Intro to cooperative art, keys to unlock collaboration

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London, January 2015

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INTRO TO COOPERATIVE ART KEYS TO UNLOCK COLLABORATION INTRODUCTION It is referred to with many names: participatory art, dialogic art, relational aesthetics, interactive performance art, art of encounter, socially engaged art, cooperative art. It has been perplexing art critics and historians, curators, the general public, even the artists involved in it, since the time it first occurred in or out the “art scene”. Indeed, it is hard or sometimes unsuitable to make distinctions, classifications or firm definitions, especially for contemporary art. The theoretical investigations of postmodern philosophers such as JeanFrançois Lyotard and Jacques Derrida as well as my own personal scepticism serve as a warning that in doing so, one can deprive art of its innate organic metabolism. Not proceeding with caution could also lead to rigid, sterile institutionalization or even worse boundless commodification. Art is a very relative, subjective notion and practice; it’s neither finite nor definite.

For the objectives of any study, however, it is beneficial to specify and narrow down the focus area of research. Despite how fluid a notion may be, when trying to investigate, analyse and even more importantly communicate, one should be able to articulate it by reason of academic

and/or artistic discourse. In the first part of this essay I present perceptions of what cooperative art is in order to describe the context of the essay’s hypothesis: it is possible to identify a number of parameters which come into play during cooperative art projects. Such parameters can act and used as the keys with which practitioners can unlock participation or collaboration amongst the several parties involved in a project. The essay further questions how these parameters affect the success of the process or the final outcome of a cooperative art project. The intention is to create a primal handbook, an introduction to the nature, challenges, methodologies and strategies of cooperative art.

PART ONE: DESCRIBING COOPERATIVE ART I first encountered the question of what is cooperative art during a course of my Bachelor of Fine Arts. But the time I truly confronted it was when I was preparing for a class with my eleven to thirteen year old students during our 3D Modeling and Sculpture course, in 2013.

For that class we would combine the technique of mould making with the conceptual background of

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cooperativeness. The students made a clay mould of their palm and casted it in plaster. As their homework, they had to make a clay mould of one of their best friends’ palm as well. I was very happy when one student even proposed of making a mould of his dog’s paw. We exhibited the negative clay mould of their friends’ palms on top of the positive plaster mould of their own palms. We discussed about what this piece meant.

The students argued that it seemed like they were doing the high-five with their best friend, they observed that their palms were bigger, or thinner, that they matched in some parts or they were different in others. We also talked about their experience with their friends. Some thought that it was odd and fun. Some said that since the clay was so firm, they had to mould it together. Some of their friends were curious about this home project and asked what was this class about. A student told us that her friend cancelled last minute so she made a mould of her sister’s hand. I then asked a simple question: “Would this piece exist or mean anything without your friends’ cooperation?”

In order to formulate an understanding of this genre of art one has to start with a basic genealogy.

The origins of cooperative art can be traced back to John Cage and the Black Mountain College. John Cage used the term “happening” to describe events which pushed the boundaries of creative fields.

He composed multidisciplinary events which would happen, still inside an auditorium, but dispersed beyond the stage, all around the space. Each person curated their own experience of the piece just by pointing their focus towards a direction. They were thus participating; in the sense of composing their own,

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personal, unique piece using the elements provided by Cage and his team.

Fluxus went further; they would write scores for actions for the public to perform according to their own interpretation of them. The piece was part the score, part the public’s performance and the result was open-ended. Another important thing to point out for this case is that the Fluxus was a collaborative, international network of artists, composers, performers, writers, designers etc. Dadaism and Fluxus were the first collectives (at least in the “art world”) to so consciously and deliberately champion the cooperative nature of their practice though their manifestos. Moreover, they were one of the first who introduced the long and always-relevant discussion of what are “studio art” and the “white cube”. They questioned and confronted the institutionalization of art through schools, museums, galleries and exhibitions and campaigned towards a social form of art.

