Collaboration— All together now? A special section of Print Guest edited and designed by Project Projects

title typography: LL Brown bold by aurèle Sack section photography: henrik knudsen Roundtable photography: josh melnick

Project Projects is After a discussion about this special section a design studio in New York focusing on print, on collaboration for Print, we were left at odds on exhibition, and interactive how best to begin. While our day-to-day is spent work, with an emphasis on independently pro- working together on a wide variety of tasks at our duced curatorial and pub- studio practice, it’s something else altogether lishing projects. The studio was founded in 2004 to step back to talk about working, or talk about by Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels; talking, or talk about talking about working. We Rob Giampietro joined considered a few focused directions. One approach as a principal in 2010. could be definitional: Wikipedia’s evolving multi- Recent projects authored page on the subject indicates, as of a visit include catalogs for the Whitney Museum of on 11/29/2010, that collaboration is “a recursive American Art and the process when two or more people or organizations Guggenheim Museum, identity programs for work together to realize shared goals.” Another the Museo Tamayo in approach could be topical/pop-cultural: On Mexico City and a new cultural institution the eve of the opening of the largest and, at $65 in Istanbul, websites with Bernard Tschumi million, most costly musical in history, Spider- Architects and Tablet Man: Turn Off the Dark, director Julie Taymor Magazine, editing and design for the Inventory mused on 60 Minutes, “If you don’t have fear, Books series, as well then you’re not taking a chance. What I do have as the design of exhibi- tions at the Canadian is a team. If your collaborators are there and they Centre for Architecture and BOZAR Brussels. all are as impassioned as you are and believe in it, then your fear is mitigated.” A third approach might be interrogative, starting with our own questions: What do we really mean when we speak of collaboration? Can we identify different modes and types of collaboration? What examples of collaborations are instructive to analyze? When does collaboration work, and when does it fail? It was difficult to agree on restricting ourselves to just one of these modes. Instead, as is often the case in collaborative environments, On one evening in October 2010, we agreed to disagree. To adopt a more dismissive 13 people from different disciplines mood: “The celebration of collaboration as a came together at Artists Space in New York City to discuss “collaboration” technique or as a practice just generally strikes and its relationship to their respec- me as pointless.” This quotation belongs not to us tive practices. What ensued over but to artist David Levine, who offered it by way the next two hours was a sprawling conversation that touched upon the of introduction at a roundtable discussion practical, professional, theoretical, organized by Project Projects and Print in October and personal aspects of the topic. 2010. (The transcript of this roundtable runs This edited transcript, continued from the cover, attempts to capture both the content of that discussion as Introduction 33 well as the lively engagement of its participants. continuously in red throughout this section.) Participants of the In our own professional circle, designers Project Projects and At the start of this 48-page consideration of Print roundtable before euphemistically call both clients and employees collaboration—with contributions from a diverse the discussion at collaborators to underplay hierarchical distinc- Artists space, New York, set of artists, designers, architects, photographers, october 2010. the tions. And beyond the workplace and labor typographers, printers, curators, editors, and roundtable included practices, there are many examples—especially Alec Hanley Bemis, writers who explore collaboration both past and rob Giampietro, Angie from political history—that demonstrate the Keefer, Aaron Kenedi, present—we agreed it was worth injecting a Prem Krishnamurthy, implications of collaboration to be cautionary, healthy dose of skepticism into the conversation. carin Kuoni, David if not sinister: Designer Daniel van der Velden Levine, Lin+ Lam, tina We wondered: Why is collaboration Lutz, Michael rock, asked, “What about the Coalition of the Willing, considered by so many to be inherently good Alice twemlow, and the people who wanted to invade Iraq? Is that Daniel van der Velden. or interesting? Projects in worlds of business, For a complete list of collaboration?” Many decades earlier, Vichy issue contributors and technology, fashion, art, and design are routinely biographies, see page 80. France’s “collaboration” with Nazi Germany was labeled as collaborative to make them more a dangerously unequal partnership masquerading appealing. This past November, New York taste- as an equal one. Mark Lamster addresses this very makers Opening Ceremony released a Tron- subject in a Print magazine review from 2009 on themed “collaboration”—the company’s second Nicholas Fox Weber’s biography of Le Corbusier: foray into a fictional world after its collaboration “Somehow, Weber resists what must have been with Warner Brothers’ Where the Wild Things Are a considerable moralizing impulse, even when debuted last year. This collection features pieces the hero of his story willingly aligns himself with that employ “high-tech aesthetics, neon, and the Nazi’s puppet regime in Vichy.” Lamster then laser cutting” along with a signature revival: quotes Weber, who writes, “Le Corbusier believed a threeASFOUR � Tron � Opening Ceremony circle that collaboration could lead to good things.” bag. Here is a fashion collective (threeASFOUR) Indeed, our perspective is considerably collaborating with a second group (Opening more fragmented than that of Le Corbusier. Ceremony) on a revival (threeASFOUR’s circle Collaboration could lead to good things, though bag) for a collection inspired by the fictional uni- it could also lead to countless other, possibly verse of a film remake (Tron). Round and round less beneficial, outcomes. Our hope is that the we go, with each partnership in this collaboration characters and contents collected in this issue connected by an “�”—a symbolic force multiplier will provide a rich basis for further consideration. that suggests to the buyer that many makers Carin Kuoni, director of the Vera List Center for are surely better than just one. Maybe it’s true. Art and Politics, noted during our roundtable that, As Eagles frontman Don Henley has observed, whatever its ends may be, “a commitment to this “Mick Jagger can’t even make a successful solo shared space, this shared time—that is very, very album, but the Stones are the biggest rock group valuable.” We look forward to sharing time and that ever was.” space in these pages with you. What’s so special, so extraordinary about —Project Projects collaboration? On the one hand, roundtable PReM K RiSHNAMuRTHY: i thought TiNA L u Tz: i started a fashion that we could start with introductions company with my partner called Lutz & participant Angie Keefer notes that “it’s difficult and any thoughts on how collaboration Patmos ten years ago. We started it out for me to talk about ‘collaboration’ because I relates to each of your practices. of my six-floor walk-up apartment with can’t think of anything that’s truly possible to do i’m one of the principals of Project a little savings, and today, we’re sold Projects, and collaboration is in over 200 stores in the world. as an individual.” Perhaps there’s actually nothing of particular interest to me because Given our limited budget, i was inherently special about collaboration—in the the practice of design seems to be in charge of marketing. One of my ideas context of a mutually dependent society, every entirely about the negotiation and to enhance the profile of the brand discussion of individual desires. was to invite a guest designer every action is the product of an unfathomable collection season to design their dream garment. of collaborative forces. We could consider any ROb Gi AMPieTRO: i’m also a principal At the beginning, i invited mostly activity, even “dinner,” a collaboration. But would at Project Projects, and i’ve been celebrities, Hollywood actresses, but a writer and teacher for more than i also included people like Richard that be useful, productive, or interesting? eight years. Design is inherently Meier and Desmond Tutu, and one unknown We certainly were interested in an email collaborative, as is teaching: lately person, a train conductor. These we received from designer Michael Rock i feel that i learn almost as much from collaborations created a lot of press my students as i’m able to impart to and interest in the company. following the roundtable discussion that attempted them. So my role is both to facilitate We also collaborated with big, to sum up the three types of collaboration we and to guide. established companies who could help described. According to Rock, they are: “Prosthetic: us finance our growth, who wanted DANieL V AN D e R V e LDeN: i’m co-founder the cachet of working with a small, partnering to fill a lack (as in a writer and art of a design studio in Amsterdam called cool fashion brand to enhance their director team in an agency); Systematic: partner- Metahaven and a critic at the Yale reputation and help our bank account. ing to tackle extremely complex problems (as School of Art. We thought a little bit about the theme of tonight’s panel — ANGie K e e f e R: i do a number of in architecture and film); and Distributive: everyone’s confronted with the idea activities, almost exclusively in partnering, often asynchronously, to take advan- of collaboration, and they practice it collaboration with others. i’ve tage of global distribution (as in outsourcing).” all the time, so it’s something that’s never thought of “collaboration” as omnipresent. but we’re also interested a separate topic, per se, until i in the idea of “coordination” as a set was invited to come here, because 34 Print 65.1, February 2011 of agreements or standards or focal it’s so much a part of what i do that Introduction 35 points that you establish before you it doesn’t occur to me to not to can actually collaborate. collaborate. Whether Fluxus or flax, language or legumes, artist Alison Knowles has spent a lifetime working in dialogue. A Menu

