In order to think about each other’s practices, we arranged systematic studio visits and talks throughout a year. It did happen that someone was perhaps absent, and in the end, some of the studios weren’t visited either. But we gave thought to each other’s practices.
The title we have chosen for the exhibition relates to collaborating, or thriving towards acting together, amongst artists, fellow creatures, communities, biocoenoses, and inanimate beings such as art works. It can also be read as a consent: works for me.
Instead of seeing collaboration as a possibility to create extra value, we have wanted to reflect on what collaboration can mean in a larger sense. Collaborating doesn’t here refer to virtuous activity as such, but rather to observing and paying attention to unpredictable, indirect and unconscious forms of participation. Things such as language, technology, fellow creatures, biocoenosis as well as inanimate beings affect the artist’s working processes with or without consent. These factors can also be called preconditions. Defining and analyzing these kinds of elements enables us to bring different kinds of art works into an equal setting.
When engaging in a dialogue with other humans and works of art, an artist engages in a dialogue with a material and conceptual reality larger than themselves. The dialogue enables a creation of undefined methods, which again can create further actions as well as networks of artworks, developing beyond an exhibition setting. An artwork may not have only one author, and an exhibition may not have only one common nominator. The participants approach their own questions through their own methods, and thus create significance for the collaboration. The inner logic of the exhibition may not be explicit, but rather, it may remain silent and implicit. It is based above all on changing ideas and thoughts, within a shared space and a shared experience.
Some of the topics that came up during the studio visits and talks throughout the year were fear, fantasies, ownership, transitional objects, the space, bioscience, cars, embodiment, crisis, health, posthuman mindbody/mindless body, information, and instead of selfishness the desire to just be part of something…