CAPP BOOK 160 pages AW3 60 01-JUN-18 10:06:19 Where values ... · which described participation and...

60 Learning in Public

Introduction

This essay, Where values emerge, will draw onfour years of research within the CollaborativeArts Partnership Programme (CAPP). Itwill give an overview of the values that haveproved to be essential to the CAPP process,and how these developed over the four yearsof the programme. My role at CAPP as artistresearcher was very much embedded. Ifacilitated elements of partner meetings, andI conducted sessions with all the partners;transcripts of some of these will be madeavailable in the CAPP resources online.1 Iinterviewed staff, artists, participants andcollaborators. Research within CAPP engagedwith a critical analysis of socially engaged,collaborative artistic practices from differentperspectives – institutions, co-producersand artists – aiming to contribute to betterpractice and better policy-making.

CAPP as a network understood ‘collaboration’to be a rich body of economic, ecological,societal, cultural and ethical attitudes andqualities. CAPP looked at how collaborationin the contemporary world can help us torethink human interaction and societal order.In the light of massive global changes between2014-18 (e.g. Brexit and the refugee crisis), theCAPP partners constructed and deconstructed

narratives of collaboration, which I willdiscuss in this essay, focusing on the valuesthat underpin such collaboration.

CAPP’s objectives, activities and expectationswere defined by all partners involved, andthe process was given rhythm by regularmeetings. The choice of sites and collaborativeart approaches by the nine CAPP partnerswas crucial, and led to a number of newformats, new institutional structures andnew concepts. CAPP was an invitation toexplore collaboration in, with and about thearts, offering new understandings inspired bycollaborative values. Collaborative arts is oftenstigmatised as being worth less than ‘highart’, more so in some countries than others.Collaborative arts is also often commodified atthe expense of its intrinsic value.

What does collaborationmean in this context?

Patrick Fox, Director of Heart of Glass(formerly Director of Create), explained thegenesis of the CAPP project: “We lookedat what could be done within the CreativeEurope Scheme. We began a process with asmaller group of partners (Tate Liverpool,Live Art Development Agency and m-cult),and we explored what the professional

Where values emerge: an in-depth explorationof the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme’sprocess, discoveries and learningSusanne Bosch

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61Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme

development needs of artists who workcollaboratively might be, and where the gapslay. This was conducted in 2014, and involvedvarious strands of dialogue, including asurvey completed by artists. We also hosteda summit, the European Learning Networkgathering in Dublin, which convened artists,and saw those in the room co-create aroadmap for what a co-operation project mightlook like. What came back strongly includedopportunities to network with peers as wellas professional development, exchange andincreased commission opportunities.”

Working together is a big focus in industry,politics and other sector networks, becausean increasingly mobile and diverse cultureneeds an understanding of commonground. According to Mark Terkessidis,collaboration is different from co-operation,as co-operating partners diverge when theirjoint activity is finished.2 Collaborationpromotes a form of working where theprocess will change all involved members,and the collaborators welcome this change.Collaboration is not an unstructured process,but rather is goal-oriented and practical.Authority is not neglected, but rather isshaped by working together. Sometimesthe process is more crucial than its result:collaboration deals with complexity and

contradictions, and tries to develop pragmaticframeworks. Collaboration is more of a lifepractice than a solely artistic method.

In the arts, the term ‘collaborative practice’has been common since the 1960s. Recently,‘participatory’ and ‘collaborative’ have beenused for all kinds of activities and audienceinvolvement. Often, funding schemes leadto projects where collaboration does not gobeyond including participants in an aestheticdimension of a work.

The discourse on collaboration and collectivityis noticeably critical within the arts. Thiscritique and even rejection can be traced backseveral years. In the aftermath of NicolasBourriaud’s publication Relational Aesthetics,which described participation and interactionas a central paradigm of contemporary art,critics took note of the democratisationpromised by participation and collaboration.3

Claire Bishop notes, in her widely acclaimedessay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,that most projects create the impression ofidyllic “togetherness” rather than exposing thecomplex and potentially antagonistic dynamicsof democratic collaborations.4 Bishop describesthe climax of the discourse as an “ethical turn”in criticism.5 Generally speaking, the ethicalconcerns are based on a scepticism that artists




only allow pseudo-participation, but actuallyimplement their own ideas while relying onother – mostly non-art – people to realisethe artwork. In this case, “collaborative” artis merely an artistic reproduction of powerpractices, concealed by the impression of“togetherness”.

There is, without doubt, a hierarchy incollaborative art projects. Collaboration doesnot mean self-abandonment for the artist (orany involved art institution), nor a completeloss of control. The artist has a definedauthority through their ideas, knowledge,ways of expression, networks, profile andoften paid time. What needs to be decidedjointly is how they will work with their non-artist collaborators, and what the expectationsare. This is something that CAPP explored inall of its projects, and which I will discuss here.