of text: prudence peiffer Chance title typography: simplon mono regular by Emmanuel Rey Photography: Henrik Knudsen

Alison Knowles has used collaboration to demystify art since the 1960s. Whether working with preeminent artists, poets, and musicians (including Nam June Paik, Emmett Williams, and John Cage) or an anonymous audience, Knowles builds art from deceptively simple activities that anyone can do and from ingredients that anyone can find. These include describing footwear (“Shoes of Your Choice,” 1962), eating the same tuna fish sandwich at the same time each day (“The Identical Lunch,” first performed in 1968 and most recently this January at MoMA’s cafe), or discovering an object in the street and passing it on (“Giveaway Construction,” circa 1963). Her most famous event score from 1962 prescribes making a salad. Yet some of Knowles’s most innovative collaborations as a founding member of the experi­ mental avant-garde group Fluxus presciently engaged technology, too; she used a computer as early as 1967 in “House of Dust,” a digital poem of scrolling chance permutations printed as quatrains that she produced with the composer James Tenney and IBM’s Formula Translator (FORTRAN). For Knowles, art becomes a menu of chances that happen, or are taken. She starts with fundamental actions like dressing, walking, reading, and eating. Often at least two are refer­ Above and next page, left: the surfaces to produce Knowles in her studio, sculptural “pages” that enced unexpectedly in a single piece, as when C ar i n K u on i: I’m the director of the informally in people’s homes, sometimes 2010, pictured with new conjure abstract can- Knowles baked paper in loaf pans for a sculpture, Vera List Center for Art and Politics having painful discussions about what works that add string vasses, Grecian robes, and at The New School; I have also collabo- projects to do next. and azuki beans to pulp, Chinese scrolls. Photos by which warps and welds Henrik Knudsen. or in her seminal 1967 installation “The Big rated with and was the co-founder of a At The New School, which houses Book,” which imagined a Borgesian book- group of artists called REPOhistory. the Vera List Center, I collaborate as-home that one walked and climbed through, We began after seeing a lecture orga- with faculty across different divisions nized by Group Material; about 10 or 20 of the university — fashion, political of us came together around our desire science, anthropology, and others. 36 Print 65.1, February 2011 to repossess history and organize pub- The most productive collaborations come A Menu of Chance 37 lic events in public spaces. We did out of a common shared interest in this for about 8 or 10 years, connecting the public. Collaboration—All together now? slept, and cooked in. Found texts, graphics, logos, onomatopoeic letters, and international headlines turn into artist’s books, screenprints, and wearable sculpture. She coaxes endless effects out of ordinary stuff: along with the book, and thereby paper, one of her favorite materials throughout five decades of art-making has remained the bean. What John Cage was to fungi knowledge she is now to legumes. They appear in Knowles’s oeuvre as instruments of sound encased in paper, as haptic color and pattern, and as organic microchips of history. Beans are cheap, universal, multiple, and diverse; they mirror Knowles’s approach to art as an ordinary, democratic tool that feeds and surprises us. (Knowles says she tries to eat beans at least once a week in gratitude for all that they have given her.) Knowles does not so much use as encourage materials—be they beans, flax, muslin, onion, newspaper, string, text, or found “street pickings”—to find their own inner voice. This introduces a suggestive verb: “to sound” a piece is to experience it, to amplify the collaboration at work. From late January through March 2009 during the Guggenheim exhibition The Third Above, top: Photograph Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, of “Identical Lunch,” first performed in 1967. 1860–1989, Knowles performed every week with Bottom: Alison Knowles, Journal of the Identical her “Giant Beanturner,” a sound sculpture of Lunch, Nova Broadcast hundreds of beans encased in a stiff paper pod Press, san Francisco, california (1971). delivering an impressive acoustic rush as it is tilted. courtesy of the artist. Walking through the exhibition, she sounded the beanturner like a breaking wave spiraling down the rotunda past viewers and other art. Once, a corner of the paper broke open and Knowles trailed a wake of beans. People collected them to give DAViD L e ViNe: i’m an artist. i began back, walking with her and listening the entire in theater, where i was a director. way—this too, became part of the performance. One reason that i am now an artist and have moved away from theater, is A year later, I saw Knowles perform “Loose Pages” because theater exalts this ideal of (1983) at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced collaboration — which in my general Study, carefully dressing her collaborator (in experience leads to something pretty nasty. So i left because i actually this performance, her daughter, also an artist) in don’t like collaboration, really. clothing segments made from abaca, flax, and The celebration of collaboration as cotton paper, until she stood wholly covered. Then a technique or as a practice just generally strikes me as pointless. Above, top: Installation Knowles gently guided this “book with a human view and detail of Knowles’s seminal work being in it” through the room, the paper shuffling, MiCHAeL R OCK: i’m a principal of “the Big Book” (1967), crinkling, and sighing softly. the design studio 2x4 in New York. i which imagined the book think in the course of this discussion as a