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A Sourcebook of Performance Labor presents the views and experiences of collaborators in other artists'works. This book reorients well-known works of contemporary performance and social practice around the workers who have shaped, enacted, and supported them. It emerges from perspectives on maintenance, care, affective labor, and the knowledges created and preserved through gesture and intersubjectivity. This compilation of interviews is filled with the voices of collaborators in notable works attributed to established contemporary artists, including Francis Alÿs, Tania Bruguera, Suzanne Lacy, Ernesto Pujol, Asad Raza, Dread Scott, and Tino Sehgal. In the spirit of the artworks under discussion, this book reinvests in the possibilities for art as a collective effort to explore new ways of finding ourselves in others and others in ourselves. The Sourcebook collection is a contribution for further theorizing a largely unaddressed perspective in contemporary art.This collection will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies and art history.

An exciting new reflection on the role of artistic collaboration, collectivism, and the politics of group formation in the neoliberal era.The artist and author Ethan Philbrick's Group Works re-imagines the group by undertaking an historiographic archaeology of group aesthetics and politics.Written against both phobic and romantic accounts of collectivity, Group Works contends that the group emerges as a medium for artists when established forms of collective life break down. Philbrick pairs group pieces in dance, literature, film, and music from the 1960s and 1970s downtown Manhattan scene alongside a series of recent group experiments: Simone Forti's dance construction, Huddle (1961), is put into relation with contemporary re-performances of Forti's score and huddling as a feminist political tactic; Samuel Delany's memoir of communal living, Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1969/78), speaks to performance artist Morgan Bassichis's 2017 communal musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell's 1977 text, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions; Lizzie Borden's experimental documentary of feminist collectivity, Regrouping (1976), sits alongside visual artist Sharon Hayes's 2014 piece on Manhattan's Pier 54, Women of the World Unite! they said; and Julius Eastman's insurgent piece of chamber music for four pianos, Gay Guerrilla (1979), resonates alongside contemporary projects that take up Eastman's legacy by artists such as Tiona Nekkia McClodden.By analyzing works that articulate the politics of race, gender, and sexuality as questions of group formation, Philbrick approaches the group not as a stable, idealizable entity but as an ambivalent way to negotiate and contest shifting terms of associational life. Group Works presents an engaging exploration of what happens when small groups become a material and medium for artistic and political experimentation.

As part of documenta fifteen, ruangrupa in Indonesia is publishing two issues of a magazine, majalah that hones in on the core idea of the exhibition – collective working. The lumbung component in the title refers to the communal rice barn where Indonesian farmers store surplus crops to share. The two issues, Harvesting and Sharing, will be published together in one volume to accompany the exhibition. With short stories and features by leading journalists, researchers, and writers from Indonesia, majalahlumbung touches on topics such as cosmology or architecture, food or eating together, thereby forming a foundation for the content featured at documenta fifteen. The individual contributions are conveyed through numerous illustrations and an attractive layout in magazine quality.

Innovation in the Ensemble Arts caps a trilogy of volumes that delves into the building blocks necessary for a vibrant, growing music organization.In the first volume—Mentoring in the Ensemble Arts: Helping Others Find Their Voice—author Tim Sharp examines the mentor/prote´ge´ dynamic and its critical impact on the lives of ensembles and their conductors. In the second volume—Collaboration in the Ensemble Arts: Working and Playing Well with Others—he challenges us to think beyond our traditional confines and to expand our worldview to one that encompasses creative new ideas, concepts, and connections.Now Innovation in the Ensemble Arts lays out the techniques of transformative renewal that enable music educators to lead individual ensemble members in the personal growth that fuels the ensemble's contributions to the community. Sharp establishes a mindset that can lead to ongoing relevancy and create public value for today's ensembles.