Narratives from co-producers

The quotes from co-producers throughoutthis essay are from events and partnermeetings, as well as interviews with artists,partners, producers and participants. Theyare partly set up to challenge perceptionsabout collaborative arts in the framework ofhierarchical structures. The findings expressedare deliberately provocative, in an attempt towiden horizons on collaborative art practices

as the common definition of narratives isbased on supposed consensus.

Collaborative arts practice is ref lexive, inthat it learns from its own processes andparticipants, and feeds back into the workas it develops. CAPP, as an accumulation ofartists, institutions and partners with artistic,theoretical, sociological or architecturalbackgrounds, explored various ways of beingcreative and then ref lexive.

Value one: taking care of theorganisational matrix

The CAPP network, as it called itself a“collaborative arts partnership programme”,had to intend to be collaborative to be truthfulto its own objectives.

The initial role of the lead partner, Create, wasto create opportunities for the institutions toexchange experiences, to invite and test thesecomplex collaborative processes in their localcontext, and to nurture their own talents aspart of a wider practice. Partner meetingsand online exchanges worked as invitations towitness each other’s processes. As host, Createneeded to secure the quality of this complexand sensitive process by inspiring and creatingopportunities, and by initially setting thetone through the way everyone was invited,


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how the process was facilitated and how theenvironment was taken account of.

There were two to three partner meetings ayear in different locations throughout Europe.From 2016, meetings included public momentsknown as Staging Posts. CAPP Staging Postswere opportunities to ref lect on the variousprojects that had taken place across the CAPPterritories throughout the four year arc. Therewere also opportunities to discuss wider issuesin relation to collaborative ways of working,public engagement and social responsibility.Specific topics highlighted the CAPP network’schallenges, including agency in Helsinki,language in Osnabrück, practice/participation/politics in London and innovative formats ofknowledge exchange in St. Helens.6

In the project set up phase, Patrick Fox andLynnette Moran, both former members ofthe Create team, asked colleagues a set ofcore questions in 2014 to start a co-creationprocess. The collective meaning making woulddevelop a multi-perspective view of our fieldwith the idea of having deeper insights intoour systems and creating new actions.

The practice-based learning was writteninto a project proposal which acted as aguide over the four years of CAPP. The howwould be decided by the process and how it

was designed. From the outset, there werequestions of self-organisation and sustainablestructures beyond the period of four years. Anoticeable change occurred in October 2016:the CAPP institutions decided jointly thatthey had learned to work with each other andhad developed enough trust to divide up intosub groups with responsibility for events,for supporting the research process and forpublications and finance. At this point, theCAPP process started to unfold with a morelong-term intention. It opened up to a widercommunity of practitioners in the formof Staging Posts, an active web presence,publications and presentations at other events.

Commenting on how the internal processesof CAPP have worked, Sören Meschede fromhablarenarte said: “With our Spanish partners,we wanted to create a network but therewas no energy, time or interest from thoseresponsible to really engage in such a dialogue.It led to us having one to one conversationswith everyone, but with no communicationbetween our four Spanish partners. Werealised our intended structures would neverwork. You cannot discuss many things on anindividual, one to one basis. For example,should we set up an open call for a particularCAPP opportunity and if so how? Discussingproceedings is complicated. It seemsimpossible to create long-term collaborations




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if people are not in the room together. Peoplework very well when they are together,but when back in their own organisationit overwhelms them. I really think groupcommunication is difficult to maintain andmanage, especially amongst institutions. Oneto one is easier. It comes down to lack of timeand that is connected to resources.”7

Value two: taking hostingseriously – making a shared spacewith diverse others

Hosting is a form of taking matters into ourown, self-organised hands, to allow innovationto happen beyond control and top-downexpertise. This type of co-intelligence arrivesat the creative border between chaos andorder. Hosting is the idea of opening, holdingand sharing a space with diverse others. Forthat to take place, people being present in aspace is the starting point for joint encounters.There needs to be an understanding ofinterdependence, with an atmosphere oftrust, respect, care, appreciation, listeningand interest. Changing formats of hosting andexchange with others allowed for differentencounters within the CAPP network. Criticalfriend Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio notedabout his CAPP experiences: “After a quiteintense stay in Liverpool and St. Helensthere are many things to think about, some

contradictions... the intensity of collaboration,but at the same time the feeling of lack ofbeing hosted... Observing and experiencingdifferent CAPP events (from inside and fromoutside) is very nourishing.”8

