From the 20th of July to the 7th of August I am very fortunate to be conducting some field work on collaborative art processes through a cooperative involvement with the unique arts project, Splendid. Based out of Lismore, NSW the Splendid Project is aimed at offering “…ten participating artists opportunities to work collaboratively together in a dynamic environment that encourages critical thinking and experimentation. The aim is to create new ways of thinking about site specific experiences. Facilitated by leading local and international artists and provocateurs, guided by a curatorium and supported by specialised production personnel, the Labs are structured as immersive and exploratory playgrounds, designed to allow for a diverse range of artists to intersect, exchange and unfold ideas.”
Acting as a virtual facilitator and ‘collaboratarian’ in the Splendid Arts Lab, my role will involve working closely with a group of ten extraordinarily gifted emerging Australian artists in order to gain critical and invaluable insight into the dynamics of collaborative artistic activity. How do artists cooperate across mediums, across creative languages, subjectivies, and idiosyncrasies? Why do artists want to work together?
Through the development of the Splendid Blog, I will help the artists to maintain a map of their inspirations, ideas, provocation, and observe with a critical eye the precipitating relationships that develop through this type of collaborative and cooperative interaction. I will be coordinating the development of the Splendid Blog in an effort to not only help document the creative process that unfolds between the Splendid artists, but also in an effort to examine the role of reflexivity in this collaborative environment. How might the blog, acting as a real-time virtual collective sketchbook foster the group process?
Hoping to gain some experiential understanding of some of the processes that artists working in collaborative climates may share, this projects can serve to crystalize some of my initial expectations, and reveal some essential relationships between artists.
more to come on this….
