Working Together
Trebor Scholz
The following text introduces issues that are at the center of the conference
"networks, art, & collaboration" to take place April 24/ 25, 2004
at the State University of New York at Buffalo: http://freecooperation.org.
FAQs
Do we feel threatened in the face of terrorism? Is that the reason for the renewed
attention to collaborative efforts of the 1960s, which were often seen as models
for change (Cotter)? What is Free Cooperation? Do we need leaders? What about
competition, self-sacrifice and individual gain? What should be part of an ABC
of working together? How does the "battle of the sexes" play out?
Woman to woman, man to man, and man to woman. What can we learn about collaboration
from Fluxus, networked art, micro radio, and social software like weblogs or
wikis? Are there specific areas that make collaboration presently more interesting?
What are new organizational possibilities based on emerging technologies that
facilitate cultural practices? Participatory online cultures allow for shared
information systems, development and knowledge representation. How do these
new contexts change the way we learn, or distribute knowledge? Which open source
tools are in our reach? Is this the end of the university as we know it? How
does the miniaturization of databases impact all this? How does jointness succeed
better – by working together chest to chest or by collaborating in participatory
online cultures? How can we be "free" in a collaboration? Who gets
the credit? Whose labor remains invisible?
The Collaborator
Collaboration is a buzzword hot like a sauna today. The use of terms like collaboration,
solidarity, friendship, we-ness, network, interaction, community, alliance,
collectivity, and more recently, free cooperation varies widely depending on
the agenda of the person using it. "Collaborator" in many languages
stands for a sympathizer with the Nazis.
In post-WWII times, for instance, Slovenians and Croatians were portrayed on
Serbian Television broadcasts as Nazi sympathizers. Today, the Slovenian group
"Laibach" provokes the audience with references to these historical
traumas with post-industrial music. I grew up under socialism in East Germany
and there a substantial part of the population consisted of what we called "Stasi
collaborators." To this day "collaborator" is a word with heavy
connotations. Collaboration just implies "to work together, especially
in an intellectual pursuit." The term "collaboration" suggests
that we cannot achieve the same goal on our own. It assumed that there is a
common goal and that people in the group share responsibility in achieving this
goal.
Free Cooperation
Collaboration and cooperation must be free, very much in opposite to the forced
collaborations in the creative industries. Freedom always means the freedom
of those who think differently from us (Luxemburg). An example for a forced
collaboration is the 1960s East German art movement of production romanticism
called "Bitterfelder Weg" in which the state demanded artists to depict
the beauty of production.
Cooperation commonly means that people assist each other to reach the same end.
In cooperation, people walk in parallels. Each participant is in it for herself,
motivated by egoistic "micro-motivation"? (Tuomela) or altruistic
collective reasons. Free Cooperation, with the German critic Christoph Spehr
in "Gleicher als der Andere," emphasizes that everybody can freely
leave the cooperation at any time taking with them what they put in. Free cooperation
needs to pay off. If there are disagreements the cooperation needs to remain
workable. There is no cooperation in which nobody is taken advantage off, in
which everything is ideal. There is no such thing as a pure and perfect cooperation.
Free Cooperation
in Action
Cooperative group models in the urban United States include models such as Reclaim
the Streets and Critical Mass. During the anti-war protests of 1993, bicyclers
in San Francisco blocked major urban intersections and highways with hundreds
of bikes as part of "Critical Mass." This was initiated by leafleting
in neighborhoods with times and dates of such actions without any central leadership.
"Reclaim the Streets" is a similarly decentralized model of taking
back the public sphere. Other ways of organizing community include broadcasting
free radio, graffiti, and street parties. Jeff Ferrell points especially to
Radio Free ACTUP, The Micro-Radio Empowerment Coalition, and Slave Revolt Radio.
In German "Kinderlaeden", parents rotate to look after their children
in a rented store or flat. In San Francisco, a similar, less formalized small-scale
model exists in which parents in a given neighborhood trade their time watching
over the children. Each time you put in time you receive a token giving you
the right to claim that same amount of hours from the cooperative network. Once
you run out of tokens you have no right to benefit from this cooperation anymore.
