). In addition to these, we have tried to access other collectives from the south and north of the country, but we did not have any feedback in time for the making of this text.

Considering these reports, some facts have become important for us to think about the organization form of photography collectives nowadays: a) we do not consider, for example, practices that have collectivized processes of marketing works and infrastructure use - as is the case of photo clubs and agencies; not even the artistic collective experiences that appeared in Brazil during the 80s and 90s - where the need to strengthen each group member individually was the appeal to the collective production; b) The group cohesion happens when sharing political position and cultivate friendship, this also in its political sense.

On this last item we discus a little more. Perhaps it is quite natural to think that, with more opportunities of contamination within the production chain, sharing processes, little or no job functions hierarchy, there are also more chances to build an affection that could unite the members of this kind of practice.

Working as a Collective in this context is a political decision when we understand the term in its classical sense: the dynamics of the relationships among those involved in their coexistence. We call Agamben to help us once again. When retrieving Aristotle, he says "friendship is the con-division that precedes every division, since what has to be shared is the very fact of existence, life itself. And it is this sharing without an object, this original con-senting, which constitutes the political.”

If we assume the collectives as a kind of political groupings, we have a better understanding of the motivations that lead, for example, we and the respondents, not to put marketing reasons as a fundamental pretext of creation and/or group maintenance. Therefore, it is easier to understand the availability for new agreements and arrangements to be created at any time, opposing, essentially, the idea of a fragmented routine and hardened and competitive work relationships.

Now, if we take to the details - which makes us to believe that there isn`t only one way or formula to be a collective - we found several reasons for the cooperative creation. As the dream of producing copyright works that do not fit within the commercial spaces (Trëma, Garapa, Cogito Coletivo), independence from the traditional media (R.U.A Foto Coletivo), the new artistic creation possibilities (SCO2, Erro99, Sô Foto Coletivo), the sum of forces and capabilities (Coletivo Pandilla, Garapa, Erro99, 7 Fotografia, Coletivo Ágata) etc. With distinct goals: create critical stories about the country (Trëma, R.U.A Foto Coletivo) problematize the photography itself (Sô Foto Coletivo, 7 fotografia, Coletivo Ágata) and the artistic research and new languages experiments (SCO2, Garapa, Coletivo Ágata).

We come back to our own experience. For Ágata, our main strength comes from a multidisciplinary approach, with a collaborative creation that tries to take advantage, precisely from the differences. This allows us to feel along the way various fields of action, such as art criticism, curatorship, artistic project tracking, audiovisual production, text production and workshops conception, etc. As also generates certain impasse when we need to formally define what we are or what we do. So we like to say that we are a multidisciplinary group that operates in art criticism, content production and brokering new relationships and interfaces in the culture field.

This is important, especially for dealing with various kinds of activities, with equally distinct needs, carried out in environments not always integrated into the art field, with an audience not always familiar with the photographic language.

Even if the debate on collective has stimulated - earlier than today - the discussion around the author figure, its boundaries, its settings in a contemporary production, we cannot say that this is a waving flag of the collectives we have talked to, and not ours as well. While it is appropriate to not consider that are either overcome all existing implications in an attempt dilution of a signature, or a copyright. However, everything seems to be in experimentation and construction in the field of a collective production.

It is worth to emphasize also that although this type of creation is favored by the use of social media, by the occupation of public spaces for creation, through co-working spaces or artistic occupations, it is not merely a reflection of this scenery as it is not a reaction or opposition to individual and lonely production models, if they exist in fact. In addition to the political positioning and affinity as cohesion essential elements, creating for us and our respondents, is given in a solid and shared living space in which the exchange of ideas and experiences result in a whole better and always greater than the sum of the parts or individual contributions.

Entler says that "with the ability to make connections, your political action [the collectives] can be effective without being necessarily scandalous or propagandistic." When he says that, mentions the power of collective activation specifically to social media. But if we widen the network idea to the sharing idea and thoughts, we will also see a fertile field of action that may create privileged spaces for reflection and expression of what is to be a collective.

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