The boundary between collaboration and co-authorship is blurred, and artistic disciplines differ in their uses and interpretations of the terms. However, the terms are distinct. Collaboration and co-authorship are strategies for production and participation that contest individualistic art experiences without denying either the individual’s engagement or the individual subject. They posit new connections with art as an object, a relational experience or a network. They also connect with gaming and play.
My graduate advisor, André Jodoin, insisted that collaboration started with the project’s point of conception, sort of like birth. Without the co-generation of the original concept as a shared process, the project was not a true collaboration. I take a softer approach to collaboration although I find the strictness of André’s interpretation useful and appealing in its clarity. For me, collaboration refers to projects and processes with shared resources and responsibility for production and realization of mutually defined goals.
Co-authorship relates to text, writing and composition using established structures with options for engagement and interaction. The structure functions as a set of parameters for participants, with options and choices for interpretation and invention. In my own work, I use the term co-authorship for projects which invite participants to modify existing scores. My reference is the original Fluxus notion of “do-it-yourself” which holds that “anyone can create work from any score, acknowledging the composer as the originator of the work while realizing the work freely and even interpreting it in far different ways than the original composer might have done.” Interpretation of the original text or composition passes authorship to the participant as a co-author.
The collective is a group of individual subjects. (Ideally) it endorses plurality and multiplicity. As a social aggregate, the collective is a socio-political entity that suggests society as a metaphor. Interaction among members of the collective may be enacted through collaborative and co-authoring actions.
Now that the idea of co-authorship has been mentioned, another question comes to mind. Is it useful to distinguish co-authorship from collaboration? Can we see co-authorship as similar to a few artists working collaboratively in a collective or is a different type of engagement implied?
But the above question can be addressed over the course of the conversation and I will take the liberty of editing this post (about a week later) to ask a more general question that might give us some geographical perspective. Ellen, having lived across Canada, how does Saskatchewan’s new media art compare to that of other Canadian centres you’ve lived in? Do people approach it differently here? Are people as aware of it? Perhaps Michelle can address something similar about Scotland and the UK. Are there some marked differences between Europe and Canada in that respect?
