Collaboration:
Creating Hybridity Through Shared Processes
"Collaborate:
1: to work jointly with others or
together esp. in an intellectual endeavor" (Webster's 259)
Many years ago, another life, I was
involved in a successful business collaboration. The leader of a team that was much greater
than the sum of its parts—as the saying goes.
I will not bore you with the minutia of that endeavor except to say that
those were heady days when I could not wait to go to bed so I could wake up and
get to my work, my team, quicker. Each
of our weaknesses overcome by the strengths of another, whether personal or technical. The effectiveness of that collaboration was to
be judged solely by the end result—a product—and more importantly by its
acceptance in the marketplace. And it
was a success. Not long after we brought
the product to market however, the team began to drift apart. The glue of a common purpose no longer
present I found it impossible to hold that team together. Disparate personalities without a unifier
soon began to clash over insignificant details.
No matter how painful the dissolution it could not color the good work
we had accomplished. Over the years I
have come to realize how magical those times were, and came to believe that it
was a once in a lifetime occurrence. An
event, although I helped to create, I still feel lucky to have been involved
in. And would gladly give a few years of
my life to be involved in again.
Flash forward a dozen years or so,
and now I am attempting to become a writer, a poet to be exact. Circling back to pursue a dream I thought I
left dying by the side of a corn shadowed gravel road somewhere in the
heartland over 30 years ago. Now slowly
taking MFA courses to see if I have the chops to write, or if not, then whether
I can obtain those skills, the craft, through education and perseverance and
practice. With that goal in mind this
spring I took a class in hybrid literary forms— a type of literature; though a
life long reader since at least the age of 6; I thought I knew nothing about. Except maybe I did.
Defining hybrid forms in literature,
as I and my classmates have been finding out, is a lot like trying to define
obscenity: I know it when I see it. Even though I believed the hybrid form was
unknown to me by attempting to define it I recognized that one of my favorite
poetic pieces, a piece I have carried both in my heart and in my head since
high school, was itself a hybrid: John
Dos Passos' "The Body of an American". Part poem, part journalism, part essay;
thought-provoking, heart-wrenching and political— this work was the bridge that
allowed me to walk from traditional genre and form to the land of
hybridity. Walk to it, but not through
it. That would take some effort of my
own.
As I watched some of my fellow MFA
writers struggle with the question of what is and what is not a hybrid work in
literature (a struggle I was also engaged in) and how to explain and define
these differences I got a sense of de ja vu: I felt as if I had been involved
in similar discussions before. And I
had. In my other life, my business life. When my team and I were creating a new
product that would control an old process in a very different way, we were
forced to create and define many of our own terms and attempt to merge them
with the more traditional methods and methodology associated with the art of
coffee roasting. This had to be done in
such a way as not to embarrass or offend traditionalists or the established,
and storied, culture of the coffee roasting community. And though it may seem like a strange segue (as
a poet my thinking is not always linear, it can be quite abstract) I began to believe
that perhaps hybridity was somewhere in the act of creating—in the process
itself— not necessarily in the finished product. And so in the spirit of hybridization I gave
the term hybridity a new form: for me hybridity was no longer to be a noun, nor
an adjective, but a verb. And that verb
would be a synonym of both collaboration and cross-pollenating.
Searching for Useful Collaborative
Examples:
When
I began my search for examples of collaboration between artists and writers the
search ended up too broad, for what I was looking for specifically. That brought me to the question of "exactly
what was I looking for?" After some thought and a little soul searching I
decided that I wanted to know how visual artists and poets interacting affected
one another's work. Especially more
abstract visual artists (by abstract I mean abstract expressionists,
conceptualists, and even surrealists), since poets work in the realm of
abstraction as well. More personally, I
was hoping that by gaining some insight into the minds of visual artists I
could begin to tackle perceived deficiencies in my own work. Namely an overly linear, chronological and causal
narrative that runs through nearly all of my poetry, even my better pieces.
In my search I wanted to avoid
simple inspiration (when a poet or writer uses an existing work as a stepping
off point without any interaction with the artist); ekphrasis: a writing about
a work of art; and the exclusive use of muses.
Of the three I was actually only able to completely avoid ekphrasis, as
the other two seem to lie on a continuum with collaboration and occur
frequently as admixtures with true collaboration.
