The Collaborator

Blue plus Yellow does not always equal Green.

Traveller, there is no path,
The path is made by walking
Antonio Machado

Rivalry, division and inequality can make collaboration difficult, but on a one-to-one level, they can be overcome with a mixture of hard work and patience. However, what can you do when this tricky trio gets scaled up? How can you encourage two halves of a divided city to work together? Last Summer I was introduced to a lovely lady called Vesta Kroese and she has recently finished a project that simply, yet beautifully, considers this problem. In HIER/DAAR she considers the North/South divide in Rotterdam – a split that is economic, political and physical: “de Maas”, the water between them, separates the two halves of the city.

Vesta was originally asked to site a public artwork in North Rotterdam, but she wanted to make something instead about the city as a whole, about its perceived divide and how the Maas might be seen as a common or middle ground, rather than a dividing line. (This is fitting for a practitioner whose work is situated in the mid point between Art and Architecture.)

A man-made point of commonality shared by both sides of the water are the Maastunnel’s two ventilation towers – Vesta realized that these two structures were the only dark spots on Rotterdam’s night skyline, as if to underline the denial of any concrete link whatsoever between the North and South. She installed neon signage at the top of each tower: when one lights up momentarily as “HERE”, the other is always “THERE” and vice versa. To the observer, all parts of the city therefore become both near and far, both familiar and foreign. Inhabitants of either half of Rotterdam are made aware of each other’s proximity and similarity, becoming simultaneously united across the city’s skyline.

The work is a dialogue that is also a call for dialogue: by seeing it, the divided city works together to make both artwork and sentiment come alive… a new path is suggested and there is a glimmer of collaboration.

This week I managed to quell a steadily growing sense of guilt by making time to meet with Cherry Tenneson (long term collaborator, “Tenneson and Dale”). It was the best kind of meeting – short, but productive. Within 45 minutes, we had planned our next piece of work. It was incredibly satisfying. Although we don’t think in the same way, we know each other well enough now that joining creative forces seems natural. No shilly-shally: we meet in the middle.

I’ve had to devote a fair amount of time to other art stuff recently (hence the guilt about T&D). Last weekend, an incredible weight was lifted from my shoulders when I survived massive nervousitis caused by presenting at Birkbeck College’s conference on “Book Destruction”. There were many fascinating and informative papers given, I learned a lot and generally felt humbled by all the incredibly knowledgeable people there. (Especially fantastic to spend a day with a room full of people who really LOVE books.)

Whilst in London, Sarah (the architectural writer I am also collaborating with) gave me a quick tour of the architects’ offices in which she works. The hugely fancy premises are right on the River. One whole wall is floor-to-ceiling super deep shelving, rammed full of architectural models. I felt like I was at the starting point for a Borges short story, as these mini worlds competed against the towering panoramic view of London from the offices’ huge windows. I got a strange sensation of shifting in scale: I felt like a lumbering giant next to the models, but also like a insignificant gnat next to the skyline. On returning to Rogue Studios on Tuesday to photograph our Exchange-Experimentation-Collaboration show, the memory of this feeling really helped me appreciate Yu-Chen and Geoff’s work even more. I thought about how at the opening Geoff’s daughter had made Yu-Chen’s H structure seem much bigger than it was; how Yu-Chen had picked up on tiny, seemingly insignificant details from the studio in her drawing and how the large, loose style of Geoff’s painting of CAC staff’s precious objects seemed perversely to make them more intimate, more precious thanks to the change in scale.

I can’t for the life of me remember who said it, but I once read a comment from a painter (or maybe it was a painting critic) who wondered “What is lost in the distance granted by perspective?”… how refreshing to look at things from a different angle; to shrink and grow, Alice-like, as the situation demands; to walk tall whilst remembering we’re small…

Maybe ideas are some sort of strangely pleasant virus – they pass from one person to another, needing a host but not really having an owner? Although the work I have begun during my time at the Chinese Arts Centre has not been in any practical sense “collaborative”, I can’t really say that it’s all mine either. If Yu-Chen hadn’t been thinking about the Industrial Revolution, I wouldn’t have started thinking about Nature and Culture… distraction, connection, reaction … and I’ve ended up with plans for a piece of work that wasn’t even on my horizon just five short days ago. Creativity seems to be catching.

Studio Swap Residency – Days 3 and 4

Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language
Raymond Williams, Keywords

A personal ban on accessing the internet during my days at CAC has been fantastic for my concentration: I’ve been wallowing in the generosity of old time, rather than feeling panicked by hasty, greedy electronic time… BUT even during four old, slow, non-internet-y days, completing a new piece of work has proved impossible. I have had to change my plans. There’s just no way I can work that quickly (and to a standard that is good enough).

So what have I actually done? I’ve made 5 small studies (almost complete… but not quite!) for what might one day be a finished piece. I’ve also had a lot of strange thoughts about Nature and Culture, which I am trying to sort into some sort of expressible order (so that I can reply properly to your comment Rob ;) and I’ve had a really great time not thinking about anything else, which will probably come back to haunt me, but who cares when there’s still one more luxurious day left.