“…Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals… …FUSE the cadres of cultural, social & political revolutionaries into united front & action.”1 With the rise of performance and installation art during the 1960s and the 1970s artists such as Yoko Ono (1965, Cut piece), Barbara T. Smith (1969, Ritual Meal) and Allan Kaprow (1969, Project Other Ways) conceived artworks which invited and encouraged the visitors to participate in the artwork. As with

Excerpt from the Fluxus Manifesto, 1963, by George Maciunas 1

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Fluxus, the action was usually instructed by the artist but much more freedom was granted to the participants. Marina Abramović stated “What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” (Vettese, A. et al., 2009, p. 29) referring to her piece “Rhythm 0”. The actions became much more engaging, or even challenging and controversial: cutting the artist’s clothes or skin, eating nearly raw meat etc. Felix Gonzales Torres is literarily sharing his installations with the visitors, piece by piece. In his artwork "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) a pile of candy in a corner weights as much as Felix’s partner who died of an AIDS related illness. The visitor can pick a piece of candy and the diminishing of the pile represents his partner’s weight loss and suffering. The pile has to be constantly replenished giving Felix, his partner and their love perpetual life and memory. The visitors commune with the piece and become carriers of its message. What is evident is that by this time participatory art has started becoming political; addressing or advocating social issues and raising awareness.

medium is no longer a performative action, nor a material; it’s the very relationships developed between the artist and the participants or among the participants themselves. In contrast to previous examples the piece is more about the active, direct dialogue with the wide public than an overarching concept (such as feminism). It wishes to completely dissolve the forth wall, make art less elitist 2 , fully accessible and communal. The aspiration was for the visitor to share the leading role with the artist and participate in a more collaborative, creative way.

During the 1990s the social aspect of participatory art became even more prominent with a new form of it named “relational aesthetics”.

A huge shift occurred from an artwork having a social role to the case where a social interaction had the role of an artwork. The artist creates a platform for people to gather, socialize, discuss subjects which may or may not relate to the artwork’s concept.

The platform could be a reconstructed apartment in a gallery where the visitors can sit and chat with the artist over a cup of coffee, or a schedule of meeting your grandmother every week to catch up while sketching together. The artist’s

The challenge of cross-fertilization between social practice, community work education, fine art, pedagogy among others fully manifests in Socially Engaged Art where things become much more intricate than ever before. People no longer attend an art piece and participate, but they are co-creators of a project, they are involved in several stages throughout

Relational aesthetics received a lot of criticism mostly around maters of authenticity, authorship and pretentiousness. One could argue that despite its intentions, it still remained self-referential: although more social, the artwork was still framed within the discourses of the “fine arts” (institutional critique for example). Despite the fact that the artist adopted the practices of other professionals such as social workers, the balance was leaning way more towards the artistic side than the social3.

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During the 80s the art scene was becoming increasingly opaque and exclusionary. The image of the “startist/genius” and the “great work of art” reached a whole new level with the rise of the YBAs. 3 Which is illustrated quite candidly with the use of “aesthetics” in the genre’s name

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the creative process and they have an essential role in the decision making which breaths air into the piece. The artists democratize the conception, development and realization of the project. Their role includes instigating, facilitating and mediating the several aspects of collaboration which animate the piece.

Socially Engaged Art additionally creates intersections between Humanities and Sciences, employing the theoretical background, strategies, methodologies and practices of multiple fields and disciplines through collaboration with corresponding professionals. Although relevant to the matters raised by social issues, communities and other fields, the artwork does not directly answer questions or solve problems. Instead, it renders them ambiguous, open to cultural discourse for people to experience and ponder. The essence of the artwork does not lie on the physical object or action but the process of communicative exchange and cooperation.

PART TWO: PARAMETERS AND KEYS FOR COOPERATIVE ART Through the brief presentation of the several forms of participatory or cooperative art it is becoming more clear that their definition and character depend largely on the level of participation or collaboration, the intentions of the artwork and its context. In any case, however, it is quite evident that the piece cannot exist without any kind of dialogue and forthright communication between its constituents. Which in turn means that cooperative art axiomatically has to be dialectical, in a sense that it has the

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capacity to bare and communicate ideas, signifiers and meaning amongst parties.

Being dialectical, predisposes cooperative art to having the attributes of a language.

Languages consist of signs, combinations of signifiers and signified concepts. Signs can bear meaning on their own or they can be composed with others to convey more complicated, layered meanings. In practical terms, languages have a set of rules for the composition of meaning: vocabulary, syntax and grammar. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his book “Philosophical Investigations” 4 introduces the idea of “language-games” to describe the use of language and its rules. In the game of chess there is a set of pieces and a board.

The players are taught that those pieces can move on the board, that each piece has a very specific pattern of movement and that the player’s goal is to win the game by taking down the opponent’s pieces. Respectively, every game happens within a context and sets a specific content and rules.

