« notes on the pressure to fracture -or- sorry Star Wars, you were wrong! »

1. The pressure to fracture the collective working structure, to individuate and separate into parts. 

The allure of collective and collaborative structures for art making is in the first step. Our working structure begins the creation, it sets up a fundamental set of relationships that shape everything about the work to come. The difficulty is in representing the work later on. The pressure to assign leadership and authorship in the context of the professional art world.  The pressure to fracture relationships, to move 'forward' and make your name.  Naming is all about identifying.  If there isn't a specific name to attribute to the project, then nobody can get the credit. The group does. This is fundamentally subversive. This should not be a surprise, since collectivity in art making is not exactly a new idea.

However the real story for us is the way in which we must deal with these pressures everyday.  Because even if these issues are not exactly new, they still exist.  Because to defy the naming tendency and be part of a whole is a resistant action.  It resists the need for many people to know who did the work and why. It resists the tendency to look for solo artistic genius lurking behind the brush strokes (or whatever). It makes conversations difficult, and documentation and accreditation can be ambiguous, which may not work for the average c.v.

2. Individual vision / getting deeper into the practice

At the same time, we need to know who we are individually.  Go away and lick our wounds or work on something alone for a while. It’s not that bad and quite refreshing. We seem to be stronger as a unit when we can stand on our own.  Everyone must be in charge sometimes, make up their own mind, feel the weight of decision-making. 

3. There is no difficulty in process

Debate might seem like the hard part, when we are in it. Later, it will be obvious that the flow of cooperation was never stronger than when we stuck it out to argue. The endless discussions and negotiations finally succumb to the flow of ideas and the making of something. And we realize that we wouldn't be in the making stage if we hadn't found the path together.

4. There is difficulty in identifying the source

We find it difficult, though, when we must account for ourselves and struggle internally to justify individual artistic worth. The fundamental ease of collectivity is battered by pressure to succeed. How to proceed when after the fact you must tell what your part was and why you deserve the grant, etc?  OK so the grant doesn’t matter?  We’ll just be subversive and forget any possibility of gain from a strained and compromised system. After all, as common sense says: do not bite the hand that feeds.  So we’ll just not feed?  This is the difficulty. 

5. Being both and in-between. Or being one of several.

Perhaps we can be within and without, in all places, mobile and resistant according to the contexts we choose to invade/inhabit. At this time, one hypothesis involves negotiation, diplomacy, and crafty-talk.  Like Princess Leia, we’ll keep it cool and send for help with R2D2.  No!  That won’t work.  The resistance eventually waged war on the Evil Empire.  Another binary.  See how quick we slip? It’s so easy. Actually, diplomacy is about putting unlikely things together and softening the blow.  We can do that. 

Another hope might be in ecology, and the way several things act in concert to create new choices. Decentralized and cooperative, emergent systems are all the rage. Something to think about: the choice to participate in complex systems and trust in the power of the several to create amazing things. Like fireflies that sync up with no central conductor. Blinking away, they eventually coordinate like someone’s turning the light on-and-off, on-and-off. But nobody can explain how they do it. There is nobody flicking the switch. They embody the intelligence of groups.  

Two solutions, two of many … diplomacy and/or synchronicity.  We are sure there are others.  The main point is that we need to be aware of context and shift our strategies accordingly.   We cannot write outcomes before-hand. However, we can track our origins and the paths we have taken so far.  We can experiment as we go along and test our skills against new problems. We can examine our effects on others and ask ourselves if, in any particular instance, we have found a meaningful mode of survival. Again, sorry Star Wars … you were wrong.  We can only try.  Do or do not simply won't work anymore.  We won't respond to threats.  We can only work together and see what happens.