home that could Through scores and sculptures, one person we should determine what exactly be inhabited, slept, and or 100 help realize a piece. “I think of myself and cooked in. Installation “collaboration” is, because the view courtesy of the art- the audience as one thing, and we’re addressing definition has become so broad that ist. Bottom: Detail view any activity involving two people is courtesy of the artist and the work that we’re trying to do as another thing,” called “collaborative.” When i think Peter Moore. Knowles explains. She makes things in order to about the things i do, some of them are collaborate: “I don’t make them in order to exhibit highly collaborative, and some are not collaborative at all; i move in and them and go back to the studio and work. I make out of these different relationships. them so that people can use them like a tool.” i would say writing is an intensely Through her involvement with Fluxus along with personal activity that involves almost no collaboration. in other cases, you her late husband, Dick Higgins (who also founded abandon any self and become part of the influential Something Else Press which this bigger team. “Collaboration” does published many Fluxus multiples), Knowles’s not have a steady definition.i t’s something that you move in and out of 38 Print 65.1, February 2011 and define constantly across your day — A Menu of Chance 39 even in terms of how much you’re open or closed to it. work has always been “intermedia” (Higgins’ term) Collaboration—All together now? and interdependent. A crucial early mentor and collaborator for the group was John Cage, who helped Knowles determine that she didn’t have to be a painter in a city saturated with abstract expressionism. Instead, through an exchange with material and audience, Knowles’s work disarms standard categories, as if it is itself passing through the computational possibilities of “House of Dust.” In Notations, her 1968 editorial collaboration with Cage, the two invited composers to submit a score and complete a questionnaire for publication. The resulting archive of musical notations was assembled according to “I-Ching chance operations,” as Cage explained in its introduction, which determined the words, layout, and even typography in order to break down divisions between text and illustration on the page. This ceding of art’s preciousness is underscored by Knowles’s delight that someone once went to the trouble of stealing a page from an exhibited work, “The Finger Book”—“I love that!” she says. “I just would love to interview that man.” She insists that an artist not control every aspect of a piece. “They can’t tell you that rain means it’s bad weather and you should stay inside. Or tell you that the performance is not solely dependent on the quality of the tuna fish.” Most recently, working with several paper­ makers, Knowles added string and azuki beans to pulp at different stages, which then warps and welds the surface as it dries, producing large sculptural “pages” that conjure abstract canvases, Right: Knowles gathers Grecian robes, Chinese scrolls. Last fall, when materials and inspiration on a collecting trip to contemplating one of these pieces, “Cave Wall,” Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn, which hangs in her New York City home, Knowles 2010. Photos by Henrik Knudsen. seemed a little worried about its relative stillness, even when accompanied by the “cave dwellers,” found sculptural objects mounted in paper casings that include eucalyptus leaf wings and a baseball. Perhaps when exhibited this spring, she mused, “Cave Wall” could be taken down and sounded. Above, top: Page from Above, bottom: Knowles Opposite, left: Photo “House of Dust” (1967), shaving the head of her of the event score, “Make Collaboration is never done, only dormant; when described as quite possibly husband, Dick Higgins, A Salad,” performed in asked how she feels about an object like “Giant the “first computerized as part of his piece, 1962 (top) and at the poem,” which Knowles “Hat, Rags, Paper, Heave, Baltimore Museum of Art’s A lice T w e mlow: I have three relation­ Beanturner” when it is not in use, Knowles produced with composer Shave” (1961). Original “Work Ethic” exhibition ships to collaboration. Being a writer immediately answered, “The same way that I feel James Tenney following image featured in Harry (2004). Top photo by Bruce is a lonely position; however, when I his seminar on computers Ruhé’s Fluxus, the Most Fleming, courtesy of the about someone sleeping.” in the arts, which was held Radical and Experimental Gilbert and Lila Silverman write about design, one thread in my at her home with husband Art Movement of the Fluxus Collection, Detroit. work has been looking at collaborations Dick Higgins. Courtesy of Sixties, Amsterdam, Bottom photo by Harry between designers and users of design. the artist. (1979). Courtesy of the Stevens, courtesy of As a student, I’m a Ph.D. candidate in artist. Paradox Photography. design history at the Royal College of Art in London and I’m looking at the history of design criticism. In this role, I’m interested in the response to design criticism, if there is any at all, and the place where the critic and the designer meet intellectually. As an educator and the head of SVA’s Design Criticism program, I deal with designing curricula. Design criticism creates a dialogue with other genres and modes of criticism. I’m not sure 40 Print 65.1, February 2011 if the relationship is parasitical or A Menu of Chance 41 collaborative, but it’s certainly quite interesting. Athletics is a Brooklyn design studio that’s putting a new twist on an old business model. Five Man

Band text: isaac gertman title typography: baro heavy by chester jenkins & jeremy mickel Photography: Henrik Knudsen

