>> collaboration - in - formation <<

MA1, Fakultet for kunst, musikk og design (KMD)
University of Bergen, Norway | 2019-20

These resources are gathered from ">> collaboration - in - formation <<". A one-year course organised as an introduction to different forms of collaborative working for the Masters programme in Fine Art (MA1), at the Fakultet for kunst, musikk og design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway.

Four sessions across the MA1 year introduce artistic, historical, fantastical, theoretical and practical examples to explore how and why to collaborate, what shapes it can take, and what ways of working can grow from it.

Together, we investigate possible strategies, relations and support structures which can develop from working collaboratively as well building shared knowledge across different interests, backgrounds and politics. This course is not about understanding collaboration as adhering to one set way of working, doing everything together or creating absolute cohesion. It’s about developing collaboration in formation as we begin to understand each other and ourselves, and different ways of organising together through doing so.

R E S O U R C E S

#1.


Are

we

working?

What does collaboration mean to us, and what do we want to learn from it?

How can we create spaces and opportunities to nurture collaborative ways of listening, learning and working?

We look into different examples and methods of collaborative working in historical and current artistic (and other) practices: from self-organised collectives which have grown out of a need to create a different way of working, to social gatherings creating pockets of freedom under oppressive ruling regimes to finding ways to befriend concerns and ideas which come from perspectives and backgrounds different to our own.

[HERE ARE THE TOOLS, NOW SHAKE:
A RECEIPE FOR FERMENTATION]

Fermentation is a process of converting and transforming sugars, carried out by the culture of bacteria and yeasts. It’s a living process. It’s unstable, based on interconnectedness.

"...the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms?"
- Virginia Woolf, ‘Professions for Women’, 1931

[BRING: SOMETHING TO SET THE ROOM]

How do we take the shape of this MA course and make it work for our different needs and practices?

How often do we find ourselves replicating the patterns and habits that direct how we should behave, learn, work. Let’s think about it the other way round: how can we make this room fit our shapes?

“We are trying to live differently.
The maintenance of it requires commitment, devotion, and lots of HARD WORK but it means our beliefs, our actions, our behaviour, are all part of this consciousness.
We choose living fully as we work.
We choose work we believe in.
For us, this kind of work, living and time spent is breath and blood"

- Bloodroot Collective, The Second Seasonal Political Palette, 1984.

"The point was conviviality, a deep kind of sociality … The most important thing was gathering in that tiny kitchen, talking, having a drink. These small congregations are the most important entities.

Ideas come from individuals, and in group formations they have more
chance for survival."
– Victor Skersis, APTART 1982-84

[still from the 1983 film by Adriana Monti ‘Scuola Senza Fine’. c/o Cinenova.]

"Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.” - Audre Lorde

Paradise garage 1977 - 1987
For the Garage's congregation, the private membership policy offered them some sense of sanctuary and ownership. It was one of the few clubs in New York which the gay, and predominantly African-American and Latino, patrons could genuinely call their own. "The Garage was a place for people that were not accepted in society, a place from them to be free, to be who they are," says Victor Rosado, who worked at the club.

#2.


Possible


Worlds

How do different structural and organisational patterns dictate how we learn, behave and collaborate?

How can we re-think and un-learn expected ways of doing things in order to make our own worlds, on our own terms?

And how do we include others in these worlds?



This session looks to science and fantasy fiction, histories of feminisms, political organising and activism to find examples of imagining new spaces for being together - and how to care for others’ different ideas and experiences in them.

[BRING: SOMETHING TO KEEP US NOURISHED]

Let’s introduce ourselves by sharing what languages we use.

What is your relation to these languages (e.g. is this your first language, learned at school, learned because of a partner)?

How do you use your languages?

Where do we begin from when we construct new worlds? Imagining comes from where we are already: the oppressions we feel, the experiences in our lives, the gaps we can’t fill.

And in new worlds, how do we avoid falling into the same ways of working, blind spots which we perhaps unthinkingly slip into in our daily lives?

"it’s dangerous to assume that the future is just whatever we’ve been doing, only more ‘advanced’." - Octavia Butler

>>> Potential Wor(l)ds is a collaborative project between Aliyah Hussain and Anna Bunting Branch, drawing on shared interests in feminist science fiction, embodied processes of making, and different ways of worldbuilding.

