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‘Collaboration and the loss of control’

As I reflect on many years of making artworks for individuals, public spaces, events and for my own indulgent pleasure, I am aware that most of it has been totally within my control; the final decisions all resting with me – the lone artist.  This is a surprising reflection given that I choose processes which are unpredictable; I don’t like to know the outcome because I always want to learn and grow.  In this blog I intend to touch upon the benefits of collaboration with other artists as a way of releasing control and sharing the identity of my artwork.
Perhaps my recent string of collaborations is the result of a more sharing attitude which comes with age, but I prefer to think that it is a conscious decision to challenge my own style and ways of working.  Either way, it has proved to me more pleasurable to share project developments and more reassuring to share the responsibility of problem solving.
Collider installation, Earls Court, London
The comment about ‘releasing control’ is a very significant one; being surprised by creative outcomes is a healthy place to be.  This notion of unexpected discovery could also be seen as a dialogue with the materials – a conversation between artist and artwork.  Most – if not all – students are familiar with the feeling of disappointment when something does not turn out as planned.  However, the positive reaction in this instance is to consider whether what has occurred is equally valid.  It may well be.  This is something which I have had to practice, as it is not a natural human reaction, but I now begin a process knowing that my plans will be forced to change by circumstances beyond my control and that a conversation with the work will begin.
Ten years ago I wanted autonomy in my making to ensure that aesthetic decisions were my decisions and that the label on the artwork created was my name.  Rachel Whiteread once said that you cannot make good art by public consent and I took this as a justification for my single minded approach.  That may well be true of committees and advisors but beginning a project jointly with someone else breaks this mind-set and opens up new possibilities.  The sum of two minds will never equal the initial plans of either one!
Collaboration in my personal practice has resulted in installations which surpass my expectations.  Equally I feel refreshed as an artist by listening to feedback from my peers which previously only happened with any depth while I was a student.  In art schools challenging ideas is part of the package and it is an essential ingredient which can often be lost following graduation.  But the good news is that collaboration is easier following graduation.  In education there has to be a system of individual assessment which often prohibits – or at least does not actively encourage – the development of work with a joint, or even group, identity.
Call and Response installation, Battersea Park
Recent projects which I have collaborated on include a woodland illumination as part of the Olympic torch relay, sculptural installations in Entrance foyers, interactive trails of light through Battersea Park and my current projects (images can’t be released yet) which redefine huge architectural spaces with work so vast that it would have been beyond my reach as an individual.  It is worth noting that when approaching a client the merging of two portfolios can be very powerful.
I used to run a two day workshop with students in which they were asked to create a piece of artwork over the course of two days.  By the end of day one they had firmed up ideas and made a lot of progress creating something really interesting.  The following morning, I broke the disturbing news that their precious creations no longer belonged to them, but to the person next to them.  Everyone swapped work and began day two with someone else’s work; they then had to develop it as their own.  Some people laughed and some people cried.  Some were just cross.  But everyone fed back afterwards (some years afterwards!) that it had been one of their most valuable workshops; questioning the ownership of work and demonstrating how exciting it is to see your work evolving in someone else’s hands.  This is what I am trying to do now in my own career.
Supernature installation, Guilford
Neil’s work can be seen here


Posted by author: Neil Musson

2 thoughts on “‘Collaboration and the loss of control’

  • I’m in one of the recently-started OCA sketchbook circles, my first ever experience of working as one in a group and I’m loving it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before in art – but can see it’s an excellent first step into different ways of working.

  • Working as part of a team is standard practice in many crafts and in design- my first degree was in three dimensional design, and I had to learn to blow glass the American way: on a bench. It would have been incredibly difficult to do this on your own, so we were taught to work in teams – in terms of providing assistance, but usually the hierarchy would be swapped around when it was the assistant’s turn to do the glass blowing. In printmaking studios I have come across a similar team approach. Ok – this does not take away the idea of ownership. Who is the owner of an artwork – the one who has the idea (or the designer for example) or the one who makes it? This brings one back to Duchamp’s challenges. Conceptual art practices have intellectually challenged ownership in terms of process, and helped to prioritise intellectual ownership. Process art, and ‘slow’ art in turn have challenged this. Performance for years has practiced collaborative approaches – in particular of that involving the audience/ spectatorship to transgress the passivity of such set ups. All of these challenges to authorship create the tension to make work in today. I only have one reservation: If a group of people agree the rules of their collaboration beforehand (a ‘contract’ of sorts to the game) that’s seems right and ethical – the idea of telling people after the event seems less convincing to me, unless the workshop agreement was from the beginning that participants have to be prepared for the unexpected. This amounts to a psychological experiment (something performance art often plays with – see Marina Abramovic, see Flatz for example). I personally, as a teacher, refrain from setting exercises where student’s personal work becomes altered by another person, and would only consider it (reluctantly) if this had been made clear from the outset as a condition. I also do not use teaching techniques like drawing into a student’s drawing to ‘correct’ it. The collaborative group uses a different power strategy from a tutor, but one has to be thoughtful about any form of power structure in teaching, no matter how innovative – there are always implications in my view.

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