“We’re all grown-ups here,” says Matt Owens, partner of the Brooklyn-based design collective Athletics. In contrast to a young design group that might form out of relative inexperience, the five partners, Matt Owens, Jason Gnewikow, James Ellis, Wes Duvall, and David Ahuja came together in 2004 with a wealth of experience and trust that evolved over years of working together and hiring one another for projects of different scales. Forming a creative collective was a way for them to pursue greater professional opportunities. Together they have the shared infra­- structure of a mid-sized studio, pooling their individual specialties into a collective skill set that includes motion graphics, branding, web development, video direction, custom typography, print design, and illustration, while at the same time allowing them the flexibility to maintain their individual professional practices. Defining the balance between the two depends on the individual partner. The flat hierarchy of their business model is The design collective, the core component of the collective. “For lack Athletics, including Samuel Rhodes, Jason A l e c H anl e y B e m is: In 2001, I started am today. I still own the label of a better term, what we have in place is a kind Gnewikow, David Ceraso, a label called Brassland with a couple but I also manage bands like Dirty of bastard Pentagram model,” says Gnewikow. Matt Owens, David Ahuja, members of a band, The National, and Projectors and !!!, also known as James Ellis, Wes Duvall, Each partner is responsible for securing work and on the rooftop of their we were all doing it half-heartedly. Chk-Chk-Chk. As the artists I’ve studio in Brooklyn, 2010. I was working primarily as an art and worked with have become more popular, managing their own finances and accounting. Photo by Henrik Knudsen. music critic for The New York Times, I’ve seen what happens when an When a project is brought into the studio, it is the LA Times, LA Weekly, and a bunch of artist’s personality begins to over­ other papers. Actually, my first job take the collaboration. Music is an 42 Print 65.1, February 2011 in New York was producing websites at a inherently collaborative thing and Five Man Band 43 design firm.I n 2005, I veered towards people have to deal with each other — working only in music and that’s where I they have no choice. Collaboration—All together now?

discussed among the partners, and a team is Above, left to right: L ana Li n: I’m the other half of Lin + Above, left to right: or you can hire a studio like ours that doesn’t formed based on interest and availability. The Canvas for AOL’s artist Lam. As an individual, I’m an artist, A series of promotional have as much machinery, but can see how the series. Designer: Jason a filmmaker, a teacher, and a student. spots for Nick at Nite partners involved draft a proposal together. Gnewikow. Brooklyn highlighting differ- parts of a project should exist across different Hardcore T-shirt, Jason My work is and has been informed by ent figures in African- Budgets are allocated, and in a sense, they “hire” Nevikov Apparel. Designer: the filmmaking process, which, as Alec American history. Design media,” he says. “In the end, it’s all about people one another. A single partner is established as Jason Gnewikow. said about music, is something people and art direction: Wes and knowledge. We’ve gathered minds with a Cover of Oakazine, claim is inherently collaborative. Duvall, David Ahuja, and the project lead; this person becomes responsible the seasonal in-house But I always felt like with filmmaking Matt Owens for Athletics. broad range of expertise, from traditional graphic magazine for Oak “The Three-Trillion-Dollar for managing the project and being the point of clothing store. Designer: I took the role of “leader” or “direc- War,” an infographic design and illustration to web and broadcast, and contact with the client. Jason Gnewikow. Photo tor,” so I don’t really regard those for Good magazine. we’re interested in the ways these interrelate.” illustration for The Wall situations as collaborative — that’s Designer: Matt Owens. Beyond the financials, part of what defines Street Journal. Art direc- the part of “collaboration” that I’m The “Zero Zero” cover of For example, Duvall’s illustration work, which is Athletics’ collaboration is the members’ past tor: Forest Evashevski; skeptical of. New York commemorat- largely editorial, served as the springboard for a designer: Wes Duvall. ing the end of the decade involvement in the punk rock scene in one capacity Illustrations for Mark but on the other side, I think from 2000-09. Designer: series of promo spots for Nick at Nite that Owens Halperin’s weekly column Lan Thao described what I value in the Matt Owens. One of six or another, whether playing in a band or running in Time. Art director: collaborative process — the productive skateboards created for and Ahuja designed and animated. Similarly, an a record label. The partners approach working Ryan Moore; designer: antagonism that has challenged me and Zoo York’s artist series. The information-graphics spread for Good magazine, Wes Duvall. pushed me further as an artist and boards encompass New together as equals, with a certain cooperative York’s “Urbane Jungle.” “The Hidden Cost of War,” also existed as a motion- thinker for the last 10 years. Lan Thao humbleness that makes parsing out who-did- Designers: Matt Owens, graphics piece online that has fed back into brought up the subject of community Mark Owens. what in each project irrelevant. As duties are split and I was also thinking of Roberto subsequent motion and graphic work for other up and hierarchies emerge in a project, it is not Esposito’s book, Communitas, in which clients. “That mix is what we’re after,” Owens says, he defines community as a void, a kind unusual for one partner to direct another. “Our L an T hao L am: I’m part of Lin + of debt to the other. So rather than adding, “There’s a lot to be said for sticking around model demands a certain level of maturity and Lam, a 10-year collaboration. My a utopian idea, a community can be an and doing good work.” professionalism,” Owens says. “Through the course first experience with collaboration antagonistic debt to the volatility of Their approach evidently appeals to clients, was actually on a refugee island in yourself and the people with whom you of any project we favor the collective goals over Malaysia, where I witnessed Vietnamese collaborate. and, Ellis says, often attracts repeat business. In personal ego, no matter how mundane the task.” refugees escaping from the war. In 2009, Athletics collaborated with Lewis D’Vorkin “We’re all beholden to each other, and you have to the aftermath of the war, after 1975, Rob: So to follow up on the idea and Andrea Spiegel at True/Slant, a start-up they had to create a new community from of community as opposed to put out what you need back,” adds Gnewikow. scratch. They had to use resources on collaboration, I’m wondering if the website that established a blogging platform “It’s like being in a band,” quips Owens. “The the island and materials brought to word has an intrinsic upper bound for “entrepreneurial journalists.” Ellis was the music and the album are what really matters. Your them by UNICEF. My family stayed in a in terms of the number of people who central partner in the project and developed the little shack in the camp and my father can collaborate — how many people is individual part is important, but everyone has to be would help with translation. a collaboration and when does it become user interface. Owens worked on naming and a good player.” As an artist, I have been very something else? branding with Gnewikow, and all contributed to Owens believes that Athletics’ small size, skeptical of collaboration. Sometimes, the overall design of the site. Athletics worked with certain projects, the question Daniel: There’s a great economist named diverse capabilities, and ability to collaborate— becomes who will take on the work, who Thomas Schelling who wrote a piece about with the True/Slant team so closely, Ellis says, with one another and with clients—gives them will lead — and it becomes such a group how people coordinate together. His “We arrived at a shared vision for the product an advantage. “You can hire a large company, effort that individuality gets lost. research shows that if you arrange a with the True/Slant team and developed a good So for [Lana] Lin and I to come together meeting in New York, and you don’t have requires collaboration — we really a time or place, you’re most likely to 44 Print 65.1, February 2011 insist on it. It is an additive and meet inside Grand Central, on the Main Five Man Band 45 subtractive process. A lot of editing, a Concourse at 12 noon. He called such a lot of back and forth, a lot of ruptures. thing a focal point. Collaboration—All together now?