Value three: the importanceof partnership and friendship

CAPP’s approach considered how to build arelational arts practice based on mutual respect,partnership and friendship, recognisingthat communication and dialogue are anintegral part of successful co-operation. GrantKester suggests that the particular qualityof collaborative art is based on the quality ofrelationships between all collaborators, which isborne out by the CAPP process.9

According to Gesa Ziemer, self-organisationwithin the arts works because of the integrationof the Other.10 When we refer to a relationalart practice that is based on mutual respect,trust, partnership and friendship, Derrida’sunderstanding of friendship might help toidentify the qualities of such relations: Derridaemphasises that friendly co-operation orthe concept of friendship itself is aimed atthe integration of the Other, and thus aimedat at a dialogue with and between manydifferent things. Public Address Systems by LoisWeaver11 and generative dialogue developed

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by quantum physicist David Bohm,12 are twoexamples of tried and tested formats thatinvolve many different people, and thus avoidthe predominant approach of individualcompetition. These dialogical processes shapethe negotiation of involved power and decision-making consciously through their form.

Artist and activist John Jordan argues that “...at the root of what we do is radical friendship.We create these tools, these actions and thesemoments, but because we work horizontally,we try to work with a collective spirit. The keyis creating friendships. We think the basicsof any politics is the trust, the friendshipand the love that is created through theseintense moments of working together indisobedience.”13 These kinds of relationshipsare crucial to the collaboration that CAPPfosters. As hablarenarte summarised: “Thegoal is to create a trusting environment so thatpeople begin to propose things, to contradict,and to question. That is when a collective orcollaborative process can truly begin.”14

Value four: allowing participants tomaintain personal agency

Jordan speaks as an artist and activist aboutthe attitude needed to establish trustingrelationships. Projects within the CAPPnetwork experienced a series of challenges forthe co-producer units, such as being invited

into complex contexts, sometimes by morethan one partner with different expectations,under specific conditions of time and finance.Conf lict negotiation and a constant f low ofcommunication was necessary to find commonground, and to clarify different expectationsand needs. Through regular ref lectionsat partner meetings, the CAPP partnersrecognised challenges and conf lict as alearning opportunity and indicator of change.

The Convivialist Manifesto declares: “Conf lictis a necessary and natural part of every society,not only because interests and opinionsconstantly differ, but also because everyhuman being aspires to have their uniquenessrecognized and this results in an elementof rivalry as powerful and primordial as theaspiration, also common to all, to harmonyand co-operation… In short, we have to makeconf lict a force for life rather than a force fordeath. And we have to turn rivalry into a meansof co-operation, a weapon with which to wardoff violence and the destruction it entrains.”15

Given the intensely collaborative nature ofCAPP as a whole, it is not surprising that theStaging Post in Helsinki addressed ‘shades ofagency’ as its leading topic.16 At the currentstage of collaborative practices, how partnersand projects deal with difficult situations andhow they narrate the solutions and approachesto the wider field, is a key issue.




Dublin-based artist Michelle Browneaddressed the idea of ‘reputational economy’ ina session in Helsinki, about the dilemmas thatmight face partners and artists: “You try yourbest to work horizontally but then someonewill make you the leader, as you are thebrand that can be plastered onto that work.”17

Browne echoes what artist María Ruido statesin her interview with hablarenarte, that thistype of “collaboration is proposed from theartist’s perspective” and sits still within theartistic context of uniqueness and promotionof individuals.18 Within collaborative artpractices these affiliations disturb, as theinitiator of collaboration must be capable offostering trust and interest within co-producerunits and of guiding the process.

Value five: committing to honestand collaborative relationship(s)

I have highlighted the scale and depth ofimportance that relationships play in this field.CAPP members often mentioned struggling tofind the correct terminology for the qualitieswe try to address in the programme. I refer toco-producer units; what makes these distinctfrom other work or project forces is the needof the unit to commit to other people, oftenstrangers, in a jointly agreed process.

Commitment is one of the most importanttopics within this field of practice and wasalso the issue that co-producer units found themost difficult to talk about, as commitmentsare understood very differently. As describedby Terkessidis, deciding how to work together,and what mutual expectations are, is a delicatetask. Work that is committed to social ethics ina globally tense situation might work againstthe demands of the art itself.

Furthermore, ego-driven attitudes of co-producer unit members can endangerdelicate relational work. Honest and opencommunication is needed. That means thatthe relationship between institutions andartists has to be right and the intention clear:who is hosting the artist, the process and thecommunity in order to create a meaningfulcontribution? Clarification of expectationsand the nature of invitation is a must, in orderfor all parties to commit to the process in ameaningful way.

