THE SOCIAL TURN: COLLABORATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

The recent surge of artistic interest in collectivity, collaboration, and direct engagement with ‘real’ people (i.e., those who are not the artist’s friends or other artists) from Superflex’s internet TV station for elderly residents of a Liverpool housing project (Tenantspin, 1999) to Jeanne van Heeswijk’s project to turn a condemned shopping mall into a cultural center for the residents of Vlaardingen, Rotterdam (De Strip, 2001–2004). Although these practices have had a relatively weak profile in the commercial art world— collective projects are more difficult to market than works by individual artists, and less likely to be a ‘work’ than a social event, publication, workshop, or performance—they nevertheless are increasingly visible.