rhythm. We made decisions quickly, and as a Above, left to right: Cover Above, left to right: these are not always easy, but because we have of Forbes. Design and art Stills from two of four result we managed to launch a successful product direction: Jason Gnewikow short films commis- that level of dialogue established, it works.” in roughly seven months.” When True/Slant was and Matt Owens for sioned by Sesame Street “Our model has allowed us to grow and Athletics. Redesign of to broadcast during its acquired by Forbes Media in May 2010, D’Vorkin Forbes 400. UI, design, 39th season. Design and work in a way that’s unusual—to keep combining accepted the role of chief product officer and and development: animation: David Ahuja; and separating to tackle different projects in Athletics; project lead: Carin: In a high-power academic additional 3-D model- the task of overhauling Forbes’ print and online James Ellis. Screenshot environment, it can be very productive ing and animation: parallel,” says Ellis. For the partners, the continued from trueslant.com. Matt Semel, Nayoun products. He once again called on Athletics for the Naming, UI, design, and to have never met your collaborator, to K. Charoenchai, The appeal of their collaboration is the shared redesign of the Forbes 400, Forbes’ annual list of development: Athletics; be from very different backgrounds. It Napoleon Group Screen­ control they have over their destiny, and, Ellis says, project lead: James Ellis; gives you a certain license to take shot from Actual Objects, the wealthiest Americans. “Over a 12-week timeline naming/brand develop- liberties that you wouldn’t take if a web startup offering the fact that they are able to keep learning new we redesigned the magazine, using the 400 issue ment: Jason Gnewikow, you were working with people from your high-production-value things together. “As I’ve gotten older, I’m more and Matt Owens. design assets. Concept, as a new aesthetic starting point. At the same time, own area of expertise. We’ve done it design, and develop- more interested in projects I’ve never done before, a few times at The New School and it’s ment: James Ellis and we were rapidly redesigning Forbes’ online list been rather liberating for many of the Matt Owens for Athletics. where I’m learning something in the process. product for the launch of the 400.” Ellis continues, David: A social network is not, participants. It’s allowed them to Commercial for Super Over the last seven years, my day to day has per se, a collaboration, at least not go much further than they would have Street Fighter IV. Art “They needed to move very quickly and didn’t have direction and design: Matt changed dramatically as our studio has evolved.” in the non-political sense or the gone if they had worked with a group of time to start from scratch with a new team. With Owens and David Ahuja; Beyond the studio, all of the partners are cultural production sense. It’s people they knew. editing/animation: David us they could hit the ground running. The existing not task-oriented, like when you Ahuja for Athletics; client: involved in outside projects: Gnewikow operates relationship is what made us the right fit. That’s collaborate on a project or a nation Daniel: Yes, if you collaborate with Ammirati/Capcom. a clothing line called Jason Nevikov, Duvall pursues collaborates with an invading power. 20 of your best friends, that also how we landed the job.” isn’t guaranteed to produce something art projects through his Colorwheel studio, Ahuja Adapting their collaborative working Daniel: Well, let’s say a group very interesting because it’s missing records electronic music under the name Jacob 2-2, model from the True/Slant launch, Athletics collaborates mainly through a social the antagonistic element. and Ellis and Owens operate actualobjects.com, a network — you have “weak ties” and was able to immediately take on conceptual and your collaborative structure doesn’t Alec: Using the word “antagonism” is design-asset licensing company. design-related aspects of the Forbes project: resemble a studio, an office, or a home interesting because most music scenes While there are no plans to grow bigger, They were involved in discussions ranging from — it’s something else. In our practice, are formed by people who want to rise to the next step for Athletics is seeing how they can we sometimes receive invitations to the top and beat out other people. Dave advertising models to branding and design, participate in projects that involve Hickey said that a 20th century movement expand their model and explore the creative oppor- editorial strategies, content recommendations, a whole social network of artists. For involves people gathering in a bar and tunities that come from larger-scale collaborations. photo illustrations, and information graphics. example, a curator invites a group forming a “scene,” which metastasizes “We’re interested in pushing ourselves further,” of highly interesting people whom a movement and becomes art history. I They developed an aesthetic voice and syntax you vaguely know to collaborate on a think in many disciplines, that’s the says Owens. “And always looking to leverage our that Forbes could own—a sort of “Fantastic Man project. And you think: Okay, these way things work. You build your own model in new and interesting ways.” meets 1960s Esquire,” says Owens, “timeless people are so interesting, we’ll have context, line by line. If you don’t to do it. You don’t even know the build your own context, it’s going to and conservative”—that would allow the pages of curator, but you say yes. Later, you be very hard to make something last. the magazine to complement the living organism find out there are really two curators, There’s too much media, too many things that the website would become. “Projects like they don’t know each other, and they’ve vying for attention these days. I will never actually discussed the project. never work with a musician who does So, I hear you when you say you don’t not come from a larger community, and 46 Print 65.1, February 2011 like collaboration — though as a hopefully I’m picking out those that Five Man Band 47 corollary, I think you need to treat are doing better than a lot of other your weak ties well. artists in their community. Art collective Group Material’s seminal work from the 1980s and 1990s continues to challenge the relationship between art, politics, and design. Collective

