Mick Wilson and Grant Kester, “Autonomy, Agonism, and Activist Art: An Interview with Grant Kester” in _Art Journal_, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Fall 2007): 106-118.
Nicolas Bourriaud, “Foreword” and “Relational Form” in _Relational Aesthetics_ (Les Presses du Réel, 2002) originally published in French, 1998, 7-24.
Christoph Spehr, “Free Cooperation” (2003), http://www.republicart.net/art/concept/alttransspehr_en.htm, accessed September 30, 2009.
Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents” in _ArtForum_ (February 2006): 178-183.
Geert Lovink and Trebor Scholz, “Collaboration on the Fence” in _The Art of Free Cooperation,_ (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007), 9-26.
This book is about collaboration between disciplines rather than collaborative making. That is to say, the collaboration happens across disciplinary boundaries rather than as a mode of production. Most of the artists Bijvoat considers work independently. She is not discussing teams, like the Harrisons, Abramovic & Ulay, etc.
———. Postproduction. New York: Lukas and Sternberg, 2005.
From the introduction:
Relational Aesthetics was content to paint the new sociopolitical landscape of the nineties, to describe the collective sensibility on which contemporary artistic practices were beginning to rely...In Postproduction, I try to show that artists' intuitive relationship with art history is now going beyond what we call "the art of appropriation," which naturally infers an ideology of ownership, and moving toward a culture of constant activity of signs based on a collective ideal: sharing. (7, 9)
This is a collection of visual culture produced by Black civil rights activists in the 1960s. Many of the artists featured in the collection (which is the result of a show at the Studio Museum in Harlem) worked within collectives, including AFRI-COBRA, or within spaces and organizations that inspired collective production, like the Studio Museum.
This is a collection of essays about artists who collaborate while in life partnerships. Examples range from Claudel and Rodin to Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera. None of the more recent artists mentioned in Green are included here, but it's still an interesting collection. The book includes both writers and visual artists.
The most useful essay in this collection is Bourriaud's "Berlin Letter about Relational Aesthetics," where Bourriaud "look(s) more closely at the relations between these artworks and the social and economic configuration that allowed them to emerge" (44). The essay is sort of a postscript to Relational Aesthetics. The rest of the book is very interesting, looking at the way that studios and situations function in art, the significance of the movement from one to the other, etc. But very few of those essays concern collaborative work environments, unless one considers collaboration to include space (which of course it does, but that reading would have to be rather heavily superimposed on these particular essays).
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———. "Recombinant Theatre and Digital Resistance." The Drama Review 44, no. 4 (2000).
CAE seems like a great model for discussing both interdisciplinarity (a la Bijvoat) and collectivity/collaboration as a way of making work and making decisions. They have a few interviews that further detail how they work as a group. Their work is collaborative in that it works interdisciplinarily, their process and organization is collective, and they engage audiences as participants.
The Drama Review essay is great because group members discuss how they organize their collaborative structures. There are several articles about CAE in that issue, and if that particular one doesn't include the organization components, then another of the essays about CAE does.
Green writes:
“I propose that collaboration was a crucial element in the transition from modern to postmodern art and that a trajectory consisting of a series of artistic collaborations emerges clearly from late 1960s conceptualism onward. The proliferation of teamwork in post-1960s art challenged not only the terms by which artistic identity was conventionally conceived but was also the "frame" --the discursive boundary between the "inside" and the "outside" of a work of art. I would argue that artistic collaboration in the late 1960s and during the 1970s occupies a special position: Redefinitions of art and of artistic collaboration intersected at this time.”
Another exhibition catalog, this time focusing on Chicano art from 1965-1985. This is a great example of cultural collaboration, with transnationality providing a space of collective production. This particular collaboration, between the US and Mexico, is regularly taken up as a generative site in contemporary art, as we see with inSite, etc. The work in the catalog ranges from murals to performances to installation art, with the farm workers movement being an important site of collaborative art production.
The premise of this book is collective—it started with the Bay Area Video Coalition, which is a physical collaborative space if not a specific group of collaborating artists. The essay that most explicitly addresses video collectives is Marita Sturken's "Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of History." Sturken discusses Guerilla TV, TVTV, Raindance, Ant Farm, and other collectives.
This book is about the CPUSA and "revolutionary art," which often took the form of collaborative productions. The book gives space to the WPA's federal art projects, many of which were carried out by political radicals, as well as the Artists Equity Association and other movements to arrive after the end of the Federal Art Projects. The dominant form illustrated throughout the book is mural painting, painting, and drawing. Hemingway pays attention not only to art products, artifacts, and works, but also to how artists form collectives, work together, and form alliances within their own communities and at larger political levels.
