Approaches to collaboration\creativity

During the weekend it became apparent that each of us had different ways of approaching the collaborative process and that our minds engaged with the creative process in different ways. The significance of this was that if affected how we worked through topics and the time that we had to devote to each subject.

For example, an agenda item for the weekend was to decide on a specific project. Personally, I find working on something much easier when I have a specific project in mind. I like to know what it is I’m exploring conceptually/theoretically and the medium through which I will express it. Others in the group didn’t want to commit to a specific project until they had collected all the material for the project and then ascertained the way they wanted to use it.

These differences in approach have meant we’ve had to compromise. Those of us that want the specific project identified have managed to get a general commitment from the others to the idea of working on an onsite installation at Bundanon: subject to the proviso that if the material we collect there isn’t conducive to this or if it turns out we’re not allowed to do what we want (eg for public liability reasons or because we can’t afford the equipment we require) then we’ll go ahead with a different specific project instead. We’re aiming to brainstorm more ideas for the onsite installation and in two or three weeks time to get in touch with Bundanon to check that we will be allowed to put on the types of onsite installations we have in mind.

It remains to see whether this approach of ‘sort of but not quite committing yet to a specific project’ provides a workable compromise – but that’s part of this process – exploring what does and doesn’t work in the collaborative context. If it doesn’t work, then at least we will have learnt from the process.

Although we have all worked on various collaborative projects the collaborations have generally been much smaller – two artists working together. Bringing together five different artists to work collaboratively on the one project presents challenges that none of us have dealt with before.

One solution we raised to the challenge of the large size of our group was for the five of us to all work individually towards a collective outcome for project; ie to agree on one concept and then to take five different approaches to that concept. We all agreed this would be the quickest, easiest way to work. Julian explained that this was the approach he took with his collaborative project Compost. We all agreed that this approach didn’t capture what we wanted to achieve at Bundanon. In deciding to work together we all wanted the chance to work together on specific aspects of the work – to get another person’s input and ideas as the works evolved.

We also rejected the idea that all five of us will work together on absolutely everything. We have done quite a lot of work together in the early stages in an attempt to bring ourselves closer to a common understanding of what we want to achieve and in order to be ‘sparked’ or inspired by the others. We’ve brainstormed the theoretical basis of our proposal and some specific ideas for how we will achieve this. Having had these intensive periods of talking, which are to be supplemented by blog discussions, we don’t intend to take this collaborative approach all the way through each artwork. Instead we feel there will be some parts of the installation to which we all contribute, but for the most part we will break into smaller groups of two or three people working collaboratively on the specific aspects.

It has also been suggested that we select five sites at Bundanon for installations. Each person will have one site that they curate and will be responsible for getting the others involved with creating work for that site. Not everyone has to contribute to each site. Some techniques of working will be more time consuming that others, so where a technique or practice is more time consuming that person may find they only have time to contribute to a few of the sites.

We also discovered that conceptually we work quite differently. I grab onto the theory or idea very quickly and immediately want to drill down into the specific examples, to think about the application of the theory and how I will achieve it. I don’t like to spend too long talking about the high level concepts as I feel that’s a waste of time, I’d much rather be getting my hands dirty with writing a song or recording sound effects. Dan on the other hand liked to have the conceptual more firmly embedded in her mind. Rhiannon and I busily threw up ideas for specific tasks, such as creating interpretative signs, or writing a love song to conjure up romance and intrigue in the bushland grotto near the homestead. Dan felt she wasn’t contributing as much to specific ideas during this brainstorming and she was much happier spending more time discussing the high level ideas. On the second day Dan drew up a mud map of all the concepts we had discussed: authenticity, fabricated history, impermanence, etc. Having drawn up the mud map and discussed the concepts in more detail Dan was much happier to move along with the discussions ­– she told us that before doing that she had felt it was confusing and that she didn’t really understand what it was we were trying to achieve.

- Serena