Collections text: sarah hromack title typography: platform bold by Berton Hasebe

More than 30 years have passed since the fall of 1979, when the newly formed Group Material first convened on Manhattan’s Lower East Side as a collective of young artists, designers, educators, and writers; some were recent graduates of the School of Visual Arts, classmates and friends of friends joined by the same socio-academic ties that still bind New York City’s downtown art scene. Eleven members strong at its founding, Group Material experienced a series of compositional shifts over the next 15-odd years: Its changing cast featured Julie Ault, Tim Rollins, Felix Gonzalez- Torres, and Doug Ashford, among many others, all practitioners whose work lent a strong sense of individuality to their collaborative efforts. Group Material was not a faceless entity, after all. It was a cross-disciplinary force whose forays into art, politics, exhibition-making, and museum culture remain highly influential. Setting up shop in a storefront space on East 13th Street in Manhattan (the cost of which was split equally at $45 per month, per member), Group Material’s distinctly Marxist political leanings were manifested in projects that func- Left: Group Material members, 1980. Photo tioned as evidence-based social commentaries. by Donna Cortese. Above: View of “Democracy: Money was tight, but the sense of urgency was Education,” Dia Art palpable, and so the group did what it could with Foundation, New York, 1988, which was, as Doug what it had. Highly self-aware of its relationship Ashford writes, “a quartet to the still-developing Lower East Side, Group of practices: private meet- ings, exhibitions, public Material remained mindful of its neighbors while assemblies, and then a book collecting together developing Inaugural Exhibition. “[Our] first show records of our organiza- will determine our initial outreach, make clear tional events with a series Aaron: But collaboration is not just in art or cultural production, of texts that informed who we see as our audience, and to what kind of people having dinner or a drink, is it? there’s an economic imperative them.” Courtesy Group public we are committed,” claim notes on the proj- I think of it as being about a task. to operate as if you’re an individual Material; Four Corners Books. ect from August 1980, excerpted in Show and Tell: because the evaluation of the product Angie: Is it, really? Perhaps that’s is based on an identity. Whereas in why it’s difficult for me to talk about a commercial environment, the opposite 48 Print 65.1, February 2011 “collaboration” because I can’t think of is true. Products are not tied to Collective Collections 49 anything that’s truly possible to do as individual producers — they’re always an individual. produced by teams of people. A Chronicle of Group Material, a visual and textual account of the group’s earliest days, edited by Ault and published last Spring by Four Corners Books. In “Budgets,” a particularly sharp piece from the exhibit, graphic designer Liliana Dones posted on the gallery walls ten pieces of paper enumerating the personal budgets of her fellow members—a humorous, yet pointed gesture. Within a year, the space had been abandoned for a more itinerant practice that engaged various sites throughout the city and beyond. Printed ephemera played various roles in Group Material’s history. In order to meet the guidelines for incorporation in New York State, an act that would enable the group to apply for sorely needed government funding, its members were forced to prove their collective existence by creat- ing and preserving a paper trail of procedures, proposals, budgets, and other bureaucratic minu- tiae. Maintaining such rigid organizational bound- aries, if only in writing, seemed counter-intuitive to their shared commitment to open structures and dispersed labor within the group. Yet, in doing so, they formed an uncommonly precise record of their earliest forays—a set of documents that has become indispensable to those seeking to re- construct that history and understand the group’s internal dynamics. A very specific visual language emerged from this obsessive documentation, part of a larger Daniel: So why isn’t collaboration graphic sensibility that formed the public face simply working together? The word seems to claim to be adding a social of Group Material. As a cohort of conscientious and political valence to something Opposite: Handout the announcement card for Facere/Fascis (May 2 distributed during “The young people committed to engaging with their that’s already happening. Inaugural Exhibition,” through June 4, 1981) resulted in Hannah Alderfer, marginalized neighborhood, Group Material meant on October 4, 1980, at who usually designed most of the group’s printed Michael: That’s because it talks Group Material’s space at serious business. By appropriating the look, feel, about the elimination of hierarchy. 244 East 13th Street that ephemera, refusing to work on the project alto- and even material means of the very bureaucratic When you talk about collaboration, outlined their program gether. Dones stepped in, rendering the image for the first year. Above: apparatuses they grappled with, the group forged you assume there’s an equal exchange Da Zi Baos, Union Square, into a mock magazine cover by spinning the of ideas. You can “collaborate” with New York, 1982. Photo by a graphic identity now readily associated with your boss, but in a way you’re still Andres Serrano. Courtesy show’s themes—fashion, class, Fascist discourse— socially and politically engaged art practices. Some working for him. So I think there’s a Group Material; Four into media-friendly headlines emblazoned across a Corners Books. of this couldn’t be helped: The manual typewriter utopian quality to the word. searing red background.

used to record minutes during the group’s first Prem: On one hand, when a graphic Soon enough, Group Material began meetings lent a particular sense of gravity to the designer works with a client and they working on a larger-scale public installation, most banal accounts. Equally serviceable, the say, “The client is my collaborator”— where its graphic sensibility informed message- that’s clearly a euphemism used to mask Xerox machine and bulk-mailing system sufficed a power relationship. One person is driven projects such as Da Zi Baos (1982), a series as the means for reproducing and disseminating paying and one person is not. But on of posters based on the Chinese “Big Character text-heavy exhibition announcements, event the other hand, there’s the possibility posters,” or Dazibaos, which are used to espouse that articulating the terms differently invitations, and press releases. can shift the power relationship a bit. political positions and are posted on “democracy The group confronted these material One person makes, the other directs, walls” as a means of publicizing social issues and constraints with conviction. Notes from a meeting yet something else is also exchanged. engendering debate. The group polled passersby