Partners should be equally matched interms of speed of working, the involved wo/manpower, f lexibility and institutionalhierarchies, as well as forms of decision-making. In order for collaborations to workf luently and well, the entire co-producerunit needs to define the work and be realisticabout the scale of the work. In short, thistype of practice demands a mature attitude




to negotiate the contradictions between neo-liberal, competitive settings and the demandsof interdependent and interconnected work.Consequently, one needs to create locallyadapted cultures based on already existingresources and intelligence. In all of this,the expectation of a return in the form ofprofessional, economic or market recognitionis not necessarily a given.

Speaking about committing to relationshipsemotionally, Patrick Fox from Heart ofGlass said: “We need to know our personallimits. We are in an insane moment in globalpolitics… how far will we go for our beliefsand what are our limits? I do not know whatmy personal answer for that is, but I need toknow organisationally because every projectwe do speaks to some democratic crisis, orhas a explicit or implicit political emphasis.What does that mean for an organisation?We have to author our own limits. Already, aswe receive public funding, we are complicitwithin a structure because we take the money,we report data, we are part of the structureof the system. The external environment ischanging. It is a lot about life and death, now.The infrastructure is the same but I think theart world is not grasping the severity of thesocial and political situation. We do not havethe luxury to make work in a voyeuristic way,to present a work about something – the workneeds to be more active.”19

Value six: seeing time as currency –being slow, doing less?

Time is the invisible material of relationalwork. Artists often report a lack of adequateprocess time, to the extent that one’s ownbody, finances and family are neglected out ofloyalty to the artistic process.

David Beech highlights how “durationalwork has become exemplary of a certainstrain of discourse which calls for an ethicalfoundation for the relationships developedbetween an artist and a community.”20

He identifies the discourse of duration asideological, highlighting Thomas Crow’ssuspicion of “duration as a sign of the failureto engage seriously with the contradictions ofsocial space”. The amount of time spent withthe community is read as a sign of quality,charging artists and curators “with havingpastoral care over their publics.”21

While Crow focuses on the physicalconception of site, art historian Miwon Kwon’sunderstanding of site is expanded to the social,economic and political sphere. Kwon demandsan artist be sensitive to specificities of site.What gives “ongoing invented communities”their sustainability, according to Kwon, is “theartists’ intimate and direct knowledge of theirrespective neighbourhoods.”22







Time spent on art processes is problematisedby being linked to political and economicdebates; Beech suggests moving away fromthe oppositional binary of not enough or toomuch time, instead thinking about quality.23

I welcome his suggestion, but I feel that thetime for art needs to be made consciously byall parties.

When looking at the timeframes that CAPPprojects offered, they did not differ much fromother invites or open calls. Many I spoke withmentioned the challenge of giving themselvespermission to slow down. We argue in thefield that we do not know how to work moreslowly and we do not dare to do it for multiplereasons: funders’ expectations of quantity, thepressure of a CV, the fear of being left behind.We also face the reality that participants donot value the time an art project might take.Children and young people, for example, wereoften too busy with school and after schoolactivities to commit to longer projects.

Kelly Green, residency artist at LADA, speaksabout how time can be further problematisedby other unexpected occasions as well as long-term external commitments – in her case, apractice-based PhD and motherhood. “It wasfull on and pretty great, but hard. I was meantto make a toolkit and study guide at the end,but now, as my computer crashed, I am behind

on that. I have to go to Wales this week and Iam a single mum. I think I stretched myselftoo thin: as a woman, as a single mum froma working class background, I’ve got to provemyself all the time. By saying I need support,that makes me quite vulnerable. What I learnedwith this project is that I need to be clearer onthose boundaries to be realistic what is un/doable. I think this project could have needed aco-ordinator and someone on communication;it took a lot of time with all these differentpartners involved and three locations, twoexhibitions, etc., but to demand somethingmakes me feel uncomfortable. It is hard fora single mum to get involved in institutionsbecause of their unsociable hours. My mumagreed to watch my child so I could work longhours and do the travel to Canterbury andWales. That was all amazing for me as I cannotnot do it usually. With a bit of distance youknow it is not doable with these resources, todo it really well and you see yourself that you dolots of stuff not well, and it is not how you wantto do it.”24

CAPP often failed to address foreseeablechallenges such as art-typical timeframesand being able to commit enough time for thenegotiation process, as well as unexpectedsituations and the expected messiness ofcollaborative processes. Meschede named thelack of time as most common reason for a non-




committed team of collaborators.25 But CAPPalso experimented successfully with new timeformats, e.g. by Heart of Glass and artist MarkStoror initiating a 12-year residency. Suchduration, based on the content of the work, mustbe read as a provocation to the entire structureof art commissions and residencies. Rejectingthe monumental, this art genre focuses notprimarily on the quality of the object but on thequality of the temporal experience the projectoffers to a group of people.

