I’ll try to answer Genda’s question in her post Giving Back : creating new spatial possibility. For me, there is always a potential for de-stabilization and subsequent strangeness through the introduction of technological systems. In an almost parasitic manner, my method of working is to explore the leakages that inevitably occur, when technologies are used in other ways than originally intended or when the division between the public and the private become very ambiguous and blurred. What happens when technological products and platforms become subverted by simply changing the context for how they are used? What are the social and cultural conditions that accompany these technologies and how can new social situations be created?
For example, I discovered that if people include the geo-coordinates of their videos when publishing them on YouTube then these videos automatically appear as a layer of information on GoogleEarth. This re-introduces an element of place within the videos themselves. Using this feature I started to ‘virtually’ visit cities and start to get to know some of the people living there through the videos that they produced. I also knew where they lived. Through a YouTube channel you can also send a message to a person. Therefore the placement of the video on a map, and the infrastructure of YouTube sets up the potential that at some point somebody might want to contact that person back and maybe pay him/her a visit.
For ‘Buscando al Sr. Goodbar’, I created a bus tour throughout Murcia, Spain where a search was made for the authors and locations of various YouTube videos produced in the city. During the performance the bus moved through the city and we visited some sites where videos had been produced as well as some people living there. The movements through the city were mirrored on GoogleEarth which could be seen on a large monitor installed at the front of the bus. Videos were played as we reached a place on the map where an action had taken place, such as a video of somebody doing Tai Chi which was played as we drove by a park. In preparing for the tour, I contacted several people in advance and asked if we could pay them a visit, where they would re-enact some performances on their videos. Therefore at certain points we got off the bus and entered into people’s spaces. For example, there was a young guy playing piano. First we watched his video on the bus, then met him at the entrance of the building and were led into the room where the piano was situated. Once we were all seated, he played the piano for us. Therefore a video was first made in a private space, then broadcasted on YouTube for an anonymous public who then reentered the private space. In this way, the videos’ author started to experience certain consequences of the media that had been produced and made public.
Buscando al Sr. Goodbar
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.
