I just saw this:
And thought of this:
What kinds of collaborations are you involved in these days?
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10th Anniversary Flash Fiction Contest!
November 7, 2019
BIG OTHER
"[B]eauty is a defiance of authority."—William Carlos Williams
The dancers reminded me of a duo I’d seen as part of one of Cirque de Soleil troupes. I don’t think this is them since the duo I’m thinking of had a much beefier build (although they may have lost weight from all the kinesthetics).
I did a remix of a Blake Butler story that I really enjoyed working on. There was no back and forth though. It was a contest type thing.
With Lily, I gave her a story to finish which, after a massive rewrite by her, we went back and forth on. I really enjoyed that.
I’m in the middle of a collaborative essay with Davis Schneiderman which has been provocative and fun.
And I think of Big Other as an ongoing collaboration between the contributors and the people checking in and commenting.
Oh yeah, there was an exquisite corpse thing at Corduroy Mountain, I think it was, where I contributed a few lines not too long ago. And most recently, I offered a line to Sean here at Big Other for his collaborative poem.
I’ve been party to a number of collaborative projects recently, and I must say I enjoy them a great deal–when they work. Something I’ve been realizing is that economy of scale doesn’t really play out well with creative endeavor. You run into something more akin to groupthink.
Yeah, I agree Shya.
I was thinking about Lily’s “what kind of” writer post from the other day. How I use the word “experimental” more often than I prefer, as a kind of shorthand and depending on the context. And then in thinking about collaboration lately… same as with “kind of writer” post, it depends on the context. What we claim as collaborative (i.e. the “groupthink” as collaboration for a different stage or context).
JA and I have been working on a book called GLIMPSE for several months now – we pass the story off to each other. I do drawings and JA writes text – really compelling experience so far.
Johannes Goransson and I slowly chip away at different aspects of our Genius Child Orchestra projects – it appears as comics, poetry, prose, performance, online improvisation – there should be more coming from that soon. And I have some other bookmaking projects with Tim Wood. At &NOW, JA, Johannes, Tim, and I presented on all this – it was interesting to see all of these projects discussed together.
oh, GCO (?) sounds really interesting, online improv!
Danielle, these put me in mind of the Rock n Roll exhibit that rolled through Chicago a while back; there was an Andy Warhol/Velvet Underground exhibit. In it were screen test videos Warhol shot of each of the members of the Velvet Underground, alone, for something like half an hour each. Rather than simply watching performers interact and do their thing, in these you, as viewer, after a while almost slipped inside the head of the person you’re viewing. Surreal to go from voyeur to barely outside the viewed. Magical empathy, at least from my perspective.
MacKenzie Art Gallery has posted many of the shorter pieces from the hundreds Warhol shot:
http://nl-nl.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=17408256147
Oh I am familiar with the Warhol screen tests but haven’t thought about them in awhile, this link is great.
I was thinking, in relation to the Appropriation posts the other day, about the relationship between the author and reader and how this implication of the viewer in film-video art behaves the same.
I’ve been translating poetry from the Spanish for a few years and I work very closely with the author– not quite a symmetrical collaboration but, in some cases, we go back and forth so many times that I feel like she should be credited as a co-translator, a ghost editor, an always welcome and productive naysayer.
I feel this way about my project First Assignment for which I have been following young female servicewomen over the last two years. The relationships that form become part of the work in a sense.