Some subjective answers

Hi there,

before the meeeting just thought I would post some totally subjective individual thoughts on the questions that Andrea asked.

I feel good about my involvement with TAC so far. I have found it is a hard thing to find people to work with in artist groups. I have so far had two unsucessful attempts at setting up artist groups where my aim was to be able to give and get feedback in a post-art school critique kind of mutually beneficial way. Both of them ended in disaster - collaborations which failed before they even started. First failure due to mismatched expectations and practices. I faced a table of blank painterly faces at the mention of the word 'installation'. The second one failed because the group just didn't get it together to keep meeting up. The writers groups I know which I hoped to emulate have enough members so that there is always someone at the meetings even if not everyone is there. That's something I think we have done well. Somehow there is a shared need which is bringing us together regularly even though that need may vary within the group.
So I feel good and excited and reinvigorated in my faith in collaboration.

I think we have done working together well and agreeing by consensus. I think we have been good at being flexible. I think we do well at everyone expressing their opinion and differing opinions being able to be heard and discussed. I feel like it is a pretty equal collaboration.

In terms of the show, I think we could have maybe made more of an impact on it in terms of visibility, but I think that would have taken more meeting up and I feel like we have done pretty good especially at this time of year. I also quite enjoyed the set up at Enjoy with the chairs because it seemed obvious that we were a bunch of people talking and trying to work things out together rather than setting ourselves up as experts. Which was continued on the wall with the process.
I wonder if we could have done better at encouraging people to contribute to the wall....more porousness?

I think one of the challenges for TAC is to define some ways in which we will determine sucess. I think we are all having a nice time and good conversations but I also wonder whether we are in danger of falling into one of the potential traps of collaborating which is meeting new people and gaining from the group but not necessarily producing anything. I wonder whether that is one of the things to be gained from collaborating though, to appreciate a slower and more organic process. Like when you are single you can be a much easier high achiever go getter cos it's just you doing your thing but when you are with someone you might not achieve so much but you learn more because you have to negotiate with another person. Does collaboration make you a better person? Does collaboration teach you about social engagement? Is that what makes it important? Is collaboration like a relationship where you choose someone who is different to you so that you can be challenged and thus grow somehow?
Now I feel like I am that woman in Sex in the City who writes in questions. Sorry about that. But maybe that's another point, does collaboration make you a better artist because you have to be more rigorous in deciding what you do because there is another person involved?

Now that the Prospects show has come along, sucess could be gauged somehow through our working process with that. Like we have been talking in the abstract about what collaboration is etc and it's easy in a way because it's abstract, but my feeling is that we will be able to learn more by doing an actual project and seeing what happens. In that case we maybe need to document / think about it through the process, which is what this blog is so good for! Yay for cyber presence.

Hope that's useful for the thingy Andrea, Sian