According to Wittgenstein, so does any language. The various elements of a language are adapted to the context of a given situation (a game) and the “rules”, or to put in more loose terms, the “parameters” it sets.

Since cooperative art is a language-game, as argued above, it also functions within parameters which affect the project’s development. This fact enables the process of evaluation as well. If one can pinpoint the dynamics which moulded a project, it is also feasible to analyse and assess them during the process and/or afterwards. In other words it would be sweeping and oversimplifying to assume

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Wittgenstein, L. & Anscombe, G.E.M., 2009. Philosophische Untersuchungen = Philosophical investigations, Chichester: WileyBlackwell.

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that “anything goes” in cooperative art.

Any practitioner that takes herself and her work seriously acknowledges that there is a series of questions/matters which need to be addressed. It is pivotal to keep in mind that the “rules” of language-games constantly change within the context of each language-game, but furthermore the context or the languagegame itself can shift to or diffuse with other ones. Therefore, the parameters and the evaluation based on them remain always fluid and dynamic.

First key: Intentions and interests It is very important yet interestingly difficult for cooperators to assimilate and address the fact that with the existence of more than one body, comes the existence of more than one backgrounds, agendas, idiosyncrasies, mindsets and experiences.

As each member enters the collective space of a group, they bring their own perception of what the project is about, what the goal, process and final outcome could be.

As the saying goes “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. The answer is not to reinforce the hegemony of a Chef de cuisine, not to submit to the vision and interest of the singularity, because that would instantly mean the failure and death of the very essence of cooperation. Instead, the true challenge of each cooperator is to recognize and respect the existence of multiple interests; to negotiate and mediate them without compromising the integrity of the project. There has to be full clarity and transparency when it comes to expectations in order to avoid disappointment or disengagement.

Honesty and directness can prevent large conflicts and save a great amount of time, effort and emotional stress caused by misunderstandings.

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It is also wise for intentions to be very specific and realistic. Yet they have to remain flexible and incorporate right from the beginning the great possibility of things having to be readjusted, redeveloped, transformed or completely dropped along the process. “The main challenge is to find the balance between the investment of the participants and the freedom provided.”(Helguera, P., 2011, p.

48) The feeling of togetherness and solidarity is very important for the longevity of any collective or project and once it is compromised by the supremacy of personal over the collective interest, the entire structure of the team starts disintegrating.

Second Key: Authorship and agency During the creative process of any collaborative work an issue that is often raised is authorship. The most fruitful way to address the question is to release authorship and make it communal. In any project which involves any level of participation or collaboration, it is naïve, unrealistic and obsolete to believe in a lily-white, unprecedented, born-in-avacuum idea.

The sense of authorship often depends on the level of participation. If we look at participation and collaboration as gliders, through the genealogy presented above one can extract the extents within which they move: • Instructed participation: the visitor follows a set of directions provided by the artist • Interactive participation: the artist provides a platform which accommodates creative exchange between visitors and artist

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Collaboration: the artist and participants share similar roles and responsibilities

Joe Walkling is a member of the New Movement Collective and tutor at AAIS. I was interested in NMC’s way of working and he mentioned that once an idea is proposed to the group by any of the members, they have a common understanding that the idea is now shared and no longer belongs to one individual. It stopped being “your baby” right from the moment you agreed to share it with the group and further manipulation of it by others is now welcomed. They have learned not to get attached to their ideas which means they are much more flexible.

In addition to shared authorship, a key aspect of successful cooperative projects is the democratization of agency. It is productive to evoke and cultivate the sense of belonging in a collective. The cooperators should create an atmosphere of companionship and camaraderie where everyone feels right at home. The environment should inspire the sense of ownership, equally distributed between the group. The co-operator realizes that everything is co-created and feels responsible and accountable for the development of the project. This could be stressing and more challenging but on the flip side it drives the effort for each member to deliver her best for the team and herself. Hence, it further fuels the motivation and commitment first ignited by the interest in collaborating.

Third key: Collective creativity On one hand, there is the traditional notion of the creative individual as portrayed in King Vidor’s movie “Fountainhead” by the leading male character, Howard Roark: the illuminated

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visionary struggling with the entire world to make his exceptional, revolutionary ideas be heard and/or realized. Only the few have the refined, high-ended cultural background needed to understand his point of view. This perception of the creative individual is still prominent and keeps gaining force in all creative fields today.