We all know we can do more together than we can alone. But collaboration is hard, takes time, and can go against human nature. Collaboration is also at the heart of musicianship.In this dynamic and inspiring book, Tim Sharp guides us with a practical, step-by-step vision for improving the collaborative spirit of any ensemble or organization. The potential results can be dramatic.Sharp provides insights into how to develop sustainable collaboration and work towards a common vision that will serve your organization for years to come. Collaboration in the Ensemble Arts seeks to change the mindset of collaboration, to embrace the challenging realities, and to establish an environment of innovation and adaptation—and most of all great music making.

This volume explores the issue of collaboration: an issue at the centre of Performance Arts Research. It is explored here through the different practices in music, dance, drama, fine art, installation art, digital media or other performance arts. Collaborative processes are seen to develop as it occurs between academic researchers in the creative arts and professional practitioners in commercial organisations in the creative arts industries (and beyond), as well as focusing attention and understanding on the tacit/implicit dimensions of working across different media.

Most artists work alone, but some find a creative partner and team up for their entire careers. Artistic collaborators often testify that their work done jointly is better than what each person could create on his or her own. They say this collaboration is like marriage in the way that both partners benefit from a commitment to shared goals, excellent communication and trust. Based on studio visits and in-depth interviews, this book reports on more than forty collaborating sculptors, painters, printmakers, photographers, architechs and performers who have worked in tandem with other artists.

This collection reflects current and nuanced discussions of the ways collaboration and participation meaningfully inform the production, study, and teaching of art with innovative and unexpected results. It illustrates how the shifting boundaries of power, position, and identity, between domains of knowledge and collaborative participants, result in new relationships.The chapters in this book share stories applicable or relevant to readers'own classrooms, art practice, or scholarship. As such, it directly appeals to college professors of studio art and design, art history, and art education, as well as to artists, scholars, and teachers who work collaboratively. It may also draw readership from business professionals seeking critical thinkers and creative problem solvers to energize their industries. The volume will inspire conversations about the ways relationships become crucial for construction, reception and display; meaning and power; design, content, and action.

Photography and Collaboration offers a fresh perspective on existing debates in art photography and on the act of photography in general. Unlike conventional accounts that celebrate individual photographers and their personal visions, this book investigates the idea that authorship in photography is often more complex and multiple than we imagine – involving not only various forms of partnership between photographers, but also an astonishing array of relationships with photographed subjects and viewers. Thematic chapters explore the increasing prevalence of collaborative approaches to photography among a broad range of international artists – from conceptual practices in the 1960s to the most recent digital manifestations. Positioning contemporary work in a broader historical and theoretical context, the book reveals that collaboration is an overlooked but essential dimension of the medium's development and potential.

Todays artists have an unprecedented level of choice with regard to materials and methods available to them, yet the processes involved in making artworks are rarely addressed in books or exhibitions on art. Here, Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson argue that the materials and methods used to make artworks hold the key to artists motivations, their attitudes to authorship, uniqueness and the value of objects, the economic and social contexts from which they emerge, and their approach to the perceived opposition between materiality and conceptualism in art. The books introduction sets out a history of trends in artistic production and the possible catalysts for the proliferation of production strategies since the mid-twentieth century, followed by nine chapters that explore different methods and media. Detailed examples are interwoven with the discussion, including visuals that reveal the intricacies of each technique or material and its overall effect when presented as an artwork. Artists featured include Ai Weiwei, Ron Arad, Chris Burden, Katharina Fritsch, Isa Genzken, Jeff Koons, Los Carpinteros, Haroon Mirza, Takashi Murakami, Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo and Santiago Sierra.

Collaboration in the arts is no longer a conscious choice to make a deliberate artistic statement, but instead a necessity of artistic survival. In today's hybrid world of virtual mobility, collaboration decentralizes creative strategies, enabling artists to carve new territories and maintain practice-based autonomy in an increasingly commercial and saturated art world. Collaboration now transforms not only artistic practices but also the development of cultural institutions, communities and personal lifestyles. This book explores why collaboration has become so integrated into a greater understanding of creative artistic practice. It draws on an emerging generation of contributors—from the arts, art history, sociology, political science, and philosophy—to engage directly with the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative practice of the future.

