A word from everyday language, self-evident in literary studies, metaphorically used in anthropology, generalized in semiotics, ambivalently circulating in art history and film studies, and shunned in musicology, the concept of [insert own word here] seems to ask for trouble. Bal 2009 21
Faucault establishes in The Order of Things the difficulty and the precarious nature of the ‘human sciences’ and their uncertainty as sciences through “their dangerous familiarity with philosophy, their ill-defined reliance upon other domains of knowledge, their perpetually secondary and derived character, and also their claim to universality”[1]. As a field the humanities proceed in accordance with models or concepts borrowed from biology, economics, and the sciences of language. This places the humanities in a position that at once makes them appear both minor, yet privileged in relation to all the other forms of knowledge to which they defer.
The adoption of processes that critique contemporary culture, while inclusive of non-art spaces, non-art institutions, and what can be considered non-art issues, blur the division between art and non-art. So too does the language used in the search for the democratic distribution of knowledge, concepts are the tools of intersubjectivity: They facilitate discussion on the basis of a common language. (Bal 2009 19 [and] because they are key to inter-subjective understanding, more than anything they need to be explicit, clear and defined. However the whole scale adoption of concepts from the other sciences into the humanities has been identified as problematic, and since concepts are barely ever used in precisely the same sense, and while their usages can “be debated and referred back to the different traditions and schools from which they emerged, thus allows an assessment of the validity of their implications” (Bal 2002:29[2]).
The problem arises when the contradictions in the terms/concepts and their descriptions from their original spheres are ignored. The theory surrounding the contradictions of the terms cannot be neglected and cannot be divorced from the systematic theory from which they emerge. The concepts we use in the humanities “need to mean the same thing for everyone, failure to do this results in our having the undesirable situation in which concepts are tenuously established, suspended between questioning and certainty, hovering between ordinary word and theoretical tool” (Bal 2009, 15). The combined commitment to theoretical perspective and concepts on the one hand and to close reading on the other is in itself a continuous changing of the concepts, that bracket all meaning and eliminate none, does not solve any confusion as to the true meaning of a term, it increases it.
In order to “avoid misunderstandings in communication with others”, Meike Bal argues that the processes of change and meaning of a concept need to be assessed before, during and after each “trip”. This assessment, we know, rarely if at all ever happens. Bal’s interest “in developing concepts we could all agree on and use, or at the very least disagree on, in order to make what has become labeled ‘theory’ accessible to every participant in cultural analysis, both within and outside the academy”. This means that usage of concepts is particular, and consequently, meaningful disagreements can be made on content.
Her interest in developing concepts usable and agreed on, or at the very least disagree on, in order to make what has become labeled ‘theory’ accessible to every participant, both within and outside the academy. If Bal’s research is to be understood in any particular way, is that she calls for a development of shared and agreed upon language that can travel, but the terms of this shared language, I would argue a still to be invented/ reinvented.
Bal asserts: “concepts are not fixed. They travel – between disciplines, between individual scholars, between historical periods and between geographically dispersed academic communities. Between disciplines, their meaning, reach and operational value differ” (Bal 2009 19) precisely for this this reason, I would argue that the definition and meaning of epistemological concepts should be fixed or at least far more descriptive.
This is not to say that concepts should be rigid. The metaphor of ‘elasticity’, Bal asserts might be helpful in assessing the particular use of a concept, because it suggests both an unbreakable stability and a near-unlimited extendibility. Bal 2009 17 However, when the terms becomes so elastic as to be meaningless then they no longer solve a problem but by virtue of their all encompassing nature they become the problem. Bal herself rightly points out: that concepts are not to be regarded as labels and rather concepts (mis)used in this way lose their working force; they are subject to fashion and quickly become meaningless”. They become jargon; lose their content and nothing more, than tautologies. “They pretend to be a theory with greater impact and meaning, but they’re actually just a description of an absence.
Some concepts are so much taken for granted and have such generalized meaning that they fail to be helpful in actual practice how do we reclaim these concepts and apply them in a structured manner. Terms like collaboration, community, participation, relational social practice collective are just another way of saying we are working together and none of them actually describe fully the complexities encapsulated in each conjuring of the term. All these terms are building up in my opinion into a glossary of complete abstractions, which for the uninitiated are misleading.
