Just the sort of thing I really enjoy. My mind goes into overdrive at the possibilities of what I can do when given this sort of brief. I'm not one for delicate little drawings or marks I like to be quite bold and this was perfect.
To be given a brief where everybody is to draw on everybody else's piece is not for the feint hearted. Some can take it very personally. Some did. But you cannot win, as soon as you move on from a piece someone will have reacted to your last mark.
With the piece of paper I started on I completely covered it with masking tape obliterate the paper and make it harder to draw on. It didn't entirely work as people just found clever ways to work on the surface or even remove elements of the tape.
The freedom for everyone to make whatever marks they wanted on whatever piece of paper was liberating. Some opted for delicate small intrusions, others bolder. It was like juggling plates as you only left a piece for a few minutes and it was soon changed, sometimes drastically.
As the session progressed the work transformed more and more, some to point of becoming 3D, cuts were made, folds added, pieces fixed on top and then most of these drawn on again...
It came to a point when I believe had we of been allowed to continue the work could have been totally destroyed, although would it have been destruction or would it have been a further development? Other questions to consider were:
When is a piece of work finished?
Who owned what at the end of the session?
Should we have turned them over and created on both sides of the paper?
When do you feel you have gone too far?
This piece was one of my favourites. It did get destroyed or rather re-made. Notice the register even became part of the piece..
The masking tape one how it finished up. Cut, obliterated, covered, painted on, more tape and more cuts. Really like the way it turned out.
Most collaborations in the art world are harmonious and designed to make the project or piece(s) better for the joint effort. My 100 word text was about collaboration but that was on a larger scale when artists use others to either make or develop their ideas and the differences between approaches to using others as part of a team or a factory producing art.
The beauty of the workshop was that nobody knew what they were going to do or what others were going to do to their original piece. It became fluid and reactive. Duchamp stated back in the Dada movement that there is collaboration with every piece of art as the viewer is adding as much to the piece as the piece is saying. It's a two way thing, one can't exist without the other. He stated “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act,” (https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/media-and-performance-art/participation-and-audience-involvement/).
The beginnings of performance art in the late 50's and early 60's were 'happenings', although these were an intentional gesture of whatever degree by the artist or artists the reaction was completely unknown and how the piece may develop was totally up to anyone who was part of the performance. The term 'Happening' was created by Allan Kaprow, his book 'Essays On The Blurring Of Life An Art' is considered an art bible in certain circles. It really does underpin a lot of my thinking in last year and hopefully will continue to do so for the rest of this degree and beyond.
Enlightening reading.
Happenings were 'the thing' to do at the time but as with all of these movements they became out of fashion and not so cool... Especially when the Supremes actually sung about them in one of their 60's songs.
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