After a little searching I hit upon
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, a writer and collaborator in her own right, that
compiled a list titled "The 7 Best Collaborations Between Artists and
Writers" for her Arts and Words
website (Stufflebeam). Of the seven
there were three that I felt were relevant to what I was looking for: Dennis
Ashpaugh and William Gibson's Agrippa; Alex
Smith and Amy Gerstler's Past Lives and
Danez Smith and Sam Vernon's "Fall Poem" all of these feature a poet
and a visual artist creating pieces that move beyond the art, past the written
word transcending through both to a higher level. Additionally, both the Agrippa and Past Lives
collaborators mention the development of a third man, or entity, that aided in
the completion of the pieces.
Stufflebeam's own collaboration Strange
Monsters contains some interesting insights as well, but as a music (jazz)
and written piece (prose) didn't contain the visual aspect I needed for my own exploration. I would like to attend The Art & Words Show that Stufflebeam organizes every year in
Ft. Worth, TX (this year's show is October 7, 2017). Talk about hybrid!
Through my search I came across many
solid examples of collaborations between artists (especially musicians) and
writers. But of what I was truly
searching for, examples of poets and visual artists working together there were
very few. Besides the three listed above
I could only find one other with the gravitas to make my list: Garth Evans and Leila Philip's Water Rising: A Collaboration of Art and
Poetry. Evans, a sculptor—painted
and Philip's a prose writer—wrote poetry.
The two set out to challenge themselves and create something completely
unique. And as stunning as these pieces are,
I was more struck by the interview of Philip that appeared in conjunction with
a story and review of the book in The
Woven Tale Press. In this interview
Philip explains how they came to collaborate and how they set their rules for
the project:
"Then we came up with
our own working rules. One was that we would both work in genres outside of our
usual practice. I wrote prose but for this project I would work in poetry, and
Garth is a sculptor but would make works on paper, watercolors. We wanted a
structure that forced us to really stretch ourselves. We also agreed that we
would work for a year, making works consistently, each month, but that we would
not share these works until the year was over."
She
further goes on to explain:
"So our collaboration began with a necessary phase of us
working independently in the same location. This was important to us because
Garth did not want to “illustrate” my poems with his images, and I was trying
to avoid writing ekphrastic poetry."
In order
to stretch myself I would need to set some rules. As counterintuitive as this advice seemed it
somehow felt right to me. Armed now with
some examples of successful poet/artist collaborations, as well as some advice,
I had two more aspects I wanted to research to try and gain a better
understanding of the advisability of creating a hybrid work through a
collaboration. The psychology of the
thing and the why of the thing was what I was after. As in how do I choose a partner? And why bother with all this apparent hassle
anyway?
The Psychology of Collaboration (or You
May Be a Good Partner, But What Am I?)
There is no denying that either by
temperament or arrangement poets and painters work alone. Perhaps the intense focus required to get the
stroke just right, or to spend half a day inserting and then deleting a single
word make people in these two professions especially unsuited to collaborative
undertakings. Or perhaps, they just need
to find the right partner, a partner that suits their own personality and
respects their process. In Dr. Carrie
Brown's blog essay “Creativity and Collaboration: It's All About Trust and One
Mind Catalyzing Another." she lays
out the psychological factors involved in any great collaboration starting with
good collaborators. She goes on to argue that an open and trusting mind as well
as an honest evaluation of self is the starting point for successful joint
projects. Moving on to explain the
different approaches to, and types of, collaborative processes, from muses to
more direct and engaged collaborations.
I found her advice so useful and easy to understand that I made a short
checklist out of her piece. This statement especially, seemed to get to the
heart of how to handle the friction between collaboration and the lone working
conditions that poets and painters are more accustomed to:
"Collaboration
does not require constant en face or
symbiosis with your chosen partner.
Merging and separating at different phases of the work keeps individual
identities and energies intact. This
maintains a freshness that feeds the mutual process."
Advice
seemingly tailor made for lone operators like poets and painters wishing to
create together.
Another essay that deals with the
psychology of collaboration but containing examples and written in a less
scientific way is Joanna Penn's "Create Something Together. Artistic
Collaboration in Action. (Penn 1)" from her blog The Creative Penn. Penn goes
a step further than Dr. Brown by actually advocating for writer's to begin more
collaborations and to explore new genres and mediums to help them discover new
ways to write and to help develop new audiences. Penn actually hits on two issues here: the
psychological and the "why do it"?
So...
Why Collaborate at All?
Robert
Miltner in his essay "Where the Visual Meets the Verbal: Collaboration as
Conversation" written for on-line magazine Enculturation, lays out in a very detailed way the benefits of
collaborations between artists and writers.
