The Brooklyn Rail

33 questions (+7) we don’t know how to answer

01 Is it radical to have no social masks?
02 Is it radical to always tell only the truth?
03 Is it radical to dismiss the figure of the individual artist?
04 Is it radical for an artists’ collective to be born by mistake?
05 Is it radical to have an artists’ collective in which no one wanted to be an artist?
06 Is it radical to have an artists’ collective whose members could never be admitted to any fine arts academy?
07 Is it radical for an artists’ collective to be called Atelier dell’Errore (Atelier of Mistakes)?
08 Is it radical for a collective to identify itself with its own acronym AdE (Hades)?
09 Is it radical for a collective to consist of 11/12 neurodivergent artists?
10 Is it radical for a collective to turn, over twenty-three years, the remaining 1/12 into a neurodivergent person?
11 Is it radical for a collective to transform 11 people from occupational therapy into 11 professional artists?
12 Is it radical for a collective to mock the term “neurodivergence” as a greenwashing of political correctness?
13 Is it radical for a collective to be aware that, to everyone else, we remain a group of “psychiatric patients”?
14 Is it radical for a collective to recognize that art is not witchcraft and does not cure any pathology?
15 Is it radical for a collective to claim that art transforms the “patient,” not the pathology?
16 Is it radical for a collective to consider the rest of the world the kingdom of “normaloids”?
17 Is it radical for a collective to function as a single organism in which many limbs form one body?
18 Is it radical for a collective to transform itself into a Renaissance workshop?
19 Is it radical for a collective of “psychiatric patients” to become a cooperative art studio?
20 Is it radical to have a collective in which every artist is a worker-member with the right to a monthly salary?
21 Is it radical to have a collective that wants to be recognized for what it does rather than for what it is?
22 Is it radical to have a collective that has never been trapped within the cage of “outsider art”?
23 Is it radical to have a collective that begins each workday with a permanent assembly?
24 Is it radical to have a collective whose assembly manages to give a voice even to those who cannot speak?
25 Is it radical to have a collective that has drawn “only” animals for twenty-three years?
26 Is it radical to have a collective that draws “only” animals without ever using an eraser?
27 Is it radical to have a collective in which any animal can transform at any moment into any other?
28 Is it radical to have a collective that sees metamorphosis as a salvific process?
29 Is it radical to have a collective that considers metamorphosis as the planet’s greatest future potential?
30 Is it radical to have a collective whose self-defense forces consist of an army of “Guardian Animals”?
31 Is it radical to have a collective that turns its coprolalia into a form of performance art?
32 Is it radical to have a collective that considers its art studio a sacred place?
33 Is it radical to have a collective that professes disbelief in the omnipotence of the visible?

In operational terms:

A Is it radical for a collective to prophesize a planet Earth ruled by gigantic insects?
B Is it radical for a collective to prophesize “mammalized” insects with no more binary genders?
C Is it radical for a collective to draw animals as projections of desire?
D Is it radical for a collective to draw animals capable of satisfying every erotic imaginary?
E Is it radical for a collective to draw animals to narrate sexuality in neurodivergence?
F Is it radical for a collective to build the sail of P.P. Pasolini’s boat using fifty rescue blankets?
G Is it radical to use that sail to become the secret refuge for the sentimental education of two AdE artists?

If even one answer is YES, AdE is a radical collective.