Only up to ten such tokens are given out at a time to avoid abuse.
Online, Saul Albert’s "Distributed Library Project" (http://dlpdev.theps.net/)
is "a shared library catalogue and borrowing system for people’s books
and videos. There is no reason the dlp shouldn’t be used to share other resources
too, which is one of the development aims of this project." Users of the
open source software locate fellow "librarians" in their vicinity
and share with them whatever their local library would not have. This is only
one example of cooperative networks. I will come back to more examples of open,
shared and free networks later.
Temporary Alliances
Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau use the term "radical and pluralist democratic"
discourse to describe a project that creates links among multiple struggles
against subordination and domination. No one subject position, be it defined
by class, race, or gender functions as central identifier for a given temporary
alliance. People of different backgrounds come together focusing on one single
issue. One example is the green movement. To solve global ecological problems
Buckminster Fuller envisioned an international cooperative effort that would
create "some artifact, some tool or invention." Johann Wolfgang Goethe
calls on us to always strive for the absolute and if we can’t be an absolute
ourselves, then we should become a serving part of an absolute. Following this
logic it is important that the cooperation is meaningful enough to all involved
to willingly subsume their egos but, in opposition to Mr. Enlightenment, I’d
argue for free and equal relationships instead of servile subordination. As
the creation of technology-based artworks requires increasingly deeper levels
of specialization and collaboration between the technological and conceptual
components. Collaborations between artists and programmers are the subject of
many conferences such as "The Beauty of Collaboration," in March 2003
at The Banff Centre in Canada.
Organizational
Structures
In aggressive or competitive contexts, so called "tiger teams" are
(often forced) collaborations based on several competing groups of 4 or 5 individuals
who are given the same task. Each group strives to solve the given problem best
driven by prospects of financial and career gain. Critical Art Ensemble suggests
groups of 2 to solve one task. Let’s hear some examples. Founded in 1981, Paper
Tiger TV is another consequential model of collaboration. Paper Tiger creates
and distributes often collectively produced activist video work that critique
the media. The New York City-based chamber orchestra Orpheus works without conductor
and rotates all functions among its musicians. Another organizational structure
is the national network of alternative spaces such as micro-cinemas, not-for-profit
galleries and others that exist all over the US. Examples are Artist Television
Access in San Francisco and Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo, to name just two. But
for me, the most powerful collaboration took place on February 15, 2003 when
millions and millions and millions of demonstrators worldwide simultaneously
mounted a collective "no" to the war in Iraq.
DIY
In art history the most ready association with collaboration is the Fluxus movement,
with artists like George Maciunas. In 1961 Allan Kaprov wrote the influential
essay "Happenings in the New York Scene" laying out ideas of interaction
that were mainly associated with the happenings of the 1950s and 1960s. A happening
according to Kaprow is "an assemblage of events performed or perceived
in more than one time and place." Fluxus focused on the Do-It-Yourself-aspect
of art (you too can be an artist), and the interaction between the artist and
her audience. It was the Fluxus artist Ray Johnson who pioneered Mail Art not
much later.
More recently, with web-based art we question the ownership of the networks
in which collaborations takes place, and also critique the politics of online
visibility. Search engines like Google list websites that are linked to by a
high number of sites, which themselves have high popularity and link ratings.
For this reason power remains largely with the websites of the mainstream media.
To whom do we link from our websites? Do we link (cooperate) at all? Lesser
known directories like the Open Directory Project build an alternative. The
Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory
of the Web. It is entirely reliant on globally collaborating, volunteer editors.
For the last nine years more artists have taken on networked spaces as the context
for their work. Networked communication on laptops, small wireless devices like
cell phones or PDAs lead the focus away from the art object and the individual
author becomes less significant (Barthes). One of the first Internet-based artworks
was Douglas Davis’ "The World’s First Collaborative Sentence" of 1994.
Everybody can add to an ongoing sentence, but nobody is allowed end it, to add
a full stop. Tens of thousands of people have contributed to it. The changes
of the piece over the past ten years reflect the changes of the World Wide Web.
Bret Stalbaum designed a program called Floodnet that overloads a site with
calls to load its pages. In an attack in support the Zapatista rebels the Mexican
government’s official site, returned the message "human_rights not found
on this server. (Stallabrass) If a sufficient number of people launched attacks
the action became a virtual march.
