Collaborative Art Practice

In our world of flows, networks have become the most powerful tool in how we organise our lives: Networks dominate the rise of global capitalism and its shadow economies, the emergent forms of extrastate control and resistance movements, the worldwide expansion of consumerism and communitarian subcultures. The struggle between network formations produces a space that is both fragmented and contested, yet testifies to the creativity of its inhabitants.

Networked Cultures traces these conflictual negotiations in dialogue with artists, architects, curators and theorists whose work explores possibilities for a multi-inhabitation of territories and narratives across cultural, social or geographic boundaries. Through their shared experiences and accompanying case studies, this book offers an insight into the complex spatial and social realities of globalisation, from city-like informal markets in Moscow and the post-war self-urbanisation in Kosovo to the border economies of the Mediterranean and the parallel worlds of today’s burgeoning megacities.

With essays by Adrian Blackwell, Marina Grzinic, Irit Rogoff and AbdouMaliq Simone, and conversations with Özge Açıkkol, Azra Akšamija, Ayreen Anastas, Ricardo Basbaum, Helmut Batista, Jochen Becker, Matei Bejenaru, Ursula Biemann, Sylvie Blocher, Stefano Boeri, Katherine Carl, Sarah Carrington, Branka Ćurčić, François Daune, Igor Dobricic, Ana Dzokic, Joan Escofet, Jesko Fezer, Asya Filippova, Rene Gabri, Iacopo Gallico, Sophie Hope, Nataša Ilić, Guven Incirlioglu, Katrin Klingan, Vasıf Kortun, Erden Kosova, Olga Lopoukhova, Margarethe Makovec, Marc Neelen, Philipp Oswalt, Kyong Park, Marta Paz, Constantin Petcou, Tadej Pogačar, Poka-Yio, Marjetica Potrc, Gerald Raunig, Oliver Ressler, Josep Saldaña, Marko Sančanin, Güneş Savaş, Florian Schneider, Despoina Sevasti, Pablo de Soto, Srdjan J. Weiss, Eyal Weizman, Seçil Yersel and Claudia Zanfi.

The enclosed DVD features conversations with the contributors to this book that follow the thematic strands along which the collaborative format of Networked Cultures itself has developed: Network Creativity – Contested Spaces – Trading Places – Parallel Worlds.

DVD edited by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer

The Plimsoll Inquiry (The PI), was the second case study for my PhD, titled 'The Rogue Academy: Conversational Art Events as a Means of Institutional Critique'. It was an event that took place over seven weeks beginning in September 2013 at the University of Tasmania's Plimsoll Gallery at the College of the Arts in Hobart Tasmania. This project report formed part of the second phase of the project.

In Europe, the history of the 360-degree painted panorama dates back to the late 1700s and faded from popularity after the invention of cinema. Yet in China, the first 360-degree immersive panorama was unveiled in 1989. The panoramic phenomenon continues to flourish on a massive scale in China with a group of highly skilled artists specialized in the creation of 360-degree paintings. In spring 2019, the Velaslavasay Panorama will unveil Shengjing Panorama-the first ever China-USA collaborative panorama. Shengjing Panorama depicts the urban Chinese landscape of Shenyang in the years 1910-1930-an era of great technological change, global exchange, and diversity in architecture, religions, and culture. This presentation will give background information on the development of this collaboration between representatives of the Velaslavasay Panorama, including Andy Cao, Ruby Carlson, Rastra Contreras, Guan Rong, Sara Velas, and the Shenyang based artists

Recorrido por diversos casos de prácticas artísticas en las que se han puesto en juego procesos colaborativos: Cabanyal Portes Obertes, varios proyectos de La Fiambrera, Transacciones/Fadaiat y Villalba cuenta. Su gestación, su formalización y su puesta en conexión con los públicos proporcionan materiales e ideas que permiten analizar desde perspectivas no habituales lo que entendemos por "obra".

This paper aims to reflect upon the different authenticities of collaborative works that combine contemporary music with performance-based art. For this purpose, the collaborative work Luís Vaz 73, created by two of the most prominent figures of the Portuguese avant-garde, the visual artist and performer Ernesto de Sousa (1921-1988) and the composer, pianist, and conductor Jorge Peixinho (1940-1995) will be discussed.
Although it cannot be defined in absolute terms, the notion of authenticity is considered of utmost importance in contemporary art conservation. Authenticity is a relational, intrinsically context-dependent, and multiple concept. Several challenges emerge when the artwork combines different contexts, such as contemporary music and performance art, as these two performative practices imply different notions of authenticity, preservation, and reinterpretation. The authenticity of performance art is usually linked with the original event and with the artist’s intentions. In musical performances the work’s authenticity can be related with the composer’s intentions, the sound itself, or the performance practice (KIVY 1995). Considering that collaborative works have both a double nature and a double authorship, it is important to ask: where does the authenticity of these works reside? Can these works be preserved and presented in their multiple authenticities?