Collaboration fails when time is ignored orhandled as it would be in other art projects.Glenn Loughran and Lindsey Fryer referto inefficiency as the very nature of thework. Fryer says: “This practice takes a lotmore investment of time across the wholeorganisation than the traditional exhibitionformat. For example, if you commission anartist to do an exhibition it might cost £10,000including the artists’ fee. These collaborativecommissions can cost between £40-50,000.You need to support the artist over anextended period of research time buildingrelationships with local people. And whenyou’re working with communities you haveto support them with travel and food. Youdon’t have to do that with an artist makingan installation, for example. That is why thecommissioning organisation has to changesignificantly to support this developmental

way of working. Marketing deadlines needto be stretched, using social media anddigital formats more creatively and openly.Expecting a title and project informationin the usual time scale is unrealistic, asthese works are often shaped by the processof working with others. Challenging thenormal institutional process needs staff to becreative f lexible, adaptable and resourceful.Understanding this contemporarypractice across the organisation is vital fororganisational change and development. ForArt Gym, co-curated with young people in TateCollective, we needed to listen, to understandwhat young people need, and to learn fromthem rather than imposing impossiblesystems and structures onto them. Art Gymachieved 10,200 participants/visitors inthree weeks. This is far more than traditionalexhibitions over the same period, and farmore impactful on young people deliveringit and those visiting with family and friends.So there needs to be a major shift in how theinstitution brings collaborative practice intothe programme, how it is resourced and howstaff understand the practice and its impacton communities. Learning from our CAPPprogramme, we have a further three years ofcollaborative practice projects planned and weare making progress within the institution,we are making a difference and there aresigns of getting there.”26




Valentina Karga, residency artist withm-cult, discussed how she makes time forherself within her own practice. Karga usesmeditation as part of her practice, and didyoga every morning as part of her residency.Karga explains: “It’s my constant. When youtravel so much I think it’s good to have someconsistency because the context changes somuch. So you have to find a constant and themost reliable constant is yourself. Actuallythere is nothing else… the body is veryimportant in this equation because how youfeel is immediately communicated in yourbody. So if your body is tense then that alsomakes you feel tense, and think in a tensedway. I make space very deliberately for this.I take it. Even when I feel like I don’t havetime. When the mind tells you, you don’thave time for this and that, but I really justgo ahead and do it.”27

In a conversation with Oskia Ugarte, one of thefour directors of Centro Huarte in Pamplonaand Georg Zolchow from hablarenarteMadrid, time was identified as an issue,both in terms of accessing sufficient time forexchange and ref lection and in terms of beingrecognised as a resource, as a currency withina collaborative process. For Ugarte, findingtime to inform the work was the challenge,not so much organising project working timesamong a collaborative team of four directors.

For Zolchow it was very much about time toref lect: “We [hablarenarte] lack time to meetand talk. And that impacts on the quality ofwork and quality of relationships. This yearwas terrible in that sense. We sometimes donot see each other for two weeks. And thenwe have so much to talk about that we do notfind the four hours that we would need. To sitand talk and think together is fundamentalfor projects like this one. If we do not have thetime, these projects fail.”

These conversations revealed a strong senseof the need to value relational time, and tomake very deliberate decisions to create theconditions for nurturing that. In ref lectingon how that might happen, Zolchowobserved: “It is more complex. To slow thingsdown is an answer. I do not know how to doit. We all agree on that in the cultural sectorbut we do not know how to do it, none ofus. In a European project, time is measuredagainst money.” 28

It seems essential that the slower, non-activity-filled relational time is establishedfrom within the field or project itself. Andit seems important that it is established bythose who understand the importance of andvalue of this type of non-action time, for thequality of the process, the outcome and theresilience of the entire setting.




Value seven: allowing ‘inefficiency’ –fighting for long lasting activitiesand against burn out.

When considering efficiency, the collectiveLa Fundició demand a paradigm shift: “If wewere to stop seeing ourselves as somethingseparate from the situations and processes ofcollective creation, to stop trying to controlthem from a privileged position and by meansof external calculation, then it would no longerbe possible to measure their ‘effectiveness’ interms of the degree to which objectives areattained, and they would no longer fall withinthe dialectic between success and failure.”29

Artist and educator Glenn Loughransimilarly highlights efficiency-thinking asan embedded, reductive set of neo-liberalprescriptions: “Socially engaged art is anabsolutely cumbersome, inefficient way towork because you are at the mercy of deepprocesses that can go either way. We candevelop skills to make that better, but itcan never be a totally efficient process,and it shouldn’t be; when it’s efficientit’s questionable.”30

The term ‘inefficiency’ in relation tocollaborative arts practice creates interestingthought processes. If the nature of thispractice is being qualified as inefficient, the

idea of a quick fix through this type of artis not suitable. Non-art-based co-producersare often the most vital in these projects,and they are often the most unheard. Theyare ‘inefficient’, difficult, unwilling at timesto be involved in devising the structure of aproject, because they follow the natural logicof a process, not so much a project plan. CAPPprojects realised that institutions need to putthemselves into the non-art-based co-producerstructures rather than the reverse.