He takes several detailed looks at successful works by poets such as
Frank O'Hara's "Oranges" and an overview of Robert Creeley's more
than 40 books of collaborative works. As
the Agrippa and Past Lives pieces above already mentioned Miltner quotes poet
Charles Simic talking about a third person, or third mind when collaborators
are in synch and creating. This
extensive and well cited essay ends with this thought as to why poets should
seek out artists to work with:
"Collaboration is more than merely responding to art, it is
equally an engaging in dialogue between the visual and the verbal artist,
initiating an open-ended conversation which transgresses the borders between
mediums and builds bridges which both connect artistic communities and create
friendships."
Open my mind, build bridges between artistic communities, make
friends and create better art. With
reasons like theses for motivation—hell I'm all in for collaboration and
hybridization.
Laying Down the Rules and
Finding a Partner:
As I began to seriously consider a
collaboration I decided to leave the rule making until I had found a suitable
partner. So I listed a few artists that
I knew. None of them excited me to the
level I believed was necessary, either because their art was not abstract
enough (remember I was trying to move away from a more formulaic poetry, to
something different) or because I did not want to spend too much time with
them. About to give up I looked across
the table I sit at every Wednesday night directly at my friend, my brother,
Thanh Duc Vu. Thanh was a conceptual
artist working often with multi-media.
How I had not thought of him till that moment, I can't fathom. Sometimes you seek the expert that lives far
away, while a more expert expert sits across the table. It just shouldn't be that easy. Timing
couldn't have been better as he was seeking a reason to begin painting again,
after a nearly 5-year hiatus. My project
was to be his motivation and his painting was to be mine. The best part of this partnership was that we
know each other well, having been through some strange times together while both
working in Central Vietnam. Each of us well
acquainted with the strengths, weakness and personalities of the other.
Rules:
For Thanh
there were three rules:
1) Don't
tell me the title of the paintings (this rule developed after the title of the
first painting, I believe, affected how I experienced that painting and my poem
as well).
2) Paint
whatever you wish
3) Answer
any question about materials, paints, etc. I ask
For
myself I had only two rules:
1) See 1
above
2) Write
4 poems using 4 paintings as starting points
After finishing the final poem, I
can only say that the experience has felt transformative, even magical. Three of the poems are so completely unlike
anything I have ever written that I am simply amazed. And yet in every one I can hear my voice and
see Thanh's painting. I am hopeful that
this experience has a long lasting effect on my writing. Regardless, my friend, my brother, the artist
Thanh Duc Vu and I have begun to lay out the rules for our next collaboration,
perhaps taking our hybridization project to an entirely different place. Maybe even to the world wide web.
In conclusion I would leave any
writer or artist considering a collaboration such as ours with this little
anecdote. Late one evening sitting in a
Florida room in Union Park, Fl. near the
end of our little project and while talking about about our art and the processes
we use—I sensed another presence at our empties filled table. I became
joyous. It was just the three of us;
Thanh, myself and the Third Man enjoying each other's company and discussing
our craft. Regardless of how well our
pieces are received, at that table, on that night we transcended ourselves. Fellow writers if you have never experienced
this perhaps it is time to find a partner and practice a little collaboration-hybridization
of your own.
Works Cited
Brown,
Carrie M.D. "Creativity and Collaboration: It's All About Trust and One
Mind Catalyzing Another." Psychology
Today, 30 March, 2013. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-creativity-cure/201303/creativity-and-collaboration
Evans,
Garth and Philip, Leila. "Water Rising: A Collaboration of Art and
Poetry." Woven Tale Press, 14
Dec. 2015. http://www.thewoventalepress.net/2015/12/14/water-rising-art-and-poetry/
Merriam-Webster
Inc. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate
Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, 1990
Miltner,
Robert. "Where the Visual Meets the Verbal: Collaboration as
Conversation."
Penn,
Joanna. "Create Something Together. Artistic Collaboration in
Action." The Creative Penn, 23
December, 2013. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/12/23/artistic-collaboration/
Philip, Leila. "A Writer and an Artist
Collaborate." Woven Tale Press,
14 Dec. 2015. http://www.thewoventalepress.net/2015/12/14/writer-and-artist/
Stufflebeam,
Bonnie Jo. "7 Best Collaborations Between Writers and Artists." Art &Words, 27, Sept. 2016. https://bonniejostufflebeam.com/2016/09/27/7-best-collaborations-between-writers-and-artists/
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