Collaboration between artists has been practised for centuries, yet over recent decades the act of collaborating has taken different meanings. This publication examines cultural, philosophical and political issues tied to specific instances of collaborative practice in the performing arts. Leading scholars and practitioners review historical developments of collaborative practice and reveal what it means to work together in creative contexts at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Key questions addressed include how artists are developing new ways of working together in response to contemporary economic trends, the significance of collaborating across culture and what opportunities are apparent when co-working between genres and disciplines. Noyale Colin and Stefanie Sachsenmaier present these perspectives in three thematic sections which interrogate the premises of collective intentions, the working strategies of current practitioners, as well as the role of failure and compromise in collaborative modes of creative work. This volume is an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and those interested in contemporary artistic methods of working.

Inclusive Arts Practice and Research interrogates an exciting and newly emergent field: the creative collaborations between learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled artists which are increasingly taking place in performance and the visual arts.In Inclusive Arts Practice Alice Fox and Hannah Macpherson interview artists, curators and key practitioners in the UK and US. The authors introduce and articulate this new practice, and situate it in relation to associated approaches. Fox and Macpherson candidly describe the tensions and difficulties involved too, and explore how the work sits within contemporary art and critical theory.The book inhabits the philosophy of Inclusive Arts practice: with Jo Offer, Alice Fox and Kelvin Burke making up the design team behind the striking look of the book. The book also includes essays and illustrated statements, and has over 100 full-colour images. Inclusive Arts Practice represents a landmark publication in an emerging field of creative practice across all the arts. It presents a radical call for collaboration on equal terms and will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying, researching or already working within this dynamic new territory.

The past twenty years have seen a new generation of artists working together in small groups and large collectives to explore new avenues of art, design, performance, and commerce. In Come Together, author and visual artist Francesco Spampinato assembles an international roster of forty of today's most exciting and influential collectives, from design studios like Project Projects and political performance artists The Yes Men to flash mob provocateurs Improv Everywhere and the multimedia artists Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Alongside visual portfolios of their best work are in-depth interviews addressing each group's unique motivations, processes, and objectives. What emerges is a shared desire to turn viewers into producers and to use commercial mass-media strategies to challenge prevailing social, political, and cultural power structures. Come Together is an essential resource and inspiration for students, art lovers, and anyone interested in the cutting edge of visual culture.

WHAT IS THE ONE THING not taught in design school, but is an essential survival skill for practicing designers? Working with other people. And yet, in every project, collaboration with other people is often the most difficult part. The increasing complexity of design projects, the greater reliance on remote team members, and the evolution of design techniques demands professionals who can cooperate effectively. Designing Together is a book for cultivating collaborative behaviors and dealing with the inevitable difficult conversations. Designing Together features: 28 collaboration techniques 46 conflict management techniques 31 difficult situation diagnoses 17 designer personality traits This book is for designers: On teams large or small Co-located, remote, or both Working in multidisciplinary groups Within an organization or consulting from outside You'll also find sidebar contributions from David Belman (Threespot), Mandy Brown (Editorially, A Book Apart), Erika Hall (Mule Design Studio), Denise Jacobs (author), Jonathan Knoll (InfinityPlusOne), Marc Rettig (Fit Associates), and Jeanine Turner (Georgetown University).