Inspired by the feminist constructed language Láadan, Potential Wor(l)ds explores the possibility of moving from traditional ways of communicating (including speaking or writing in a dominant language like English) towards more experimental, collaborative modes of expression.

“If we keep on speaking the same language together,
we’re going to reproduce the same history.
Begin the same stories again.

Don’t you think so?”

– Luce Irigaray, 1977

"Sometimes that is what we struggle for: wiggle room; to have spaces to breathe. With breath, comes imagination. With breath, comes possibility. We might in spilling out of the rooms we have been assigned, in our struggle with an assignment, mess things up.

What a spillage. Things, persons: flying out of hand.

And that: is hopeful."

- Sara Ahmed, Wiggle Room, 2014

Cauleen Smith

Sojourner

#3.


school


without


end

- with


Louise


Shelley

This session invites London-based curator Louise Shelley to share her experiences working in artistic and educational cooperatives and forming collaborative projects with grassroots organisations and community groups.

We explore possibilities for learning from and with each other to produce alternative bodies of knowledge through communal activity and experience. How can we think about collaboration as not working towards perfect cohesion, but towards ways of learning which recognise and hold space for the differences in how everyone learns,
listens, works?

The title for this session comes from the 1983 film by Adriana Monti ‘Scuola Senza Fine’. The film documents an educational experiment in Italy which created important spaces beyond the home and workplace for women in particular to share and learn from each others’ different life experiences.

Louise Shelley is a curator based in London, UK. She is the current Curatorial Fellow at Cubitt, London where she is developing a 15-month public programme working from the structure of Cubitt as an artist-run co-operative - and specifically how the gallery can develop collective ways for working, pedagogy, economies and presentation. Previous to Cubitt she was the Collaborative Projects Curator at The Showroom, London and is also currently a member of the Cinenova Working Group, a non-profit, volunteer run feminist film distributor.

[BRING: SOME AUDIO TO SHARE]

[BRING: AN INGREDIENT FOR A COLLECTIVE SOUP]

Through critical, active spectatorship: watching, listening, thinking, talking and eating collectively, we’d like to share some ideas of ours, others to start to hold space as a group that could translate into how you hold space going forward for your MA1 exhibition: how can the space be experimental, caring, open, shared?

Can we imagine new ways to doing this?

What are the resources available to us: the art school, the city, our communities?

How can we start to soften them, make them listen, change and support us and above all we demand they are decolonial and anti-patriarchal?

- recognising the distinct differences and identities in each of our planets, but our connected-ness through gravitational pull, circling each other, occupying the same space, but differently.

Collective tarot reading - inspired by the practices of Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva.

We asked:
// What do we have in common?
// How do we use it?
// And what are the dangers?

Making a saltdough solar system -

[BRING: A FORTUNE FOR SOMEONE ELSE]

[BRING: A SANDWICH FOR SOMEONE ELSE, LISTEN TO WHAT THEY LIKE AND DON'T LIKE]

#4 :

Doing

it

together


- with


Njål


Paulsberg

This final session invites Bergen-based musician and producer Njål Paulsberg to think about putting collaboration into practice. Njål has been at the core of Bergen’s collectively-organised music scene for years, producing festivals and events as part of the collective Nabovarsel. His own music studio is run on a set of collaborative principles which inform its use.

This session will look back to the collaborative philosophies, examples and ideas we’ve studied throughout the year to think about how to apply them practically in different situations. We’ll also explore how to support each other to move away from ‘normal’ ideals or expectations about how we should do things, and instead look towards working in a direct emotional feedback loop where our own knowledges and feelings become the tools we use to measure what works for all of us, individually and collectively.

Njål Paulsberg is a Bergen-based producer and musician. As well as organising music events as part of the collective Nabovarsel, his own music studio in Bergen is run on a set of collaborative principles which inform its use. As a producer, Njål is internationally renowned for producing high-quality, innovative artistic productions for artists at the cutting edge of Norway’s cultural scene. Njål’s own music blends hip-hop, techno, library music and voice in his individual projects of Put Your Hands Up for Neo-Tokyo as well as collaborative projects with Advanced Language, Evigheten and Young Dreams.

[BRING: A RESOURCE FOR ISOLATION]

Andre 3000 (OutKast) opens up to music producer Rick Rubin about the early days of OutKast, how he first found his voice, how his mental health diagnosis has been both a blessing a curse - and why it’s so hard for him to write new material.

