In the spirit of the essai, I'm opening the question of multi-tasking because it appears endemic to any culture (or infrastructure?) of open collaboration. I myself am multi-tasking right now. I always do so when put into a socially-generated collaborative project. I claim this pattern is not just mine, but springs from the internal necessities of socially-generated collaboration.
By "socially generated" I hope to distinguish collaborations that are driven by the urge to work with others (thus, socially generated) from collaborative work that is driven by—and shaped and scripted and delimited by—form. "Form" might be the institutional structure of one's job (where every day requires collaboration, regardless of the social dynamic); it might be an assembly-line; it might be an Oulipian text or Surrealist game (such as "Exquisite Corpse," where one must carry out the form of the game to get the result).* And, trenchantly, form might also arise wherever emerging patterns of work (socially generated collaborations?) become reified as sites of training and professionalization (art school).
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[Just to be a picky pain in the butt: why would anyone undertake an exquisite corpse if they weren't motivated by the urge to collaborate with others? I understand that the form inherently requires collaboration in this case---I once initiated a project like that with 70 artists and writers, called Exquisite Language, it was craziness, but ANNNyway the point is you'd have to be way, way more psychotic than I to make a gigantic thing like that with dozens of people if you were *only* interested in form, not in the necessary aspect of social generation.]
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So, bivouac #1 in this essai: socially generated collaboration is distinct from formal collaboration; they generate different internal necessities; they are paths toward different results. My experience is that the first, socially generated collaboration, elicits multi-tasking.
But the calcification of socially generated practice within those forms that can be taught, evaluated, and "accredited" by art schools (i.e., that can be professionalized) is a far more interesting question than the dynamics of multi-tasking.
Why have socially generated collaborations migrated toward the culture of art-making (as opposed to remaining strictly social or migrating into the culture of "social work," say, or political activism, or spiritual/religious practices) and thereby into programs of art education? At the most pragmatic level, there is money. A young person faced with the problem of living/paying-rent/eating while pursuing non-remunerative social collaborations with others has the option of going to school where loans are available (and often family or community support is elicited). Not only the money, but also the normalization and aura of legitimacy conferred by "being in school" can become invaluable supports for fully developing the work. [Amen.]
By contrast, to remain outside of art school isolates the practitioner in an undefined no-man's land. One bereft of much money. Or, such a practitioner could (to run through the options offered above): (1) work or train as a social worker, pursuing what might otherwise have become "art projects" within the culture of providing social services; (2) engage the energies and attention of political fellow-travelers and pursue the same work as a form of political activism; (3) join a church or other spiritual group and, as with the political activists, enlist that community in these practices.
I am curious about the overlap between these different cultures and economic/professional paths. Doug Blandy might be a good source of information about the overlap of art and social work; as would Laurie King for art and political activism; art and church/spiritual community? Radical Faeries would be superb for that.
Perhaps you'd like to know what else I am doing while I write this: editing a novel-in-progress written by someone who would like to publish it; jotting notes for a lecture called "What Is Publication?"; setting up meetings to make a book with a photographer in Portland; inviting friends in NY and Oakland to join this collaboration; saying "hello" to friends who pass by this semi-public room where I am writing; checking Facebook; watching video of a police shooting (cop kills civilian; Portland's third this year); checking Yelp for cheap Italian food nearby.
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Collaborative practice hasn't migrated into the arts so much as it has been isolated for us to examine.
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Some of us come from arts traditions that are inherently collaborative, that never had the Paint-Alone-In-Your-Studio tradition to overcome. Theatre, dance, music, zinemaking, stuff that would now likely be called "social practice," but that I grew up thinking of as "performance art" or "some weird art thing." All kinds of modes mix up solo-authorial ideals with collaborative mashups of performance and creation, crossing boundaries between maker, audience, not-the-official-author collaborator, curator, and editor. It's really fun and addictive, actually.
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Social work, political action and most institutional frameworks are inherently collaborative. What is enabled by bringing collaborative practice under an artistic microscope is an attempt at evolving that way-of-working beyond itself. Without profit being prioritized like it might be at an institution, artists have an opportunity at modeling different economic models without the same level of anxiety.
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I question if collaborative practice has ever fully migrated into collaborative practice. I don't think asking someone, overtly or covertly, to do something to centrally complete or activate your work is collaboration - at best it's getting help or support or participants (even if it's crucial) and at worst it's manipulation. Either that or everything is collaborative - while true isn't that useful in this context. Is it useful to have deeper distinctions for collaboration? Yes! Why? Because in deep collaborative practice the lay of the land changes, time becomes flexible, iron becomes mist and the void reveals its contours and qualities and may even, if responding is available, show us how to steer this thing. (JR)
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