Page 20 - 57 X 76 - Hanafi • Goenawan Mohamad
P. 20

As an artistic strategy, collaboration also occupies          ‘intervention by’ or ‘participation’ with the public. And
          an increasingly central and dominant position in the          third are works that are a combination or ‘slices’ of

          current stream of contemporary art. Since the 1990s,          the two types. Although it has a long history rooted
          talk of collaboration has emerged in discussions              in the model of European guilds, new collaboration
          about various practices signaled by terms such as             is discussed in connection with a number of key
          ‘relational art’, ‘socially-engaged art’, ‘community-         developments manifested in the birth of works,

          based art’, ‘dialogical art’, or ‘participatory art’ which    manifestos, movements, and artistic styles in modern
          appeared in blockbuster exhibitions. Certainly, I’m not       art, at least since the early twentieth century. In a
          generalizing all of those terms under one umbrella            modernist framework, collaboration is seen as an
          of the category ‘collaboration’. There is a separate          inventive methodological breakthrough capable of

          discussion that deals with differences and similarities       producing aesthetic newness.
          in understanding.  But in plain view, collaboration as
                            1
          an indication of an artistic paradigm shift shows at          In more recent times, a number of critics and
          least two major phenomena. First are works of art             historians discuss collaboration as an artistic

          done collectively by two or more people (whether by           phenomenon that marks the transition from
          those who call themselves ‘artists-units’, ‘collective        modernism to postmodernism.  Charles Green,
                                                                                                         2
          artists’ or among artists and non-arts practitioners          in his study of art practice in the Euro-American
          who are temporarily collaborating for an artistic             context after the 1960s, for example, understood

          presentation). In this category, collaboration can also       collaboration not only as a new way to redefine art,
          be the result of interdisciplinary initiatives. Second        but also as a conscious effort by artists to project
          are the proliferation of works that are oriented or           their artistic identity. Collaboration is an alternative
          open to ‘interaction and / or collaboration with’,            way for artists whose image is construed as isolated

                                                                                  3
          1  See Maria Lind, Complications: On Collaboration, Agency and   and aloof.  Maria Lind, in her review of critical debates
          Contemporary Art, in Nina Montmann (ed.), New Communities,
          Journal of Public | Art | Culture | Ideas, no. 39, Spring 2009, pp.   2  Lind, ibid., pp. 53–54, see also Charles Green The Third Hand,
          57–62. These terms are almost always associated with the names of   Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism,
          a number of curators, critics and historians, for example, ‘relational   University of Minneapolis Press, 2001, p. x.
          art’ with Nicolas Bourriaud; ‘dialogical art with Grant Kester, ‘new   3  Various collaborative practices that emerged after the conceptual
          genre public art’ with Suzanne Lacy, etc.                     art of the 1960s in the Euroamerican context, including those


          20
   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25