In 2010, pouf ! art + architecture (Cynthia Hammond and Thomas Strickland) began a site-specific project under the rubric of Urban Occupations Urbaines (UOU). UOU was a year-long, neighbourhood-based curatorial platform located in the rapidly gentrifying, post-industrial neighbourhood of Griffintown, Montreal. Curator Shauna Janssen devised UOU to engage artists in a dramatic space of urban transition, inviting our collaboration with Griffintown's many ruins and contested sites. The site of pouf !’s intervention was a well-used dog run called Parc Gallery. Beyond the humans and dogs who frequented it every day, this green space was little-known and thus vulnerable to the wave of demolition and development spreading across Griffintown. The city of Montreal privatized Parc Gallery in 2007 in preparation for condo development. pouf's two-year collaboration with the users of Parc Gallery asserted the publicness of this green space. We used art and outreach to show the park's history, present use, and future importance. Our motivation was to assert a counter-argument to city officials’ and developers’ claims that the park was 'empty' space, and to create a rationale for saving the park. In Elizabeth Grosz’s term, we ‘made visible’ Parc Gallery’s inter-species vitality, its meaning as shared, interspecies space, and its surprising heritage as a space of community activism.

Recorrido por diversos casos de prácticas artísticas en las que se han puesto en juego procesos colaborativos: Cabanyal Portes Obertes, varios proyectos de La Fiambrera, Transacciones/Fadaiat y Villalba cuenta. Su gestación, su formalización y su puesta en conexión con los públicos proporcionan materiales e ideas que permiten analizar desde perspectivas no habituales lo que entendemos por "obra".

The conference seeks to address collaboration and the spectrum of collective working methods which have defined and keep informing some of the independent practices in the field of photography in the 20th and 21st centuries. Our focus is on the UK and France, and seeks to envision case studies in a comparative approach.
Collaboration is increasingly recognized as one of the main drivers in contemporary practice, and today’s practitioners demonstrate an attention to the dynamics and politics of collaborative work. The rise and ubiquitous development of digital photography has certainly allowed new ways of envisioning collaborative photographic practices.  At the same time, funding streams require projects to develop outreach and think in terms of participation from the public.
Collaboration is an enduring focus in institutional and academic perspectives on photography. The articulation between photography and collaboration has been the central theme of conferences and exhibitions in the last 15 years (Fremantle Arts Centre, 1+1=3, Collaboration in Recent British portraiture 2006; Aperture and Magnum, Collaborative Images: New Models of Authorship and Aggregation, 2014, Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, Collaboration, A Potential History of Photography 2018). Academic research is consistently mining the implications of collaboration for photographic practice, considering it, like Daniel Palmer, as inherent to the production of photographic images , as a form of “civil contract” according to Ariella Azoulay,  or as a political stance as shown by Steve Edwards.  Can we envision collaboration as an inescapable mode of production for photography, evidencing the evolution of artistic practices towards a “relational aesthetics” in the words of Nicolas Bourriaud?  Such issues drive postgraduate courses (MA Photography and Collaboration at Coventry; MA Art and Social Engagement in Bordeaux-Montaigne, MA Art and Social Practice at Middlesex University). Collaborative photographic practices are envisioned as part of processes of and strategies for social change or “tools for community development” as studied by Tiffany Fairey , and such principles feed into contemporary practice.
The history of photography collectives, of collaborative initiatives in publishing and circulating images, in photographic education contexts and community photography projects, are deservedly given increasing recognition. The question of the legacy of past practices is crucial. Recovering these histories, thanks for example to the digitization of archives and/or their transfer to public institutions, is fundamental. What do these archives reveal about collaboration in photographic creation? What dialogues can emerge between past and present practices?
The idea is to both provide a focus on collaborative practice in contemporary photography, while exploring questions of legacies and memories of, but also evolutions and departures from earlier practices. How do these questions feed into practices in the present? What are the conditions of practice today for collaboration, and for collective organization and working methods? It has been argued that conditions of production, reception, distribution of photography have radically changed and that there can be no bridge between past and present practice, particularly when it comes to independent, oppositional, collective forms of photographic practice. That any attempt to do so would be nostalgic. 
Nevertheless, we want to suggest that the notions of collaboration, the common, the collective, feed into contemporary photography, whether or not this is done in conscious relation to past practice.
The object of the conference is to explore case studies of practice which acknowledge the multiple interventions involved in image-making, which invite collective engagement as a defining framework in the creative process, and show a commitment to exploring and addressing the politics of representation. We also want to study the collective, in broad terms, as a pragmatic but also political and ethical framework of practice for professional photographers. We seek contributions on collectives as structures more or less guided by common objectives and working methods, on collective publications, and studies highlighting the growing role of crowd-funding in publishing photography books.
Proposals could address, but are not limited to, the following issues:
- Photography collectives then and now
- Photographic agencies
- Participation or collaboration?
- Community photography
- Workers’ photography leagues
- Archival and curatorial issues raised by collective practices
- Collective forms of publishing
- Crowdfunding: a form of collaboration?
- Photography, public art and public display
- Social media, digital networks transforming the distribution of images: is sharing collaborating? (Daniel Palmer).
- Photography education and the challenge of collaboration
Proposals of approximately 300 words with a short biographical note should be sent by November 15th 2019 to Karine Chambefort-Kay (Université Paris-Est Créteil) at chambefort@u-pec.fr and Mathilde Bertrand (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne) at mbertrand@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

We will notify participants of the decision of the scientific committee by the end of November.

Members of the scientific committee:
Laurent Chatel, Université Lille III
Taous Dahmani, Université Panthéon Sorbonne
Mark Durden, Centre for European Documentary Research, University of South Wales
Steve Edwards, Birkbeck College, University of London
Charlotte Gould, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Béatrice Laurent, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Carla Mitchell, Four Corners Gallery, London
Corinne Nativel, Université Paris Est Créteil