Kaprow's book is chronological, beginning with "The Fifties" and "The Legacy of Jackson Pollack," and continuing into "The Nineties." Kaprow describes "participation performance" and "communal performance," including things like parades and other spectacles in these categories. While Kaprow does discuss work made in collaboration with other artists (see the last chapter, "Just Doing," for a description of work done with Jean-Charles François), the book take on collaboration in the sense of artists collaborating with audiences/participants rather than artist collaborating with one another.
From back cover:
"Grant Kester discusses a disparate network of artists and collectives--including The Art of Change, Helen and Newton Harrison, Littoral, Suzanne Lacy, Stephen Willats, and WochenKlausur--united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture. Kester traces the origins of these works in the conceptual art and feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and draws from the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, and others as he explores the ways in which these artists corroborate and challenge many of the key principles of avant-garde art and art theory."
Suzanne Lacy edited this compilation of public art projects, some of which are collectively produced. Many of these projects do not involve collective authors, but all of these projects are collaborations because they are public, so the collaborators are the artists' public and the public at large.
This book looks mostly at painting and other 2D art forms, focusing on Surrealism, DADA, etc. It's an exhibition catalog, and Abram Lerner's introduction makes a useful point about perceived differences between collaborations in different disciplines:
“The idea of collaboration among visual artists is rarely entertained by the public. The perception of the artist as a loner confirms the generally accepted notion of solitary genius. This impression, however, does not seem to apply to the other creative professions. It is understood that scientists collaborate endlessly, and writers are known to have collaborated…, and as for composers, who would dare separate George from Ira Gershwin or Rogers from Hart?” (9)
A book about Gutai, among other post-war Japanese art movements. There are essays about Gutai, cultural logic within Japanese art, and activist visual cultures of the 1960s. there are also essays about Tokyo FLUXUS, and more recent art (produced in the 1990s) as well as lots of illustrations from the museum exhibition and beyond. Collective form of course comes into play most obviously when talking about Gutai, social activism, and FLUXUS.
This is a collection of essays and documentation of art works that all take up gift giving and exchange as the primary impetus behind the art. The second half of the book is "The Handbook for Gift and Exchange-Based Art," which includes project histories and an essay. This is a useful book, both because so many artists in the book are from the Bay Area (the project was conceived at CCA, where Purves teaches) and because collaboration is the premise of gift and exchange art.
This book was the result of a conference, this time at SUNY Buffalo in 2004. The book is about "the dynamics of (online) collaboration" (9). The editors are careful to announce that they "do not join the gospel of business analysts who seek collaboration as a tool to grow wealth for the already prosperous!" (9). The book looks at collaboration from several angles. There is an "alternative economy" at work within online collaborative spaces (a la Wikipedia). There is a difference between coerced cooperation and "free cooperation." There are property issues at stake when considering concepts of public or fair use of material, as well as ownership.
The book shows that collective form benefits groups with political agendas. A few of the of note: Brian Holmes, "Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics: Cartographies of Art in the World," Alan W. Moore, "Artists' Collectives: Focus on New York, 1975-2000" Rubén Gallo, "The Mexican Pentagon: Adventures in Collectivism during the 1970s," Jesse Drew, "The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism" Reiko Tomii, "After the 'Descent to the Everyday': Japanese Collectivism from Hi Red Center to The Play, 1964-1973."
This book focuses on artists who make work that is "always presented as joint productions" (9). The editors take up the concept of "team" to encompass the range of art collectives Green enumerated in The Third Hand. After a brief introduction, the book consists of reproductions of collaborative work alongside artist statements and curatorial statements, punctuated by essays from several critics. Irit Rogoff writes about "production lines": how collective entities were rewritten as individuals, and have since been undergoing a "process of unnaming" (38). James Hillman writes about "Plural Art," asking about art's relationship to states of childhood, and childhood's existence as being outside politics (which I'm not sure I agree with). He is a psychologist who does Jungian analysis, and he concludes that "art is incomplete, unfulfilled, faulted unless it shows the yearning of our animal nature for its realization in a political context" (65). Hillman writes about collectivity with the word standing it for archetype rather than teamwork or collective work.
Olly & Suzi not only collaborate with each other, they collaborate with animals, too. Their process involves going to animal environments (often in very extreme environments) and allowing the animals to mark paper, which they then draw into, forming images that are combinations of human and animal marks. This is mostly a book of images, which includes documentation of the artists on location.
Tiampo traces a history of the Gutai collective, describing early, middle, and late Gutai, as well as the group's determination to base their philosophy within Japanese tradition rather than as a satellite of a European or American art movement.
This catalog from a show at Mass MoCA is structured as an "instruction manual," to encourage readers to go out and do their own interventions (although the text doesn't really back that up, reading more like a typical exhibition catalog with interview segments). Many of the participants in this show are collaborative groups (CAE, Yo Mango, Tactical Magic, more) and the show itself emphasizes collectivity and a certain DIY aesthetic.