To argue for an ever expanding and increasingly elastic understanding of terms/ concepts results in circular arguments that in the end draw up back into the conundrum of how do we then define the term in question and how much of this definition is uncontestable. Definitions by their nature serve to delineate what is included on the understanding of the term and its antitheses what it directly opposes or does not mean. Which makes the simple “borrowing” of loose terms here and there not very helpful in describing aspects of cultural phenomena (Bal 2009, 17) they also do not offer a clear-cut, unambiguous formulation of terms – which Bal positions as “could at best be attempted but never achieved – but for its insistence” (Bal 2009 18)
How far should a concept be allowed to travel until it is considered lost? How strictly should particular concept definitions be made? Defining and analyzing a concept can be a useful way of defining a research problem or phenomenon under study. To do that, it is important to reveal all the problems with the concept you are about to use. Give an account of its history, reflect upon former definitions, and check its etymology and the theoretical context in which it emerged.
Defining Collaboration
The Social science research contains a wealth of knowledge for people seeking to understand collaboration processes [my emphasis]. The commonly employed definition in management studies of collaboration was developed by Thomson (2001a) as: “collaboration is a process in which autonomous actors interact through formal and informal negotiation, jointly creating rules and structures governing their relationships and ways to act or decide on the issues that brought them together; it is a process involving shared norms and mutually beneficial interactions” (Thompson, Perry 2006 22). Similarly Lind (2007) defined it as “some form of conscious partnership takes place through interaction, participation, group activity, or other kinds of intentional exchange through processes [my emphasis] of working together it will look at some attempted formulations of “working together”” Lind 2007 183.
The emphasis for a process-oriented definition of collaboration, (Thompson Perry 2006) must take into account the nonlinear and emergent nature of collaboration, suggesting that collaboration evolves as parties interact over time. However definitions provide little insight into the complex nature of collaborative processes, and an important piece of the collaboration puzzle is lost when this broad scan does not yields valuable insights about what one would need to know in order to “do” collaboration.
Differing forms of artistic collectivism have been well theorized, as artists have always conceded and exploited the inevitability of implicit self-representation (Green 2001 ix). The deliberate, careful construction of authorial alternatives described by Green (2001) show artistic collaboration as special and obvious case of the manipulation by the figure of the artist, for at the very least collaboration involves a deliberately chosen alteration of artistic identity from individual to composite subjectivity through which new understandings of artistic authorship to appear in collaborations (Green 2001 x). Gregory Sholette in Dark Matter, on the other hand give us an example of how observations of arts inherently collaborative nature given and its otherwise intangible social production has lead to a bevy of popular business books that make the connection between creative production and collaboration clear: “Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration; Creativity: Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Innovation Networks; The Culture of Collaboration; Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration; Arts-based Learning for Business; Orchestrating Collaboration at Work. There is even one book that attempts to teach newly precarious “flexible” workers the special survival skills of artists, and another entitled Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work”, (Sholette 2011 43).
Collaboration scholars in classic liberalism, with its emphasis on private interest, view collaboration as a process that aggregates private preferences into collective choices through self-interested bargaining and as process in which organizations enter into agreements in order to achieve their own goals, negotiating among competing interests and brokering coalitions among competing value systems, expectations, and self-interested motivations (Thompson, Perry 2001). These books and their ideas follow closely on politically committed forms of mostly collaborative art that arose on the cusp of the post-Fordist structural adjustment of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Sholette 2011 8).
In Maria Lind’s Collaborative Turn, “collaboration becomes an umbrella term for the diverse working methods that require more than one participant” and refers abstractly all processes where in people work together applying both to the work of individuals as well as larger collectives and societies. (Lind 2007, 185) As an intrinsic aspect of human society, the term is used in many varying contexts such as science art education and business. Collaboration is as the above the definition suggests an open-ended concept, which in principal encompasses all the others. (Lind 2007, 185)
A Contracted History of Collaboration
Over the centuries there have been different kinds of grouping of artists in guilds, associations unions, workshops, schools, movements. However each one of these instances has recognized the individual artist as the sine qua non of such associational belonging. Enwezor 2007 244
Recent confrontations within the field of contemporary art have precipitated an awareness that there have emerged in increasing numbers, within the last decade, new critical, artistic formations that foreground and privilege the mode of collective and collaborative production. The position of the artist working within collective and collaborative processes subtends earlier manifestations of this type of activity throughout the twentieth century. They also question the enduring legacy of the artist as an autonomous individual within modernist art. Enwezor 2007 223
Generally all studies of artistic collaborations have been presented as a telescope onto a larger study: that of a shift to a new understanding of artistic identity that emerged from modernist notions of artistic work-both radical and conservative-and progressed toward alternative and quite extreme authorial models, which lie a long way from the simple paradigm of the single lone artistic originator and creator. The process problematizes straightforward suppositions about both artistic identity and the origin of postmodern art. During the 1960’s and 1970s, artists were testing the limits of art.
