In my talk I will focus on MACAO’s quest to gain visibility in the art world and becoming ‘popular’.

It is productive to analyse MACAO’s actions through the social movement theory of Alberto Melucci, whose work provides illuminating insights on the ‘cultural side’ of political mobilisations. In one of his most important contributions to social movement theory (Melucci, 1996) he stressed that the will to challenge ‘codes’, meaning the cultural and social codes operating in a given society, is a key feature of any social movement. Inspired by the work of Alain Touraine, he insisted that the most ambitious goal of Social Movements is to redefine the meaning of social action. From this point of departure, we can see how artists challenged the existing codes of the art world, a social space that expected them to achieve good degrees from prestigious art academies and then pursue largely individualised careers, seemingly forcing them to seek popularity and stardom as individuals, in a world they perceived as heavily financialised, hostile, and precarious.

Their political work, allowed to re-signify these expectations via coalescing around a collective that helped them to exploit not their individual, but their collective resources to gain a popularity/ visibility that would not have been possible individually. Putting together their social capital, artistic competences, and skills, they were able to create what I define an entity that I call ‘autonomous art institution’ (Cossu, 2022) which resulted in prestigious collaborations with art museums – as Reina Sofia in Spain and ZKM in Germany – and renowned artists from around the globe. I believe this testifies to a fundamental dialectic that MACAO artists were able to establish between the existing art world and their own collective, something that aimed at parasite, ingest and re-elaborating the current trends in art and society: from visibility to sustainability.

This process is not free from power dynamics and internal struggles, as any group or collective is inevitably bound to suffer from those. In my talk I will also focus on the internal differentiation of artists within MACAO to explore how power and inequality remain however embedded in the individual and collective quest to visibility and becoming ‘popular’.

References:
Cossu, A. (2022). Autonomous Art Institutions: Artists Disrupting the Creative City. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Melucci., A. (1996). Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alberto Cossu's ethnographic research on the MACAO centre in Italy radiates out to questions about what it means to be a modern artist, and how much autonomy is left to the artist in a globalized and politicised world.
Autonomous Art Institutions provides a unique perspective on the political engagement of artists in order to investigate the reconfiguration of contemporary art practices as they dissolve in social and economic processes. The book provides insight into the making of a radical art institution across seven years of activity, showing how social, cultural and economic elements are appropriated and repurposed by artists in the process. Based on years of sociological research as well as direct involvement of the author in the artistic practices, the book illuminates the spark of society-to-come by examining the doings of artists as they attempt to disrupt the ‘creative city.’
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786616036/Autonomous-Art-Institutions-Artists-Disrupting-the-Creative-City

Alberto Cossu is a sociologist and media scholar whose research is concerned with art & creative work; collaborative and digital economies; with a focus on the organisational processes and new forms of value creation that he studies combining qualitative and digital methods. He currently works as Assistant Professor in Media & Communication within the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester where he is Programme Director for the MA in Digital Media & Society. He has published on several peer-reviewed journals and his first monograph, Autonomous Art Institutions – Artists Disrupting the Creative City, appeared in June 2022 for Rowman & Littlefield International.