Collaborative practices and processes arecomplex and messy, and (often) fun. Co-producer units and/or individuals takeknowledge and then try to apply it to theirsituation. This results in locally adaptedcultures based on local resources, localintelligence and local work.

Artist Mark Storor was one of the mostcreative people in introducing me to theparadigm of inefficiency in our field: he dealtwith me, the researcher, by inviting me towitness his making rather than talking aboutit. Storor moved to St Helens in 2016, butwas commissioned in Rhyl and invited me towitness his working methods there.31

His decision to spend his time making – andnot talking – demanded f lexibility from me.How are artists contributing to particular places







over time? I talked to a lady who took part in hisproject and played a key role within the town. Ilearned about his practice through others talkingabout it. Storor puts 100% of his attentiontowards to other people and their potential.His attention to others and his way of engagingaesthetically as well as socially travel ahead ofhim. As he does not believe in language beingstrong enough to translate the value of his work,he invited me to be a witness. This approachdraws attention to the value and importance ofobservation as a way to understand practice,rather than verbal exchange.

Value eight: encouraging amore care-based artistic practice:the gift as methodology

Through the CAPP process, I have spent a lotof time thinking about what collaborativeart practices are giving to the world. Whydo I speak of a ‘gift’, when looking at a co-producer-unit creating change through anartistic practice? Why is the term ‘gift’ usefulin the context of collaborative arts practices,instead of speaking of a transaction? Whatdoes it mean to let go of the idea of growthas guarantor for happiness and wealth?We need a new social, moral and politicalphilosophy for living together, since democracyand ecological survival cannot rely any longeron the idea of infinite economic growth.

Thus, we have to oppose the global hegemonyof finance capitalism and look for forms ofprosperity without growth. Conviviality is theterm introduced by Ivan Illich to express the“art of living together.”32 In 2014, in ConvivialistManifesto: A declaration of interdependence, 40French-speaking individuals wrote a manifestofor a constructive solution to today’s world:“The prime concern […] is the quality of oursocial relationships […] The term [convivialism]is meant to point out the fact that the main taskwe face is that of working out a new philosophyand developing practical forms of peacefulinteraction.”33 The point for Illich was to restorethe primacy of ‘being’ over ‘having’, by exposingthe f laws in technology and capitalism.

Care and gift are the immediate translationinto action of the interdependence thatcharacterises the whole of humankind, andwhich has been integral to CAPP. “Societiesreproduce themselves symbolically andsocially via a cycle of giving, receiving, andreciprocating. What [ethnographer Marcel]Mauss34 was concerned with was a thirdprinciple – namely, ‘solidarity’ as a form ofmutual recognition secured by the exchangeof gifts founded on social ties and mutualendebtedness.”35 This ‘third way’, solidarity,beyond the purported absolutes of state andmarket, is one of the key political demands ofthe MAUSS movement.36




The CAPP experiences name the complexityof gifts exchanged. This type of art practiceoften focused on finding common ground, andpooling resources, knowledge and activities forpurposes that do not lie primarily in the makingof profit. CAPP projects were challenged to findcreative answers while facing contemporarycrises that affected the projects.

Sophie Mahon, residency artist with Heartof Glass, speaks about the importance ofbeing able to explore artistically withoutpressure over outcomes – a shift away fromthe normal pressures put in place by fundersand employers. She says: “I love Heart ofGlass, as it is all about the process. They neverasked me once about the outcome as such.They have always been: how is it working withthat person? How are the ideas developing?I applied for an open call because I aminterested in northern towns like these, in a lotof ways it’s similar to my own home, a deprivedpost industrial town. When I read the brief, Ithought, I can do that because I have been thatyoung person. I can give these young peoplea voice as where I come from is not a millionmiles away.”37 She further describes howthis work with Heart of Glass allowed her toestablish a relationship with young people whoslowly responded to the cycle of her giving, byreceiving and reciprocating.

Jakob and Manila Bartnik, a collaborativeartist couple in Osnabrück, Germany, regularlywork with the gift as methodology to invitepeople into the exchange cycle. Antje Schiffers,a German artist, collaborated in 2017 withMuseum Ludwig in Budapest and the curatorKatalin Erdődi. In her ongoing work, I likebeing a farmer and I would like to stay one, thereis a reciprocal exchange between herself and afarmer family. She works for a week on a farm,painting outdoors, while asking the familyto document their reality on video as well ashosting her.

