Collaboration drives exciting art. When artists come together and unite as collectives, they etch the backbones of future imaginative realities by weaving a variety of aesthetic tendencies, artistic missions and political desires under the same banner. The Russian Formalists’ art drove the spirit of the Bolshevik Revolution, Andy Warhol’s Factory defined generations of artists to come, Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis defied Pinochet’s regime by acting as a small space of resistance for the Chilean LGBTQ+ community, and Grupo Cine Liberación challenged dictatorial tyranny in Argentina through protest cinema. Arts collectives are incubators of newness that challenge the norms of everyday life by concentrating diverse perspectives into fierce units of resistance that consistently rearticulate life itself by highlighting the art of the future.

 The art collectives represented in this edition of the Arts Issue represent the birth of new ideas. Whether it’s Their Art Club’s vision of a creative outlet for artists outside of NYU’s arts programs or Key of She’s network of female jazz musicians, these arts collectives are laying down the bricks for concretizing utopias.

 Collectives are cooperative enterprises. Arts collectives are cooperative enterprises rooted in creativity and aspiring for freshness. The arts collectives in this edition of the Arts Issue — 222, Art + Type, Key of She, MICHELLE and Their Art Club — embody this spirit of creativity. Their diversity, both in terms of mediums and make up, demonstrate how today’s aspiring artists are rethinking the traditions of their art through groundbreaking practices.

 By celebrating the work accomplished by these collectives, this issue pushes for their ingenuity to be shared. As such, this issue can be seen as the gust of wind that carries the news of these collectives to the world. In spotlighting new ways of thinking devised by collectives that are composed of diverse artists, this issue’s goal is to catalyze the aforementioned collectives’ practices by offering a place for people to read about them. The Arts Desk is devoted to informing its readership about the ever-evolving rhythms of art, and in putting together this issue on collectives, we stay true to that goal.

 With our profiles of five different arts collectives with roots at NYU, this issue offers an opportunity to witness novelty in the making. Not only does our focus on collectives showcase a variety of exciting personalities involved in various art practices, but it also provides the reader with insight as to how rising artists are challenging the status quo. We hope that the readers of the Arts Issue come away with the same verve to re-articulate the world that the artists we interview exhibit on a daily basis.

 A great many thanks go out to all of the arts editors and writers — Yas Akdag, Isabella Armus, JP Pak, Shreya Wankhade — involved in the making of the Arts Issue. A similar token of gratitude extends itself to everyone who helped make this edition possible: from our Editor-in-Chief to our Under the Arch collaborators and the most hardworking multimedia team in the game of college publications. Everyone involved in the making of the Arts Issue has a zeal of genius and merits laudation.

 Scour the pages ahead and invest yourself in the ingenuity of the collectives represented. Hopefully they will inspire you to take on the world with similar ardor.