in July 1980 recount a heated debate over what Michael: Are we saying that, in Union Square on current events and posted color to paint the gallery space, with members’ when there’s some kind of financial their candid comments in a series of handmade various positions carefully recorded; minutes relationship, collaboration is posters. Public grants allowed for more elaborate impossible? Because that was your from the following month recall the insistence supposition in a way: Because interventions such as “Subculture” (1983), a series that didactic materials be placed in the gallery as somebody’s paying you, you can’t of placards on the New York City subway, and a means of contextualizing the first exhibition for collaborate. But it’s a much more “Inserts” (1988), an advertising supplement to The complex relationship because the a general audience. Other conflicts are recounted financial and economic relationship New York Times; both enlisted the work of other more vividly: A debate over the use of an image between the designer and the client artists in initiatives whose themes, at times overtly of a woman deemed sexist by some members for is more complex than a direct payment political in nature, forced heated discussion. situation — often you’re working with somebody who’s ultimately being paid 50 Print 65.1, February 2011 by somebody else, and distributing Collective Collections 51 that cash to a whole bunch of people to help them do a project. Group Material’s most powerful projects employed an innate understanding of the way information functions in the public realm, forming incisive critiques of various institutions while operating from the gallery space. “AIDS Timeline,” installed at the Berkeley Art Museum MATRIX Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 (and chronicled at length in Show and Tell by Sabrina Locks) was, and remains, a tactical masterpiece. Displaying artworks alongside a trove of research into the various industries Alice: But you didn’t see yourself as This spread, left to right: Artists Space, an audience member asked how, whose policies and procedures impacted the Installation view of just a producer in that? given recent cultural shifts, young people might then-ten-year epidemic, members Doug Ashford, “The Castle,” as part of Documenta 8 held at the continue making socially and politically Julie Ault, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Karen Tina: No, it was completely a Museum Fridericianum engaged work. Tim Rollins answered, simply: Ramspacher, along with the art historian Richard collaboration because Sarah Morris in Kassel, Germany, 1987. needed our technical capability to make View of “MASS,” exhibited “It’s up to you,” suggesting that the possibilities Meyer, then a graduate student in Berkeley’s art at The New Museum of it happen. And we kind of had to direct Contemporary Art, New are as wide-reaching as his own practice, which history department, merged political activism and the project and say, “No, you can’t York, 1986. View of the straddles the commercial art market and public art-making to form a loose and associative, yet Alice: There’s a parallel in education, do this, but how about that?” So it was group’s seminal exhibi- where the power relationship is about really an exchange of ideas. In the tion, “AIDS Timeline,” education system with the same determination literal, taxonomy of a disease that galvanized the grading. When you’re working in groups end, it was close to what she wanted, held at the University Art Museum, University that marked Group Material’s undertakings. political landscape. The piece was recreated at the and one person isn’t working as hard, but there were a lot of my ideas in the of California at Berkeley, The group’s demonstrated openness in sharing Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford (1990) and or something’s not working, how do you piece as well. 1989. Photo by Ben evaluate that kind of activity? Blackwell. Courtesy Group that conversation with others is a testament to again at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Alice: That brings up a really Material; Four Corners the enduring nature of their practice, which has New York, for the 1991 Whitney Biennial, where Tina: I think collaborations are interesting point: What’s most valuable Books. since informed the practice of countless artists, its inclusion marked a newfound willingness on the most successful when there’s no in that relationship? Is it the hierarchy — when people from different technical facilities or the original activists, curators, and designers. the part of American art institutions to engage with backgrounds come together with a vision? the epidemic. goal to create a project. One of the By claiming the gallery, the printed page, artists I’ve collaborated with is Michael: To take that even further, Sarah Morris. She wanted to make a are you invested in her artistic vision and the street as sites where art and politics are sweater based on one of her paintings, as the paramount thing that you’re translated through a distinctly graphic language, in the shape of her favorite sweatshirt. trying to solve and satisfy for her? Group Material engaged the culture industry— The painting had over 17 different Does that thing somehow have to be colors, which was interesting to me preserved? And if so, how do you reach and one another—in rigorous intellectual debate. as a designer — I would never design visibility on your own, if she’s this To this very day, nearly 15 years after the group anything like this myself because artist with an idea, and your job is to disbanded in 1996, its former members exhibit a it’s a complete production nightmare. grapple with her naïveté? But when you collaborate with someone sense of inclusiveness about their work. During the who is not restricted by knowledge of David: What if only one side considers question-and-answer session at a symposium on the technical difficulties, you are it a collaboration? What if, as far Group Material held last October at New York City’s pushed to do things you never would have as Sarah Morris is concerned, that’s done otherwise. In the end, we found her sweater, and you only executed it? this one little factory in Scotland who It’s the fate of the fabricator, you 52 Print 65.1, February 2011 was willing to make a limited edition know, who doesn’t get a credit, who’s Collective Collections 53 of 30, which were then all signed and totally anonymous, and yet, they’re the numbered by the artist. ones who executed it technically. What happens when you ask a curator, a graphic designer, and a group of architects to reinvent an essential New York alternative art space? Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity text: adam kleinman title typography: plan grotesque stencil` by nicola djurek photography: henrik knudsen

Founded in 1972 to promote emerging and potentially marginalized art practices, Artists Space became a stalwart of the alternative New York art scene. The institution played host to many iconic exhibitions, such as 1977’s Pictures, curated by Douglas Crimp, which canonically announced artists like Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo to a wider audience—and helped influence a whole generation of artists concerned with what is now called the “postmodern image.” As a touchstone of such programming, Artists Space has been the epicenter for land­ mark, if not iconoclastic, displays covering themes such as identity politics and the culture wars, the AIDS crisis, and the institutional recuperation of the avant-garde. In recent years, however, the program has faltered a bit in presenting field-defining exhibitions. In an attempt to redefine its image and position, Artists Space recently brought in a new director, Stefan Kalmar, who, in turn, signaled the establishment of a “new era” by redesigning Interior of Artists Space during exhibition not only the program, but the actual physical space installation with director of the gallery, its offices, and its website, as well Stefan Kalmar seated David: But the thing is, I would at left, 2010. Photo by say that the presenting institution, as Artists Space’s print media and style guide. To Henrik Knudsen. Alec: But what if you’re in a the press or the museum or what achieve this monumental task, Kalmar brought in a publisher role, what if you’re Farrar have you, or the label, isn’t in any mix of provocative designers—ultimately, Common Strauss & Giroux? It’s possible that kind of competition for space or you’ll receive more credit than some of prestige with the artist who’s being Room, ifau + Jesko Fezer, and Manuel Raeder— your authors do. Some literary authors presented. I mean, that’s symbiotic. 54 Print 65.1, February 2011 will get attention because they’re on But to me, collaboration would be Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity 55 that imprint. Same goes for a gallery or two people who can make an equal claim museum that’s showing a certain artist. to artistic credit. to think about how this branding could function Collaboration—All together now? Around May we were all asked to symbolically as well as on a day-to-day basis. meet together and to have a completed project Wherever these ideas led, the realities of by a fixed end date, the opening of the first use and budget became a filter dictating the show, September 10, 2010. Also, the budget final product, not to mention the delicate was very small, only about $100,000 USD. negotiations that take place when drawing together multiple partners. The resultant package has There are no rules in design. been universally lauded in the press; The New The photographer, of course, knows more