Value nine: finding a strategic balancebetween form and content, approachand ethics

“Politics is not solely, or even primarily, aboutreasoned thinking and rational choices; it’s anaf fair of fantasy and desire. People are rarelymoved to action, support, or even consent byrealistic proposals; they are motivated bydreams of what could be.”38

The institutional formats within CAPPdiffer greatly in scale and mission.Institutions on the edges of the art marketoffer the most f lexibility and therefore themost potential in the eco-system of art.Collaborative arts practices are often not




clearly positioned, and sit between fieldsof art, education, activism, ethnographyresearch and other related fields. Beingdependent and embedded mainly in theartistic field creates tensions. There is ademand to produce excellent contemporaryart when working with cultural institutions.‘Excellent’ here means responding tothe aesthetic language of the hostinginstitution in one way or the other. Often,this does not match with the approach,content, ethics or skills of the collaborativeproject. On the other hand, artists areoften obsessed by the aesthetic form so thatthey tend to neglect the political narrativebehind it. If the two are not interlinkedwith the project aims, the work becomespointless. The challenge is to find a balancebetween urgency and necessity in order tocreate maximum attention for the project.39

Minna Tarkka from m-cult ref lects on theirstrategy of working with artists on projectsthat combine media art and collaboration, inthe neighbourhood of Maunula in Helsinki:“We learned that some artists needed supportfor media art techniques, and some for thesocial collaboration. The need for supportarises from the hybrid nature of the artists’practice. For example, Valentina Karga madethis totem and a video-manifesto representing

the values of the future community. Inher interview, she says she wants to be anamateur. It was interesting to see how thecurator, producer and co-producer cansupport the artist in opening new paths fortheir work. We worked a lot on the ground inthe neighbourhood and wanted to smooth theway. It was not just translation of language, itwas a translation of the concept of the artistthat we were trying to do.”40




Conclusion

CAPP explored collaborative arts practices inorder to develop new forms of representationfor the field. Within the practices, CAPPfound that the values important for humantogetherness are also important withincollaborative arts projects. How can weconsider values and qualities of collaborationin the arts in a contemporary setting of socialtransformation? How can we uncover valuesin an age of growing cultural, economicand political uncertainty, in a neo-liberalenvironment of competitiveness? In orderto share its richness, the cultural field needsto renew its understanding of collaborationin order to set up a more suitable language,financial and other structures, such as decision-making, timeframes and forms of learning.

How can CAPP ‘seed’ wisdom differently?How can we fertilise new grounds for humantogetherness through artistic practice? Moreimportantly, we need to think about possiblefutures that may emerge from such practices:futures involving an altered way of speaking,thinking and doing. With the followingprovocations, I would like to summarise wherethe CAPP network had deeper insights into thevalues and qualities of collaboration in, withand through the arts. Collaborative values ofhuman togetherness emerge:

l when accepting inefficiency. ‘Inefficiency’is the nature of this practice in a neo-liberalenvironment. The shift happens when slowingdown to make work.

l when accepting the power of ‘bottom up’:the co-producers, initially called participants,are the movers and shakers, but at the sametime they are the most unheard voice. It iseven more ‘inefficient’ to get them structurallyinvolved. Therefore artistic institutions need towork to bring participants or co-producers intotheir structures, or adapt to the co-producers’structures themselves.

l when the friendly chemistry betweeninstitutions, artists and the entire co-producer-unit is working well and the processis hosted properly.

l when we understand the importance ofradical relational approaches for this typeof work: ego-driven attitudes slow downthe f low and endanger relational work. Anhonest, open way of speaking is neededbetween all involved to create a resilient andsubstantial piece of work. The clarificationof professional expectations within the co-producer unit is a must.




l when understanding the direction of thework: mature co-producer units have a lot toshare in terms of their attitude, approachesand methodologies, such as the focus on care/self-care, and the need for conscious and self-ref lective action, courage and taking risks.

l when being clear that collaborative art isa life practice, not solely an artistic practice.There is no division between the two.

Currently, the world experiences politicalleadership performed by popular heroesor tycoon-type characters who base theirlegitimation on radical self-empowerment.Democratic culture based on acknowledginghuman interconnectedness on a local, regionaland international scale is slowly vanishing.Furthermore, attitudes are changing fast whenit comes to dealing with contested societalcontexts in a political way, which often entailsdecisions that ignore important aspects,postpone finding sustainable solutions andcreates stress for the parties involved.

In 2015, Frederica Thieme from Art Way OfThinking opened her workshop with theCAPP network by congratulating all of uson work that matters greatly and pointingout how, even within very challengingconditions, collaborative art practices canmake constructive contributions to peacefulcoexistence in a contemporary setting ofglobal, cultural and social transformation.The process of negotiating our difficulties andhighlighting the values created in this field ofwork will continue.