Bishop and Kwon draw the attention to continuities between the participatory impulse of the 1960s and those of today and discuss the three concerns – activation; authorship; community – that have been the most frequently cited motivations for almost all artistic attempts to encourage participation in art since the 1960s. While the main impetus behind participatory art has been a restoration of the social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning, Miwon Kwon (2002, 2007) in her writing positions the development of the strategies along side works and other curators occurring since the 1960 that have reflected on aspects of site-specific practice itself as a “site,” interrogating its currency in relation to aesthetic imperatives, institutional demands, socioeconomic ramifications, or political efficacy.
Her configuration of different cultural debates and theoretical concepts on social issues and how they can form institutional framework (not necessarily an art institution), in a neighborhood or seasonal event, a historical condition, even particular formations of desire are deemed to function as ‘sites’.
The two prominent models of collaboration that feature in the studies of Lind, Enwenzor, and Sholette have been those formed or became visible after the mid 1960-1990’s and can be summarized in the first type as “possessing a structured modus vivendi based on permanent, fixed groupings of practitioners working over a sustained period” and the “the second type of collective tends to emphasize a sensible, non-permanent course of affiliation, privileging collaboration on a project basis rather than on a permanent alliance”(Enwezor 2007 225). Green (2007 xi) In his introduction Collaboration as Symptom Green looked at three manifestation of collaborative practices: first those with bureaucratic identities, followed by close-knit collaborations based on marriage or lifetime, family partnerships and finally, artist couples who developed a third authorial identity effacing the individual artists themselves and became akin to corporations, or more aptly organizations.
Writing in 2007 Lind asserts, “Strategies for collaboration in contemporary art seem to have a particular relationship to the last decades political and social activities. Claiming common ownership of public spaces, both individual and collective action in urban spaces have increases” Lind 2007 189
Lind also points out “undoubtedly, there are many forms of artistic collaboration,” and refers then to the modes developing after the 1990’s i.e “[others] have chosen to organize themselves around the model of a bureaucratic organs and allude to the business world and branding methods.” That consists of people coming from various professional backgrounds artists, architects, and sociologists- who together nourish a desire to change society with their work.” The basic models of contemporary collaborative forms in art can be easily extended as there are innumerable variations on the theme, but this should suffice to show their prevalence and indicate their heterogeneity. Lind 2007 201
In their Third Text issue on Art and Collaboration published in 2004, Roberts and Wrights presented papers that were first presented at a conference, ‘Diffusion: Collaborative Practice in Contemporary Art’, which we organised at the Tate Modern, in October 2003[3]. In the introduction they also note the number of contributions on collaboration form France and posit this as an influence of Nicholas Bouriads Relational Aeshetics and writings on collaborative practices through the French cultural Journals.
It is also worth noting that majority of theorizing around collaboration and creativity happens at a very particular time at the turn of the millennium, with a small traction from the 1999’s Get Together-Kunst als Teamwork” was an exhibition at Kunsthalle,Vienna in 1999[4]; and into a full blown buzz word by the early 2000’s particularly 2004 and 2005[5] and trickles into non subjectivity by the end of the 2007 but not before Maria Lind writes her paper The Collaborative Turn, from which these examples are drawn. This of course is not in any way to say that that was the end of collaboration nor was this just the beginning, as has been illustrated shared practices have been and continue to be pervasive as practice, if you care to look.
Is collaboration an inherently ‘better’ method, producing “better” results? The curatorial collective claims that the purpose of collaboration lies in producing something that would otherwise not take place; it has to make possible that which would otherwise be impossible. Lind 2007 204.
[1] Michel Foucault, 2001. The Order of Things (Routledge Classics). 2 Edition. Routledge. Pp380
[2] Mieke Bal. Working with Concepts. European Journal of English Studies Published online: 17 Jun 2009. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/neje20
[3] John Roberts & Stephen Wright (2004) Art and collaboration, Third Text, 18:6, 531-532
[4] Lind 184 2007
[5] Lind 184 “Dispositive Workshop” (a series of six artistic projects) at Kunstverein Miinchen 2003-2004; “Colloquium on Collaborative Practices” at Kunstverein Munich in July 2004, documented in Collected Newsletter published by Revolver Archiv fur aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt 2005; “Collaborative Practices Part 2” at Shedhalle in Zurich in April 2005; and “Collective Creativity” at Kunsthalle in Fridericianum in Kassel, in May 2005. The symposion “Taking the Matter into Common Hands,” took place at Iaspis in Stockholm in September and October 2005. The Swedish cultural journal Gliinta has made a special issue on “collective art,” no 1-2, 2006.