Claire on collaboration

I've been stumped trying to figure out what I'd like to write about my collaborative practices... other than to say that I participate in collaborative projects regularly and I really enjoy it, oftentimes more than my own individual practice. It somehow eases the pressure I give myself with my own work and means the creative development is coming from multiple angles rather than just my own. It feels like expansion; a particular kind of freedom, or a departure from the foggy headspace of solo practice to find common ground with someone else's practice. Learning how someone else thinks about something can be a really interesting adventure.

The collaborative work I have participated in so far usually involves equally balanced roles, where all parties contribute more or less at every step of the way, with the final outcome being something that could not be achieved by any of us individually, and where it's not fully possible to separate out the 'bits' that each person did, because it's all one and the same. Although different people will bring different experience and skills/resources to a collaborative project, I think the dispersal of defined roles, and the slippage between who contributes what, and when, and how, can be exciting territory. 

Maybe that's my ideal collaborative scenario, but I suppose it operates on a spectrum, depending on the nature and intentions of the project.

There's just something FUN about being in on something together, meeting in the middle and discovering something new.

Inter Collective, An Operation Preserving Isomorphism, 2011

(Photograph by Devika Bilimoria)