Dr. Susanne Bosch is an artist andindependent researcher.




Endnotes

1. See www.cappnetwork.com [accessed 19th April 2018]2. Terkessidis, Mark, Kollaboration, edition Suhrkamp, Berlin, 20153. Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, Les presses du réel,Dijon, 20024. Bishop, Claire, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics in OctoberMagazine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, No 110 (Fall 2004)5. Bishop, Claire, The Social Turn, Collaboration and Its Discontents,in Schavemaker, Margriet and Rakier, Mischa (eds), in Right AboutNow: Art and Theory Since the 1990s, Valiz, Amsterdam, 20076. See www.cappnetwork.com [accessed 19th April 2018]7. Sören Meschede in conversation with Susanne Bosch, Madrid,June 20178. Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio, from an e-mail to Susanne Bosch,24th April 20189. Kester, Grant, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communicationin Modern Art, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 200410. Ziemer, Gesa, Konvivialistische Kunst? Über das freundschaf tlicheZusammenleben im urbanen Raum. In: Frank Adlof f, Volker M. Heins(Hg.) Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2015,p 18211. www.split-britches.com/publicaddresssystems [accessed 15thDecember 2017]12. sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Chaos-Complexity/dialogue.pdf[accessed 11th December 2017]13. John Jordan on Creative Activism, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPQ2MyLwiJI [accessed 11th December 2017]14. Impossible Glossary, published by hablarenarte, p.13, www.hablarenarte.com/en/proyecto/id/capp-impossible-glossary[accessed 11th March 2018]

15. 15th June 2017, www.cappnetwork.com/capp-event/shades-of-agency/ [accessed 11th December 2017]16. Convivialist Manifesto. A declaration of interdependence (GlobalDialogues 3), with an introduction by Frank Adlof f, translated fromthe French by Margaret Clarke. Duisburg 2014: Käte HamburgerKolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation. Originally published inFrench as MANIFESTE CONVIVIALISTE. Déclaration d’interdépendance,Éditions Le Bord de L’Eau 201317. Dilemma session initiated and lead by artist Tellervo Kalleinen,15th June 2017, www.cappnetwork.com/capp-event/shades-of-agency/18. Impossible Glossary, published by hablarenarte, p.14, www.hablarenarte.com/en/proyecto/id/capp-impossible-glossary[accessed 11th March 2018]19. Patrick Fox in conversation with Susanne Bosch, March 201720. Beech, David, The Ideology of Duration in the DematerialisedMonument: Art, Sites, Publics and Time in Doherty, Claire and O’Neil,Paul (eds), Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art,Valiz, Amsterdam, 2009, p. 31421. Beech, ibid, p. 31822. Kwon, p. 134 in Beech, ibid, p.32423. Such as “delay, interruption, stages, f lows, of instantaneousperformances and lingering documents, of temporary objects andpermanent mementos, of repetition,echo and seriality”, Beech, ibid, p. 32524. Kelly Green in conversation with Susanne Bosch, March 201725. Lindsey Fryer in conversation with Susanne Bosch, June 201726. Sören Meschede in conversation with Susanne Bosch, March 201727. Valentina Karga in conversation with Susanne Bosch,October 2017

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28. Oskia Ugarte and Georg Zolchow in conversation with SusanneBosch, June 201729. Impossible Glossary, published by hablarenarte, p.144,www.hablarenarte.com/en/proyecto/id/capp-impossible-glossary[online 11th March 2018]30. In conversation with Susanne Bosch in February 201731. Drawing upon Rhyl and its people for inspiration, Lif ted byBeauty: Adventures in Dreaming was both produced and performedcollaboratively in spring 2018. www.nationaltheatrewales.org/lif ted-beauty [accessed 17th January 2018]32. Illich, Ivan, Tools for Conviviality, New York, NY: Harper & Row,197333. Text excerpt from Convivialism Transnational, written by FrankAdlof f, convivialism.org/ [accessed 17th January 2018]34. Mauss, Marcel, The Gif t. The Form and Reason for Exchange in ArchaicSocieties, New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 192435. dialoguesenhumanite.org/sites/dialoguesenhumanite.org/files/meetuppage/103/convivialist-manifesto.pdf [accessed 17th January2018] p.1136. ‘Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Socialies’– Anti-Utilitarian Movement in Social Sciences37. Sophie Mahon in conversation with Susanne Bosch, March 201738. From Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politicsin an Age of Fantasy, 2008, www.stephenduncombe.com/dreampolitik/[accessed 11th December 2017]39. John Jordan on Creative Activism, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPQ2MyLwiJI [accessed 11th December 2017]40. CAPP partners Poarch talk on residencies in London, March 2017

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