Why collaboration?

Ok, well, good question. Why did you set up a collaboration? Break it down .. . . .

Call and Response: A curators invitation.
The initial catalyst for TAC came from an invitation to make a new work for a group show that Melanie Oliver was putting together for Enjoy which was later titled Every Now, and Then. The curatorial premise of the show focused on the nature of the relationships formed when artists invite varied kinds of participation to realise their artwork. Melanie was particularly interested in foregrounding the problems and politics involved in the claims made by and for relational practices as being (among other descriptions) inclusive, participatory and democratic artforms; “Rather than designing happy, harmonious projects, the artists featured in Every Now, and Then develop and maintain social tension within their work, addressing the political aspects of communication that are often overlooked” - Melanie Oliver quoted in the press release for Every Now, and Then.

I’ve been making projects that contain relational elements since art school, experimenting with various tropes and degrees of participation to provide subject matter for, enact, and demonstrate concerns and propose questions through my work. I was particularly interested in the critical context that Mel was creating because I have experienced the challenges inherent to these encounters – both as an artist, participator and critic of these works.

These challenges have included questions like: who is the author of this work? Are artists exploiting a participating audience for their own proffesional gain? Are artists prescribing the audiences participation in a way that prevents their role from having any real affect on the work? How can the audience see the results of their efforts? Isn’t the artists role always priveleged in any exchange that they have set up? What is the role of an artist in this kind of work? What is the role of the institution in this kind of work?

These kinds of questions have always been present in my practice but only existed in my work in a backgrounded way, so it was exciting to be given the opportunity to make work for a show that had this very pointed focus.

The following text is a piece of writing I sent to Melanie Oliver during the idea proposal process;

“The politics of human communication are at their most perceptible in group dynamics.The desire to create a project that utilises the structure of collaboration to address these politics is also a desire to imbed the project in a practical and collective experience of a structure which operates by working decision making processes through the problematics of human interaction.
Imbedded in the value system of collaborative structures is the belief that a common goal can be found and achieved in a group setting. Their ability to operate effectively is reliant on the productivity of human interaction, participation and goodwill”.

In retrospect I think part of the motivation for the initiation of the collaboration and its attendent values was to respond to the tone of the show. I felt the critical framework had a slight but perceptibly pessimistic edge, that its review of contemporary relational projects was proposing to be a more ‘realistic’ view and that this de-romanticised de-throning of relational practices presented a challenge to their potential to do more good than harm.

Every Now, and Then’s curatorial framework and the platform of Enjoy’s institutional support provided me with an opportunity to engage a selected part of Enjoy’s ‘audience’ (those that had previously responded to an open call through email) at a much deeper and more generative level than my projects had previously allowed for, and in the continued life of The Association of Collaboration I am able to ask the questions I am most interested in within a group that is similarly interested in discovering the answers - together. (sorry ending is cheese factor high!)

Hope that this goes some way to answering your question Andie! and please respond to any of the ideas raised every one, Im sure you have some questions/challenges of your own too. . .