Old utopias have sobered up. Our collective body is tired and fragmented. How can it be recovered, reconstructed? One way, I think, is to approach the collective body as one might an actual body: through metaphors of the collective’s bones, muscles, and connective tissues. In this essay I trace examples of collective practices from WWII to the contemporary moment in the post-Yugoslav context, where collectivity is no longer defined by the essentialist determinism that communist ideology used to supposedly fostered the “inherent collectivism” of the “East.” I follow a specific line of forms and structures of artistic production—separate from mainstream discourses—that sought to redefine art’s social position, its role as a medium of social relations. I highlight paradigm shifts and trace the methodological and political connections between different generations that shared similar problems.