{"id":960,"date":"2016-08-25T07:50:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T11:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=960"},"modified":"2016-08-25T18:45:33","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T22:45:33","slug":"collaborators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2016\/08\/collaborators.html","title":{"rendered":"Collaborators"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"team-collaboration-clipart-1\"<\/a>Artistic collaboration is finally getting the respect it deserves.\u00a0 No longer looked down on as Art by Committee Meeting, interdisciplinary work is being celebrated for its ability to bring multiple voices into a single event, to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

We see this in arts reporting; we see it in arts funding.\u00a0 In arts reporting, there is an added benefit: it\u2019s much easier to describe an artistic process that is communicated among several share-holders than a process that takes place entirely inside of one person\u2019s head.\u00a0 And, as technology has greased the wheels of communication, there is also the social media angle of reporting: when in doubt, describe how the artists used an online platform to share their ideas \u2013 that\u2019s still novel enough to merit discussion.<\/p>\n

As for arts funding, the terms \u201ccollaboration\u201d and \u201cartistic alliance\u201d crop up regularly in application guidelines.\u00a0 This is all for the best. \u00a0There is enough destructive isolation in our world; artists can model communication and find common ground in a way that benefits all of us, and funders will do well to support those efforts.<\/p>\n

And yet.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve sat on grant committees and heard panelists talk about collaboration in a way that makes it seem indistinguishable from innovation.\u00a0 They are not the same.\u00a0 Collaboration has been around for as long as artistic expression has been around \u2013 there is nothing intrinsically innovative about it.\u00a0 It is one of the many ways humans have created effervescent art.\u00a0 It\u2019s also been responsible for a substantial amount of formulaic dreck.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t a magic formula for innovation: it can emerge from a clash of disparate views; it can just as easily sprout from a single seed.<\/p>\n

So when I hear people celebrate the death of the solitary genius, I wonder how many babies are going out with that bathwater.<\/p>\n

I have students who are natural collaborators, artists whose minds catch fire when sparked by kindred spirits among their colleagues.\u00a0 I also have students who need isolation in order to create, who do the whole smithy-of-my-soul thing, and find collaboration stifling.\u00a0 When I see support for artists circling around the principle of collaboration, I worry for these inward-facing artists, the ones whose sensitivities blossom in solitude.\u00a0 And I think of Oliver Sacks\u2019 concern for some of his charges:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there any \u2018place\u2019 in the world for a man who is like an island, who cannot be acculturated, made part of the main?\u00a0 Can \u2018the main\u2019 accommodate, make room for, the singular?\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artistic collaboration is finally getting the respect it deserves.\u00a0 No longer looked down on as Art by Committee Meeting, interdisciplinary work is being celebrated for its ability to bring multiple voices into a single event, to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We see this in arts reporting; we see it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}