Social Needs
versus the Needs of the Art World
Recent art history lists many collaborations including Art & Language, General
Idea, Gilbert & George, Guerilla Girls, Group Material, REPOhistory, PADD,
Art Workers Coalition, Critical Art Ensemble, Rtmark, Temporary Services, Komar
and Melamid, Berna and Hilla Becher, Fischli and Weiss, and Collective Actions
Group. It is often assumed that collaboration is by default valuable, alternative,
and politically progressive. I disagree. Collaborations between artists can
be quite profane. To be relevant and consequential artist collaborations need
to focus on social needs instead of the needs of the art world thus questioning
all of culture. The cooperative vision of groups like Group Material changed
curatorial practice and provided new art activist models. Group Material collectively
saved money for an entire year and then rented a space in New York City, a storefront
gallery. Here the group put on the exhibition "People’s Choice" for
which they asked homeless citizens to bring in objects that they thought were
beautiful. Another significant exhibition was "AIDS Timeline."
Graduating art students frequently form art collectives because of the positive
implications of shared resources such as knowledge in the areas of (art) history,
(cultural and media) theory, literature, and science. The more they know the
broader is the specter of issues that they can address (Critical Art Ensemble).
Cross-disciplinary efforts can be supported because individuals have different
skill capital (from video to programming, performance, and writing).
Free Cooperation in the art context means that the artist stays in control of
her work. Institutions of the art world are not interested in free cooperation,
and are not supportive of them. The model of the artist as 19th century genius
and as exemplary sufferer is alive and prospering. Often an articulate, attractive
individual out of the group is selected and promoted by institutions and (main
stream) media. The logic of the art world and that of technology-based art,
created on and distributed via computers are opposed to each other. The art
world focuses on the romantic idea of the author who creates an auratic art
object that can be distributed by its many institutions. Technology-based art
is variable, often ephemeral, existent in many copies, collaboratively authored
and can often be distributed online.
Weapons of Mass
Instruction
Will open source technologies soon become weapons of mass instruction (Lovink)?
Is this the end of universities as we know them? Many class rooms today accommodate
a circular positioning of the chairs that is a must for class room cooperation.
Students in the US interact with each other and other learners world wide almost
constantly through online communication forums. Teachers may become no more
than (online) linkers to knowledge. Collaborative networked education, might
become a much more serious alternative to the costly and sometimes slow and
disconnected structures of the university. Free software and open source are
still not widely used in academia but that will hopefully change. An example
of stable open source software is "Open Office," which as a community,
aims to create the leading international office suite that will run on all major
platforms and provide access to all functionality. Free text books are put online
at Wikibooks(.org), and many texts can be found at the Gutenberg Project (textz.org).
The project Opentheory(.org) is the application of ideas of Free Software to
the development of texts, theories and forms of thought. Users of the site improve
on each others texts. Wikiversity, a project just recently under way expressed
the goal facilitating e-learning and distance learning via Wikis. Online learning
environments may have better chances to accommodate differences in communication
styles, temperaments, and fundamental beliefs and values than a class room situation.
E-learning software also allows for long distance learning and the sharing of
educational resources such as videos or audio across poor regions.
The ABC of Working
Together
In East Germany I often experienced a commonality of values when working together
with others. Due in part to a a shared opposite- the state, butalso a certain
monoculture of the everyday. We read the same books and listened to the same
Pete Seeger records. Learning from this experience I realized that it builds
trust to start a collaboration testing out the compatibility of values and common
interests first instead of immediately focusing on the goals. Social resources
like trust, mutual RESPECT, tolerance, and shared values make it easier for
people to work and play together. Based on this trust true communication can
take place. Within the shared space of the collaboration, participants must
feel free to experiment. Again, freedom in cooperation means the freedom of
those who think differently from us (Luxemburg).
Collaborators need to get to know each other as people and need to find out
about each other’s agency. This dedication to the other person can be at times
a bit scary and collaboration does not work for everybody. Getting to know each
other always works much better offline, chest to chest rather than online, which
can be very slow. The ABC of collaboration demands that needs are addressed
and the lines of communication are kept open. Each collaborator needs to be
given full authority about their task. Collaborators need to respect the professional
priorities of the other participants.
