Collaboration in the age of multimedia art

Hey everyone,

This time I wanted to talk about my views on collaboration and how it applies to our residency with Freya at CounterPulse.

So let’s start by dumping some ideas. Collaboration to me…

• is about communicating
• is about the work/project not individuals
• is also the individuals enjoying
• is the process of getting multiple people involved in a way to create something that is not possible individually.
• is about knowing when to stay silent
• is not about going further but slower
• is about going further and faster
• is not just division of labor
• is about trusting others while listening to them
• is about trusting others and knowing that section you do not know is in capable hands
• is about asking for input
• is giving feedback event it might hurt the other
• is not about everybody debating for everything
• is about respect
• is about being responsible
• is inclusive

Now that I have a loose-enough definition of what collaboration is, I will look into our process for this residency. Our first weeks were solely spent on discussions about understanding what we want about this residency, our point of views about the subjects and sharing past works as well as possible inspirations. This was the foundation of our early communications and strengthened  the respect,  respect and similar notions between us (of course everything is a process).

To our work sessions, we both brought multiple ideas that we prepared individually and ran that through with the other. Some of these we start using and improved, some never made it too far with some we got each other’s feedback but again the originator went on to improve the idea. There were some items we liked but could not see a place they fit in. There were couple ideas, that did not make sense with the other but we both “bought in” to explore and understand it.

As we approach the final run, we still have somethings to do in the piece, mostly about the production but still some about the content. Till this point our main approach was enjoying the process and I think it sill will be…

And here is something from my explorations (using some visual effects from Keijiro):

[Photo from R. Yagiz Mungan’s installation, Causality at Purdue University. Selin Mungan pictured interacting, photo by the artist]