Longhouse has commissioned artists Sue Challis and Shaheen Ahmed to document their development as an artistic collaboration on the Longhouse website. This commission sets to look at collaborative practice and how two artists from different cultural backgrounds with different practices reach an equal relationship in their collaboration. Sue and Shaheen will record their conversations and ways of working as a collaboration, trying to answer some of the following questions:
• How does this process work?
• What is the process/ method of communication?
• What are the benefits of working collaboratively?
• How does the collaboration benefit your individual practice?
• How do you reach a consensus?
• How is the relationship equal?
• Why did you choose to collaborate?
• What do you want to achieve through the collaboration?
• What are the issues/problems of collaboration?
Documenting this information will provide a useful and interesting case study into collaboration and cross-cultural practice. How do two artists with very different practices and ways of working collaborate effectively together?
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Autopoesis by Sue Challis and Shaheen Ahmed
We first worked together on ‘Impact Plus Art’, a year-long ACWM-funded project Sue coordinated working with women from South Asian and Black Country backgrounds towards a Wolverhampton exhibition. We realised we wanted to work with each other again, overcame our mutual fears of rejection, and looked for suitable community arts projects. We talked about what ‘collaborative art work’ is: is it separate pieces with a joint theme, pieces we have physically made together, individual pieces which come from joint ideas? Eventually, it seemed that, if we wanted to collaborate we’d have to make it happen – we’d have to make collaboration itself our next project. Since, Sue was also finishing a part time MA in Fine Art at BIAD (August 2009), we could collaborate on work towards that show. Over six months we filmed ourselves in conversation – in Shaheens’ dining room, Sue’s studio/shed, a cafe in Bishops Castle, with and without children around. We became very frank and probably a little intense, about art and politics, gender and religion. Shaheen is a devout Muslim and Sue a devout atheist. Sue is an irredeemable southerner and Shaheen an unrepentant northerner. Shaheen is primarily a graphic artist, basing her work on non-representational pattern, and Sue mainly makes videos which show people. Sue is ambivalently single with a grown-up son and Shaheen is happily married with school-aged children. Our differences seem in some ways to strengthen our relationship; we decided our starting point was not to try to change one another, take our friendship for what it is, and see if such different people could make a working collaborative partnership.
The biggest barrier to making work seems to be the usual one of lack of time – and lack of money to free up time. This is partly to do with women’s lives and careers, partly to do with being self employed, ill-health, and partly to do perhaps with self denial about something which seems like indulgence. Why try to collaborate, when it is sometimes harder ? We both work separately as well & with other people. But we both think that it is important to get to know each other across apparent cultural divides – divides often exaggerated by politicians and racists.
We became interested in the idea of autopoesis, overlaps, interdependence which might change but not compromise identity – and looked for things we had in common. For the MA show 2009 we developed a theme around cultural phenomena which link and loop together, which exist alongside each other, which interact, and help form each other whilst preserving their identities. An Arabic text became an English folksong which became a painting based on Arabic text … The work was only partially successful: it still felt like ‘work in progress’ and a record of a process. Yet one of the films – Ahmed’s Bricks – worked as a finished piece; that is, a work produced by Sue but in response to our joint discussions.Currently, we are posting a shared sketchbook between us two and a third artist in Ireland, Mandy Mullowney. Often the work in that little book clearly is in response to each other’s entries – we have to work on not feeling exposed, but it’s always fab getting it in the post! Now we are planning a 3-D work (using paper sculpture) which will have been physically worked on by both of us – it’s also outside both our usual skill areas but part of our discussions about ideas, morality & religion.
In collaborative community arts work – eg planning and running joint workshops or public arts events, we believe that feelings around the differential value placed on different skills (eg ’leading’/managing vs creative or technical skills) are often unacknowledged; partnerships can sometimes be skewed by undiscussed lack of confidence or exaggerated respect. We have talked to women artists who have felt put down by male collaborators, especially around technical competence, and where essential social skills are undervalued.
If this writing seems to blur ideas around making art and doing community projects, that’s because, like many people, we’re trying to do both in order to make a living. The vast majority of human activities require collaboration, and where roles are clearly or traditionally defined this seems to be a smooth process. But our experience of making art is that it feels like a new process every time, so you have to keep working out new ways of relating to each other. And while we keep on muddling along, we’d like to hear anyone else’s ideas on this.
Shaheen & Sue