Andre 3000 interview with Rick Rubin

<*> peanut butter cookies (no flour)

200g peanut butter
130g sugar
45g ground coconut flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
>>> Mix together, roll into small balls and place on a baking tray, press down with a fork. Bake for 12 mins until brown at the edges and then let them cool completely.


<*> portable keyboard, with in-built speakers. Makes it possible to make music outside, when not able to gather with people in the studio.


<*> take a shell, put it to your ear, and listen


<*> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4lfe4orjCk



<*> surdeig baking! Share the surdeig starter culture to start your own.


<*> sharing cuteness and healing powers of comfort - like a knitted rabbit (Miffy’s friend Melanie) to keep company


<*> "alltrails" hiking app: points out all hiking trails around the world. Use it to find all the trails which no one else is using. ...


<*> make tea out of Birch tree leaves! 
Put some Birch leaves in to hot water for some time and then drink as tea.
Foraging in your local area for plants which you can use in dyeing / tea / infusions / eating - thinking about different ways of using what’s around us.



<*> praying at specific times during the day. Making a daily routine to stop what you’re doing, light a candle and pray for 10 minutes.



<*> Derek Jarman book ‘Modern Nature’. A book of Jarman's diaries from when he lived in a remote cottage on the coast of UK, writing about his gardening and remote living - celebrating gardening, friendships and sexuality.



Hear Derek Jarman reading some of the book here: https://www.nts.live/shows/timeisaway/episodes/time-is-away-20th-april-2020



<*> finding new ways to play at home with children - but how to find space to create something for yourself which you is also creative and useful? Learn how to knit!



<*> take care of your plants, and talk to them!


<*> buy plants and flowers.
 It brings some life and joy into the room.

<*> a plant grown from a carrot in the fridge! Grow whatever starts growing and sprouting in your fridge!


<*> 
Yuval Noah Harari: "The world after coronavirus”


And a poem:
"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.



And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.



And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."
- 
Kitty O Meara



<*> a playlist for isolation: 
https://www.mixcloud.com/consoli/nicolas-jaar-essential-mix-no-bbc-edit/


- and a book to read: Philippe Aries “The hour of our death” - documenting and reflecting on Western attitudes towards death over past thousand years



<*> tune into the live streams from the 
National theatre of London:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ntdiscovertheatre


- and a 
music video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d2SNX3bfYKw



<*> listen to 
Ruphus "Inner voice
" (1977)


<*> Stabilo 3-in-1 pencils - excellent for face painting, water soluble, indestructible pencils!


Shared resources for isolation (Eva's notes)

Feedback loops: When we don't have concrete feedback, we start filling in answers with our imagination. And the uncertainty of these imagined scenarios, can lead to anxiety. Learning becomes more problematic as well, since we have so few chances to actually learn from the output that emerges from our input.

We start thinking about what is expected of us according to vaguely identified norms, and we can often loose track of pursuing what we want to. And it can be hard to tell what we actually want, since our efforts do not give us any output to evaluate, due to long feedback loops. Long feedback loops make it difficult to evaluate progression.

To learn using a new tool, we must have a continuous sensory conversation between the tool, the matter it is affecting, and ourselves. This is a feedback loop.
We produce an action with our beings and bodies, and evaluate the results through our senses and interpretations.

All these factors will be in continuous change throughout this interactive conversation, and our learning occurs beyond our rational thought. This means that we cannot merely fathom how to use a tool. We must experience it, again and again, through a series of interactions, a feedback loop.

The more events of input and output, the more we, in a meeting with the world, will deeply learn the tools.

Enduring Rules for the Creative Life

(Sister Corita Kent + John Cage)

Changing the modus operandi, will often trigger new ideas. Since an artist often is very used to hearing their own instrument and their own playing style, they can evolve set ideas of what is “good” or “bad”. But when you alter their feedback loop, they will rather start evaluating by how exciting something is. Excitement is paramount to intuitive flow.

They way the musicians react to having something new thrown into their feedback loop, will often create surprises, also surprising me. This can lead to more ideas being sparked in everyone involved.

Kongle are a Bergen-based band of:
Sivert Karlsen - drums
Andreas Tangen - bass
Simon Skarstein Waaler - keys
Sverre Torheim Vik - guitar and vocals

Their album 'Skogen' was recorded and mixed by Njål Paulsberg, and released
in 2019 on Blanca Records, Bergen, Norway.

Collaboration and feedback loops

- in practice