Watson, Steven. Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. New York: Pantheon, 2003.
Watson's book focuses on Warhol in the Sixties, paying attention to the Silver Factory as "an extraordinary point of Sixties intersection" (xv). This book introduces a novel approach to collaboration, suggesting that physical spaces are also important to collaborative creativity.
A Litany for Survival: Audre Lorde (Ada Gay Griffin, Michelle Parkerson, US, 1994)
Africa, I'm Going to Fleece You (Jean-Marie Téno, 1992)
AKA Don Bonus (Spencer Nagasako & Sokly NY, US, 1995)
Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (Lee Hirsch, US/So. Africa, 2003)
American Dream (Barbara Kopple, US, 1990)
Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country (Anders Østergaard, Denmark/Burma, 2009)
Bus 174 (Jose Padilha, Brazil 2003)
Calavera Highway (Renee Tajima-Peña, US, 2007)
Chile, Obstinate Memory (Patricio Guzman, Chile/Spain, 1997)
Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France, 1961)
The Cockettes (David Weisman, Bill Weber, US, 2002)
Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, France/Austria/Tanzania, 2004)
Daughter From Danang (Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco, US/Vietnam, 2002)
Eyes On The Prize I+II, VD 298 (Henry Hampton, Blackside Productions, 1987 & 1990)
Forbidden Love (Lynn Fernie, Aerlyn Weissman, Canada, 1992)
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (Isaac Julien, UK, 1995)
Gate of Heavenly Peace (Carma Hinton & Richard Gordon, US/China, 1995)
Grey Gardens (David and Albert Maysles, US, 1975)
History + Memory (Rea Tajiri, US, 1991)
Imagining Indians (Victor Masayesva Jr, US, 1992)
Kanehsatake: 270 years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin, Canada, 1993)
Local Angel: theological political fragments (Udi Aloni, Israel/NYC, 2002)
Long Night's Journey Into Day (Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid, US/So. Africa, 2000)
Looking For Langston (Isaac Julien, UK, 1989)
Lumumba, The Death of A Prophet (Raoul Peck, Haiti/Congo/US, 1991)
Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later / Cabra Marcado Para Morer (Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil, 1984)
Murder of Fred Hampton (Michael Grey & Howard Alk, US. 1971)
My America, or: Honk If You Love Buddha (Renee Tajima-Peña, US, 1997)
Paulina (Vicky Funari & Jennifer Maytorena-Taylor, US/Mexico, 1998)
Pray The Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker, US/Liberia, 2008)
Rabbit In The Moon (Emiko Omori, US, 1999)
Rough Aunties (Kim Longinotto, So. Africa, 2009)
S21the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Rithy Panh, Cambodia, 2002)
Silverlake Life (Tom Joslin, Peter Friedman, US, 1994)
Sisters-in-Law (Kim Longinotto, UK/Cameroun)
Song of the Shirt (Susan Clayton and Jonathan Curling, UK, 1979)
Stranger with a Camera (Elizabeth Barret, Appalshop, US, 2000)
Suite Havana (Fernando Pérez, Cuba, 2003)
Surname Viet Given Name Nam (Trinh T. Minh-ha, US, 1989)
Taking Pictures (Les McLaren, Annie Stiven, 1996)
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, US, 2004)
The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, France, 2000)
The Smell of Paradise (Mariusz Pilis and Marcin Mamon, The Netherlands/Poland, 2005)
The Way to My Father's Village (Richard Fung, Canada, 1988)
The Woman's Film (San Francisco Newsreel, US, 1971)
Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, US, 1988)
Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, Richard Schmeichen, US,1986)
Tire Die (Fernando Birri & students of Santa Fe school, Argentina, 1958)
Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, US, 1989)
Trembling Before G-d (Sandi DuBowski, US, 2002)
Twitch and Shout (Laura Chiten, US, 1994)
Two Laws VT4860 (Carolyn Strachan and Allesandro Cavadini, Australia, 1981)
Video In The Villages project (Vincent Carelli, Brazil, 1988-) including The Spirit of TV
W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices (Louis Massiah, US, 1995)
When Billy Broke His Head ... and Other Tales of Wonder (Billy Golfus, David E. Simpson, US, 1995)
Who The Hell Is Juliette? (Carlos Marcovich, Mexico/Cuba, 1997)
Who Killed Vincent Chin? (Renee Tajima & Christine Choy, US, 1988)
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (Mariposa Film Collective, US, 1978)
Zero Degrees of Separation (Elle Flanders, Canada/Israel/Palestine, 2005)
Special thanks to Lindsay Kelley for her research assistance.
