Major Project CONCEPT STATEMENT
How does collaboration create communities in art and design? What challenges do collaborative approaches face and what are some of the solutions?
With this second assessment, I’ve decided to take on a completely different approach to responding to the idea of creating communities through collaboration. Whereas my first assessment can be seen as a rather controlled and closely monitored process of collaboration, my major work predominantly focuses on the exact opposite - a more natural and unintentionally configured process of collaboration. Since human beings are a naturally social species, collaboration - on however minimal a level - is able to become an inherent quality of our everyday lives.
The neighbourhood setting is a highly effective analogy for conveying this idea of ‘inherent collaboration’. A neighbourhood, I believe, is the perfect embodiment of an inherent, organic collaboration that sees no bounds and requires no force or deliberation to be set into motion. Neighbourhoods are rarely meticulously planned out and deliberately constructed. It is merely an amalgamation of many individuals who happen to live in the same place, unintentionally collaborating to create communities of familiarity and, hopefully, of comfort. And yet, the many different elements are able to come together to create a seemingly cohesive entity, containing the hustle and bustle of many minds in some form of irregular - at times predictable, at times not - synchronisation. Effectively, this idea makes an artist out of every individual, regardless of their level of contribution, and makes an artwork out of every neighbourhood, regardless of its level of aesthetics. And the idea of ‘collaboration’, despite being such a driving force in ensuring the existence of such neighbourhoods, are rarely considered by the persons - or ‘artists’- involved in the creation and maintenance of these neighbourhoods - or macro-scale ‘artworks’.
Every neighbourhood has in common this one factor: that it is a coming-together of multiple minds and multiple contributions, most of which is not deliberate or carefully planned out but is nevertheless an efficacious mode of collaborative production. And so, fuelled with these observation manifested into realisations, I set out to depict this analogy.
The way I constructed by depiction of a neighbourhood would most likely be rather different to how somebody else - even someone who lives in and experiences the exact same neighbourhood as myself - would interpret and depict the vibe and atmosphere of said neighbourhood. As Pete McCutcheon says “I decontextualise then I reconstruct.” I aim to do the same: to decontextualise my own neighbourhood into a series or disjointed sounds with no apparent origin, and jerky images that, when looped together, creates a specific mood and atmosphere that can be experienced on a level that is universally relevant. This reconstructed sense of fragmentation is also fitting to illustrate the lack of cohesion as a result of many many minds working on the same ‘material’. However, this can also be seen as a form of abstract beauty, where individualism and the beauty in what is otherwise mundane and ordinary is brought to the limelight.
This idea of “treasur[ing] the local, the small-scale, the eccentric, the ordinary: whatever is made out of caring” is greatly inspired by silkscreen artist Nancy McIntyre who makes artworks that are often centred around examining the seemingly insignificant, mundane landmarks that hold elements of nostalgia and a sense of quality.
I came to notice the door handle as a rather fascinating symbol, and perfect for embodying the idea of unintentional or organic collaboration. For a significant majority of us, it is pretty much inevitable that we would come across a door that we’d have to pass through as a daily occurrence. And thus lies the ultimate structure for the basis of my artwork. Attaching pens to various door handles around my neighbourhood and taping paper to the door, I was able to set up a mechanism for initiating the organic collaboration that I would later depict. As it is imminent for individuals to pass through the doors, at the end of the day I would have pen strokes repeatedly drawn onto the pieces of paper. I made a series of ‘drawings’ and used them as the foundations for creating my final sketches. The final artwork is a happy marriage of sounds and visuals - a collection of ‘moving’ sketches that run in a loop, illustrating the various aspects that make up the collaborative community that is a neighbourhood.
As I had explored in my poster for the first assessment, I made the observation that artists are often alone, trapped within their own scopes of intricate ideas that can only be expressed by themselves and themselves alone. However, how can one by truly ‘alone’ when everything one does is so closely linked to their responses to other people and the environment around them? Every little step that you make in your neighbourhood, every tiny change you make to your front lawn, every door handle, knob, latch you happen to turn or move, renders you an artist in your own right - and a collaborative one at that - as you interact, communicate, create with the individuals around you, resulting in a macro-level art piece.
Georgetown Ben & Jerry’s (2003), Nancy McIntyre, http://www.nancymcintyrestudio.com/#
The Best Damned Cherry Blossom Picture I Ever Saw (2010), Pete McCutcheon, http://www.petemccutchen.com/RustReconstructed/TheBestDamnedCherryBlossomPictureIEverSaw.html
Untitled (1966-7), William de Kooning, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kooning-untitled-t01104
Rough Sketch of a Group of Figures, Thomas Stothard, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stothard-rough-sketch-of-a-group-of-figures-t09952
Mexica (2018), Douglas Simonson, https://douglassimonson.com/product/mexica/
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