In "Gleicher als andere" Christoph Spehr argues passionately that
absolutely all our relationships should be based on freedom and equality to
each other and the cooperation. If we can’t negotiate this, we should PUT PRESSURE
on the cooperation. If that does not work we should WITHDRAW our cooperation
or leave altogether. Spehr asks for the RULES of the cooperation to be acknowledged,
as there always are rules. Spehr talks, with Gayatri Spivak of "rules as
always being the old rules." CONFLICT that occurs while renegotiating the
rules builds respect. Conflict is a scary thing in the face of loosing territory
or even a position within the cooperation. Conflict, pull backs, silent times
for reflection all lead to INDEPENDENCE within the cooperation, which makes
us stronger contributors. We need to find save zones for conflicts. Always and
again: NEGOTIATE! Get organized. LOYALTY, Spehr claims, should always be to
people, never to structures. We should be self-reflected and SELF-CONFIDENT,
instead of acting like slaves.
Metaphors for individuation within cooperation include that of life lived singly
and free like a tree, yet brotherly united in a forest (Wader); John Donne’s
"No man is an island, entire of itself…" and Indra’s net of jewels
with each jewel reflecting all others. For all members of the network to shine
in caring interdependence TRUST that the other will do her part needs to be
developed. REPUTATION is another crucial aspect of cooperation.
Over the past years communication tools like video conferencing, live chats,
web cams, instant messaging and the Indymedia software became inexpensive and
readily available, which aids cooperative efforts. Online communication forums
such as Friendster(.net), Fakester, LinkedIn or Tribe(.net) make cooperations
easier and are all based on trust. Friendster, for instance is a web-based application
that allows users to network their friends based on their social profiles.
Nobody Needs
to Have the Say
Let us aim for COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP. Spehr suggests the politics of negotiation,
in which everybody contributes to the cooperation in a way that is useful, realistic
and well suited for the moment. There are always hierarchies in collaborations.
Those who formulate the orientation of the cooperation dominate. Collective
leadership would mean that those leading the way change so that everybody at
one point dominates. This is similar to the changing order in the formation
of bird migrations with alternating birds leading the way to the unlikely example
of Lenin’s never implemented plan to rotate political functionaries on a two
year basis between political office and work in factories.
But how can the cooperation motivate silent group members to take the much needed
initiative? How can we put this into action? In cross-disciplinary artist collectives
individual dominance shifts with the medium used in each project. For a video
project the artist with relevant skills is heading the collective, for a text-based
project, the writer in the group has the lead. Leadership is usually founded
on commitment of time, energy and resources, intellectual contribution or the
contribution of networks. Commonly, the person who puts the most resources and
time into a project has the most say over the project. This dynamic endangers
the cooperation, as it marginalizes other group members. How can we positively
motivate each other to avoid such shortfalls?
Invisible Labor
Does free cooperation have to have a leader? In his poem "A Worker Reads
History"? Bertolt Brecht took on the issue of invisible labor. He writes:
"Young Alexander conquered India." and asks: "He alone?"
"Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?" and
"Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there
no other tears? Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed
with him?" The Renaissance studios of Rubens or Rembrandt produced collaborations
for which a single creator signed therefore making these cultural objects collectable.
Andy Warhol took full credit for the low-paid production in his studio, the
"Factory." Whose labor becomes invisible whilst credit is given to
specific types of labor, particular individuals? Issues of crediting are more
developed in the film world, theatre, dance, architecture and music. Here the
choreographer is listed as such and so is the stage designer.
All Competition
and No Play?
In the "Communist Manifesto" Marx and Engels argue that the free development
of each individual is the condition for the free development of all. This does
not mean that everybody does as they please. It also does not mean that everybody
takes what they think they need. That does not work. But working in a group
is often associated with self-sacrifice, giving up of individual gain. What
about personal gain? Do we lose out to the competition when we share our networks,
knowledge, or skills? Do we lose our edge like an exhausted cowboy in a bad
Western? What is the relationship between cooperation and competition? Teams
such as the mentioned tiger teams define themselves in comparison aiming for
the creation of measurable capital. Without comparison their competitiveness
would be meaningless. Cooperations should take on a playful productive shape
without (or as little as possible) competition. Group efforts need worthy goals-
GOALS that are based on social needs, in opposition to the needs of profit driven
capitalism.
