Being an Art Collective, Then?

"What does it mean to be an art collective now, when the words “collective” and “community” are asked to do so much? They are often invoked as alternatives to competition, as soft names for care, solidarity, collaboration, and survival. But they can also conceal the labour, responsibility, exhaustion, and uneven availability that make collective life possible. Being an Art Collective, Then? begins from that tension. Collective and community are not treated here as stable forms. They appear as names that emerge under pressure, when relations become necessary and visible or strained and difficult to sustain. The zine asks how collective practice can remain transformable before being fixed too quickly into identity, duty, usefulness, or institutional form. The Zine brings together writings exchanged between Park Hye-in and Shin Hara since 2025. Its structure reflects this process of collective writing: main texts, comments, and drifts are arranged as different modes of attention. One develops a line of thought, another interrupts or repositions it, and another allows deviation to become part of the method. Across questions of infrastructure, perception, affect, technology, ecology, care, labour, and artistic self-organisation, the book traces how being together is made possible, how it is burdened, and how it might remain open to revision, refusal, return, and change. This publication is a shared itinerary for thoughts on collective life, being, and practice that both authors have carried separately and will continue to carry forward. It offers a temporary meeting point where distinct streams of thought and practice can touch, diverge, and return, without being forced into a single voice or final conclusion. Written and edited by Park Hye-in and Shin Hara Published by Common Imprint, Berlin Designed by Sam Kim "