On the other hand we have the example of the Gothic Cathedral. The process of designing and building, as well as the final product is the result of collaborative work. There is little distinction between art, crafts and architecture, high and low, tops and bottoms. Instead a network of specialists in their trait of choice works together, combining and cross-fertilizing their practices, which results in a Gesamtkunstwerk5.

The true challenge is to create a framework of operation which is structured and efficient but still openended enough to a) permit the input and contribution of all the co-operators in its formulation and b) has the capacity to be reconfigured according to the specifics of the context, content and the parties involved in the project, at any given time during the creative process. In order to achieve that, one should analyse and understand these factors which come into play.

Every co-operator should acknowledge the fact that they are specialists in what they do, but so do the rest of the members of the team. Firstly, everyone should learn to sincerely accept, respect, value and trust every collaborator’s intelligence, their amount and quality of knowledge and experience, without hierarchizing them. The next step is to identify, activate and empower what

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Translation: total work of art

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everyone can bring to the table in order for the team to reach its full potentials.

This could also mean that an exchange of information has to be established. The collaborators should assist each other in educating the rest of the group about what they know and how that could be applied to the project. It could be literally anything: from where to find the best mushrooms in the forest, to how to “paint with all the colors of the wind” (Williams V. L., 1995) or how to extract the coordinates of all the points in a mesh using Grasshopper.

Arguably, the aims mentioned in the previous paragraph are easier said than done. It is undeniable that within the collaborative team some people can be more comfortable performing some of the following activities more than others: talking, thinking, writing, observing, documenting and doing. It is everyone’s responsibility, however, to ensure these obstacles are overcome. If a person talks too much, she needs to learn how to leave time for others and if a person is too shy to talk, she should try practicing it, instead of leaving it up to others. The same applies to the several skillsets present in a room. The delegation of tasks according to everyone’s comfort zones or expertise is the quick, easy and seemingly most efficient answer to the problem, especially when deadlines are pressing. In the long run, however, each collaborator just keeps getting better and more specialized at what they already know; which would be fine in the context which gave birth to Howard Roark. In the context of collectives and Gesamtkunstwerk, nonetheless, it is much more beneficial to evolve, branch out and grow through the exchange of information, knowledge and skillsets and the constant practice of them.

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Consequently, constant circulation of roles and tasks is more advantageous, creative, exciting and much less monotonous.

CONCLUSION Every art medium has its own characteristics, possibilities and limitations but when the medium is human relationships, personalities and interactions, one should be even more attentive to the complex, delicate and multifaceted matters raised by its essence.

This essay provides a better understanding of what cooperative art is through the presentation of its genealogy.

It draws forth its major parameters which condition the development and realization of cooperative projects. It recognizes that instead of being treated as impregnable challenges, they could be the very keys to unlock collaboration and release creativity within a collective. The essay’s topics constitute a point of reference for their application and practice in cooperative projects. The ultimate goal is to establish a dialogue between theory/analysis and practice/application. As they constantly inform each other I will keep researching the several aspects of cooperative art and developing my handbook which was first introduced here.

Argyris Angeli

WORKS CITED •

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Helguera, P., 2011. Education for socially engaged art: a materials and techniques handbook, New York: Jorge Pinto Books.

Vettese, A. et al., 2009. Marina Abramović, Milano: Edizioni Charta Srl. Vidor, K., 1949. The Fountainhead, USA.

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Williams V. L. (artist), Schwartz, S. (lyrics) & Menken, A. (music), 1995.

“Colors of the Wind” on Pocahontas: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack (CD), California: Walt Disney Wittgenstein, L. & Anscombe, G.E.M., 2009. Philosophische Untersuchungen = Philosophical Investigations, Chichester: WileyBlackwell.

REFERENCES •

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Finkelpearl, T., 2013. What we made: conversations on art and social cooperation, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Fischer, G. & Vassen, F., 2011.

Collective creativity collaborative

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work in the sciences, literature and the arts, Amsterdam - New York: Rodopi.

Hagoort, E. & Braak, L.ter, 2005. Good intentions: judging the art of encounter, Amsterdam: Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.

Levy, P., 1999. Collective intelligence: mankind's emerging world in cyberspace, Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books.

Lorenz, T. & Staub, P. eds., 2011.

Mediating Architecture, London: AA Publications.

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MFA IN SPATIAL PERFORMANCE AND DESIGN