Going beyond or abandoning collective action to achieve individual goals

The title may make the reader slightly uneasy. It sounds suspiciously inappropriate or perhaps unspeakable. In diametric opposition to correct thought it raises the question: is it inherently positive or necessary for individuals to form a group in order to attain a good? Is such collaboration desirable or is it preferable for us to make our own way, setting and reaching the objectives that we consider it important to achieve as unique individuals, as modernity has crowned us? Is it still desirable or possible to form groups to obtain a common good among individuals now immersed in a post‐modernity that practices extreme subjectivity, among unique individuals who think of themselves first but who, albeit from a position of indifference, are touched by others? This article addresses the subject of collective action in a very specific context: visual artists in the city of Buenos Aires. From an anthropological focus, we see how and why certain notions of artists (originality, lack of time, hostile environment, distrusted institutions, inappropriate laws, and fear of stigmatisation) link coherently with their practices. The article highlights the inefficiency and lack of collective action (In permanent tension with the discourse) and its suboptimal results that fail to meet the minimum expectations expressed by the agents. In particular, I analyse copyright and the possibility of its collective protection. The agents' individualistic attitudes and spasms of solidarity are reinterpreted by them in the light of those notions, although the analysis shows that those concepts alone do not explain the limited amount of collective action and its poor results.