In What We Made, Tom Finkelpearl examines the activist, participatory, coauthored aesthetic experiences being created in contemporary art. He suggests social cooperation as a meaningful way to think about this work and provides a framework for understanding its emergence and acceptance. In a series of fifteen conversations, artists comment on their experiences working cooperatively, joined at times by colleagues from related fields, including social policy, architecture, art history, urban planning, and new media. Issues discussed include the experiences of working in public and of working with museums and libraries, opportunities for social change, the lines between education and art, spirituality, collaborative opportunities made available by new media, and the elusive criteria for evaluating cooperative art. Finkelpearl engages the art historians Grant Kester and Claire Bishop in conversation on the challenges of writing critically about this work and the aesthetic status of the dialogical encounter. He also interviews the often overlooked co-creators of cooperative art,'expert participants'who have worked with artists. In his conclusion, Finkelpearl argues that pragmatism offers a useful critical platform for understanding the experiential nature of social cooperation, and he brings pragmatism to bear in a discussion of Houston's Project Row Houses.Interviewees. Naomi Beckwith, Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Brett Cook, Teddy Cruz, Jay Dykeman, Wendy Ewald, Sondra Farganis, Harrell Fletcher, David Henry, Gregg Horowitz, Grant Kester, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Pedro Lasch, Rick Lowe, Daniel Martinez, Lee Mingwei, Jonah Peretti, Ernesto Pujol, Evan Roth, Ethan Seltzer, and Mark Stern

Feeling nostalgic for the almost forgotten written letter, author and former ad man Ivan Cash fell upon a simple idea: he invited anyone in the world to send him an email, and he'd write it out in a letter and mail it, for free. Participants could even request a doodle or to seal it with a kiss.What started out as a personal art project exploded into a worldwide event. As requests poured in, Cash enlisted an international army of volunteers who helped create more than 10,000 letters sent all over the globe.An addictive and artful window into everyday lives, Snail Mail My Email is a collection of the most memorable letters and moments from the project, and a reminder of the power of personal connection in a digital world.'How heartfelt emails become words of art.'—PostSecret'Call it technology in reverse.'—CNN'Marries the romance of analog with the convenience of digital.'—GOOD

Das Arbeiten in Kollektiven ist in der Gegenwartskunst zur Selbstverständlichkeit geworden. Werke und Projekte sind häufig Ergebnis von Verhandlungen und dem Zusammenspiel zahlreicher Akteure. Die Kunstgeschichte ist weiterhin dominiert vom Einzelkünstler und seinem Œuvre. Die Beiträge im vorliegenden Band fassen entlang von Fallstudien aus mehreren Jahrhunderten den kreativen Prozess jenseits von Geniekult und Schöpfermythen. Sie stellen Gruppenkonstellationen, Arbeitsmodelle und künstlerische Produktionen von Kollektiven oder Netzwerken detailliert vor und zeichnen Interaktion und Austausch als Teil des kreativen Schaffens nach. Die kollektive Praxis wird dabei zur Denkfigur für eine kunstwissenschaftliche Methodik, die ausgehend von aktuellen Produktionsbedingungen Kunst abseits von traditionellen Kategorisierungen als komplexes Gefüge greifbar macht.

“Johnson emphasizes the rarity of truly visionary artists... his approach is unfailingly generous.... Genuinely revealing.” —Publishers WeeklyFrom celebrated journalist and historian Paul Johnson, an enlightening look at the imagination and drive of visionaries who have changed our world.Paul Johnson believes that creation is a mysterious business which cannot be satisfactorily analyzed. But it can be illustrated in such a way as to bring out its salient characteristics. In this companion to his New York Times bestseller, Intellectuals, he profiles outstanding and prolific creative spirits from a variety of artistic pursuits. Here are essays on such giants as Chaucer and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and T. S. Eliot, Jane Austen and George Eliot; artists such as Dürer, Turner, and the contemporary Japanese master Hokusai; architects Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc; Johann Sebastian Bach; Louis Comfort Tiffany; clothing designers Balenciaga and Dior; and masters of the 20th century, Picasso and Disney.

Artistic Bedfellows is an international interdisciplinary collection of historical essays, critical papers, case studies, interviews, and comments from scholars and practitioners that shed new light on the growing field of collaborative art. This collection examines the field of collaborative art broadly, while asking specific questions with regard to the issues of interdisciplinary and cultural difference, as well as the psychological and political complexity of collaboration. The diversity of approach is needed in the current multimedia and cross disciplinarily world of art. This reader is designed to stimulate thought and discussion for anyone interested in this growing field and practice.

Presents for the first time a comparative study of European film set design in the late 1920s and 1930.