Commoning Art. Activating the Transformative Potential of Commons in the Arts

Commoning Art brings contemporary commons and art discourses into dialogue through feminist, queer, ecosocial, and critical studies perspectives. It outlines three positions in current practice: Art for Commons, centering the commons as a political and aesthetic concern; Art as Commons, challenging ownership and copyright; and Commoning Art, approaching art as an ongoing process of collective self-organization.

Drawing on a variety of situated examples from artistic and curatorial practice, the transdisciplinary team of authors develops a methodology that advances an ontological reorientation of art, shifting away from the myth of individual autonomy towards forms of practice grounded in relationality and interdependence. From this perspective, art is understood as infrastructure that is collectively sustained through commoning processes of care, shared responsibility, and collective decision-making. Commoning Art opens pathways towards legal, organizational, and material conditions that allow cultural work to be sustained with greater stability and reduced dependence on market- and state-based arrangements. [publisher's note]