Collaboration is an absolutely central topic in contemporary art practice, seen by many as freeing art from its traditional constraints of self-referentiality and subjectivity. In this useful anthology, artist and theorist Holly Crawford collects the most passionate practitioners and critics of collaborative art. With over 40 texts from noted academics and artists in the field, exploring both socio-political and psychological dimensions, Crawford documents a major development in contemporary art. --Dr. Daniel Palmer, Theory of Art & Design, Monash University, Melbourne
Abstract
Although the modernist notion of art as autonomoushas been thoroughly contested, the discourse of the artist as celebrated individual persists. As a counter to that, this eclectic collection of writings on 'collaboration as a cultural practice' starts from the standpoint that collective approaches have been a
characteristic feature of artistic production throughout the 20th century and that a rich cultural and artistic interchange results from shared experience and dialogue. Informed by contemporary notions of an emergent 'relational' sensibility and participative forms of social and cultural activity (such as the
worldwide web) the editor, Holly Crawford, brings together a series of interviews, essays, conversations and remarks on collaboration. International visual artists, critics, writers and musicians explore a range of histories, discourses and theories relating to communal, collective practices including FLUXUS, Zero, GRAV and SPUR in mid-20th century, women artists in the GDR and the Critical Art Ensemble in the Eighties and the experimental New Social Art School set up in Aberdeen in 2004. The resulting anthology, a considerable collaborative project in its own right, challenges orthodoxies and engages in the vital and current debate within the global artistic community about participative cooperative approaches.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Histories, Theories and Conversations
The Decoration of the Paris Panthéon by Paul Chenavard – A Particular Brotherhood
Pierre-Olivier Douphis
The Calling of Two Creatures: Depression-era Collaboration and a Theory of Camera and Pen
Zoe Trodd
Creative Occupation: Collaborative Artistic Practices in Europe 1937-1944
Horace Brockington
Collaborative Practices in Environmental Art
Grant Kester
Concepts of Collaborative Art in the Divided Germany of the 1960s
Nina Zimmer
“Avant Femme” or Futuristic Frauen “Avant-femme” or Futuristic Frauen: Collaborative Art by Women in the German Democratic Republic
Beret Norman
The Second Self
Charles Green
“Encompassing Unboundness”: Desire and Collaborative Authorship in Carla Harryman and Lyn Hejinian’s “The Wide Road”
Shawna Ferris
An Easy Alliance: A Dialogue on Methodology
Lull (Elena Knox) and Cristyn Davies
Learning from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
Vladimir Belogolovsky
Language of Innovation
Alan F. Blackwell and David A. Good
Working Together
Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman: A Life in Fluxus
Peter Frank
Temporary Bedfellows: Claes Oldenburg, Maurice Tuchman and Disney
Holly Crawford
The Ivory Towers Were Always Connected: Interdisciplinary Dia(b)logues as Challenge and Choice
Ursula Ganz-Blaettler
Socially Engaged Art, Critics, and Discontents: Interview of Claire Bishop
Jennifer Roche
“Detrimental to the Interests of the United States”: Cuban Artists (Not) in Residence
Jenni Drozdek
Suzanne Lacy: Oakland Projects
Dena L. Hawes
Simonides in the Machine: The Art of Virtual Memory in a Pentagon-funded Initiative
Carrie Paterson
Locating a Temporary Common Space: Cultural Exchanges in Weedpatch
Gillian Whitely
The Neistat Brothers, “SOMETIMES I’M HARVEY WEINSTEIN, SOMETIMES I’M WES CRAVEN. THE SAME GOES FOR MY BROTHER.” Email Interview
Lillian Fellmann
Having Their Cake and Eating it Too: The Case of Christo’s (and Jeanne-Claude’s) Im(permanence) and Exclusivity
Holly Crawford
The Wu-wei of the 21st Century Art of Collaboration
Lisa Paul Streitfeld
What is Conversational Music or “Convers”?
Martin Simon
Shorter Comments, Thoughts and Projects
Some Thoughts on Collaboration
Guy Van Belle
The Electron Buddy System
Nicolas Collins
I Always Appreciated Teamwork and Collaborations
Orlan
The Dream of a Common Language: Thoughts on Collaboration and Protest
Zoe Trodd
Observations on Collective Cultural Action
Critical Art Ensemble
New Social Art School
Eva Merz
Complicity
Andrea Thal
Transromantik
Catharyne Ward and Eric Wright
On Collaboration
TODT
“This Way Up,” Concept and Progress
Chris Fite-Wassilak
Online Collaboration in Genomic Art
Holly Longstaff
A Robot and Its Double
Pia Lindman
Collaborative Art Projects and art.es
Fernando Galán
My Collaborative Art
Ospina
Collaboration between Tracey Snelling and Salvador Diaz, Chicago, March 2005
Tracey Snelling
“i Woz,” and Gina
Steve Wozniak
“It seems simple, but it is not.”
gelitin
Contributors
Index