The Toolbox
of Openness
Online spaces are shared and knowledge, and creativity are distributed. Inside
and out of the commercial realm – inexpensive online communication tools become
more tailored towards collaborative development. Participatory cultures became
yet another hot buzzword. Creators invite users to participate, but then patronize
them by limiting their interaction to a few customizable options. Customized
user interaction has little to do with true participation, which leaves it up
to the user what they do. Web-based communication formats such as collaborative
weblogs (blogs) allow for user contribution- mainly in the form of responses
or upload of texts, audio, images or video. Discordia, for example, is a collaborative
weblog about art, techno-cultures and politics. Users log on and vote on submitted
texts, on which they can also comment. Open content initiatives include Wikis,
Open Archive(.org), Open Law, and Open Video. Electronic logging systems known
as Wikis allow real time online editing of existing texts. Wikipedia(.org),
for instance is a multilingual project with the aim to create a complete and
accurate open content encyclopedia. The website Wikipedia states "We started
on January 15, 2001 <with> articles and are already working on 110535
<articles> in the English version." Openlaw is an experiment in crafting
legal arguments in an open forum. On the Openlaw web site it reads: "With
your assistance, we will develop arguments, draft pleadings, and edit briefs
in public, online. Non-lawyers and lawyers alike are invited to join the process
by adding thoughts to the "brainstorm" outlines, drafting and commenting
on drafts in progress, and suggesting reference sources." These open content
formats allow for cooperative creation of content that is free, available and
would often not be made accessible by those in power.
Conclusion
In this text, without going into much detail I attempted to point to some areas
that make cooperation a relevant topic right now. Free Cooperation is valuable
if is has goals that are based on social needs instead of the artificial needs
of profit driven capitalism. Free Cooperation is a useful concept to evaluate,
negotiate and re-negotiate our own relationships. To work together is not inevitably
a positive or politically progressive stance. We can use the given examples
and ideas to continue the debate in the areas in which we see hopeful opportunities.
References:
Conference website "networks, art & collaboration" http://freecooperation.org
"Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII" by John Donne
"Tearing Down The Streets" by Jeff Ferrell
"Internet Art. The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce" by Julian
Stallabrass
"Introducing Social Action and Cooperation" by Raimo Tuomela
"Doing Their Own Thing, Making Art Together" by Holland Cotter, January
19, 2003, New York Times
"The Future of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig
"My First Recession" by Geert Lovink
"The Return of the Political" by Chantal Mouffe
"Caution! Alternative Space!" in "Theories and Documents of Contemporary
Art" ed. by Kristine Stilles and Peter Selz
"Observations on Collective Cultural Action" by Critical Art Ensemble
Wikipedia: http://wikipedia.org
Discordia: http://discordia.us
Wikiversity: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity
Openlaw: (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/)
Resources:
Open Source Software at Oreilly
http://osdir.com/Downloads+index-req-viewdownload-cid-9.phtml
FreeNetworks.org is a voluntary cooperative association dedicated to education,
collaboration, and advocacy of the creation of free digital network infrastructures.
http://freenetworks.org/
The University of Openess
(http://uo.twenteenthcentury.com/)
The uo is a framework in which individuals and organizations can pursue their
shared interest in emerging forms of cultural production and critical reflection
such as unix, education, cartography, physical and collaborative research.
Many 2 many is a group weblog on social software.
http://www.corante.com/many/
Open Archives
http://www.openarchives.org/
The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards
that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The Open Archives
Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives
as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication.
Womenspacework (http://www.wspacework.net/) is an independent, non-profit and
self-organized feminist internet project. It offers a structure to make feminist
theories, practices and projects more visible. It serves as a tool for networking.
It is functioning as a navigation instrument to support feminist activism on
the internet and, in so doing, outside web space as well.