York Times art critic Roberta Smith went so far This spread, left to right: about a given picture than I would even as to equate this bottom-up restructuring Greene Street facade, dare to imagine. So, often we remove New York, featuring with the revolutionary setup that Alfred H. Barr, lettering by artist John ourselves so that the expert can determine Baldessari. Interior during Jr., used to found the Museum of Modern Art. a screening in the 1970s, the reception or use of something. To get to the heart of this possibly New York. Adrian Piper performs at Artists Space historic process, I spoke with various players to in the 1970s, New York. We had worked with Jesko previously uncover how their ideas were made manifest. Historical identities for on the Wyoming Building in New York, but Artists Space from the What follows is an impressionistic collage of these 1970s and 1980s. View of we did not know everyone that was brought the group show, Pictures, multiple voices, which together trace a tale of how at Artists Space, New York, together for this “think tank” meeting. all of these sometimes contradictory thoughts 1977. Interior of Artists Space before its renova- were distilled into a functional framework. tion, 2009. All images Stefan knew us from a project we did courtesy of Artists Space. with him in Munich for the Kunstverein. There, we put a large table in the center of the space that could be used as a bar or café. This communal table was a natural outgrowth of the large tables you have at beer halls in Munich. However, the large table could also be reconfigured and used as a stage, for example.

There wasn’t much said of display during the first meeting; most of the desire was to create the space as a kind of generator with an open or common area at the core. On top of that, there was a desire to bring the office area into view so that the visitors and the staff would see each other.

I drew a kind of diagram of overlapping circles, with one representing a library, another Lana: I was thinking of a totally different arena, which is psycho­ the office area, and another the exhibition analysis — psychoanalysts often think space, and so on, so as to create zones of contact of this analysis as a collaboration. between these usually discreet aspects. I don’t know if the analysand thinks of it as a collaboration, because there is a power relation, but, in fact, Carin: What if it’s not a task, but I didn’t really understand the teams. isn’t the author of the analysis the an interest? There was a lot of interest for collaboration, but analysand? Does there have to be a prod- uct or profit? Tina: In German, the word for there was little discussion of how this would collaboration is “Zusammenarbeit,” result. So we just went off from that meeting Michael: But then that shared purpose which means “working together.” In the and thought about the project independently. would have to be implied. In your example I brought up with the artist analysand example, you and your analyst Sarah Morris, what is so wrong that are working together to heal; there’s somebody produces and somebody designs? Before the renovation, the space was an economic exchange, but you share that That’s a collaboration because she a bit moribund, which paralleled the state purpose somehow. couldn’t have done it without us, and we couldn’t have done it without her. It of the institution: 30 percent of the floor space Prem: It’s funny because at another doesn’t need to be a product. It can be was used for storage, and another moment in time, a group of people sit- a goal or it can be an idea, or it can 30 percent was taken over by administration, ting in a room like this would have be a statement... simply been called “sociability,” or in particular, a large corner office for “discourse,” not “collaboration.” It Michael: Would all the workers at the the director. Basically the space began to would have been something else. But Ford factory be collaborating to make mimic a kind of corporate institution. nowadays, at least in New York, we that Taurus? assume that a group of people sitting in a room will lead to an outcome — Prem: Is collaboration intrinsically a kind of work. equal, or is there a distinction between equal collaboration, in Michael: Yes, is it that there has to which investment and power are 56 Print 65.1, February 2011 be some sort of task at hand that you equally divided, and another form of Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity 57 feel you’re equally in charge of solving collaboration that you described, like or addressing? the Sarah Morris sweater? Just gut the place, and be through with it. Collaboration—All together now? The idea of the nine rooms was rejected. Then you get a kind of 1970s SoHo artists loft, much like what was around at the time At some point, a member of the board, the institution originally opened. who was an architect, came in to see if we could actually complete something, Well, the demo idea might have been and on time. I think there was some a more a strategic move than a design move— nervousness about what we were doing. a kind of let’s-do-it-and-see, but also more as a fait accompli requiring new architecture. Some members from the original “think tank” team had already dropped out by now, probably At this point we thought that the loft idea is because there wasn’t enough structure. sort of untrue, I mean, as architects you’re not really doing anything with this situation. The point of design is to take seriously the daily use, and not to just leave gestures. You At the second meeting we came could put in an open office in the space, but back with a proposal. Okay, build in nine what if a screening room was needed? Further, spaces with 20 doors between them, as what happens in the future when a new director a counter-proposal to the wide-open space comes in? There needed to be some base idea. This way you preinstall a setting that structure from which the space could logically is rigid, one that is very rich as you move adapt instead of falling back on the ad hoc. around in a nomadic way over time. We decided to pare down the room idea We weren’t sure what to expect from to match it with the open-room idea in This spread, left to right: the second meeting, so we just came back An early model for Artists a way that could serve as a backdrop for all with a programmatic diagram superimposed Space containing nine of the mixed events in the future program: rooms. Photo courtesy of on the gutted space. This grew out of the ifau+Jesko Fezer. Proposed exhibitions, performances, talks, films, etc. use diagram given in the first meeting. programmatic scheme for the space. Photo courtesy of Common The walls were taken out, but we wanted Room. Demolition of It is more dramatic to show change existing walls as part of to keep the doors from the first proposal, from within. Before their removal, the existing renovation, 2009. Photo as a door is more expensive to build than courtesy of Artists Space. walls had congealed to define the cramped Revised model for Artists a wall, if either should be needed. context of the exhibition space, which Space showing a large gate in the center of the was something to move away from. So, the idea gallery, 2009. Photo cour- This large door/gate idea was a kind of weird tesy of ifau+Jesko Fezer. to take out walls just to put in new walls... Annotated plan for Artists addition; what does it say about “transparency” Space, 2009. Photo cour- to have a large door looming in the space? tesy of Common Room.

As a compromise, posts were put in Michael: The question is: Is collaboration a certain state of grace to establish a coordinate grid that matched which is different from all other the outline of the rejected rooms. This way, work? Is it a special condition of there would be some anchors that could define work, unlike division of labor, for instance? You know, division of labor is the space, but also so that some coordinates essential to modern capital. It is the could be set up to build off in the future. coordination of specialized activities that allows a modern product to be produced. But that’s not necessarily These coordinates would be slightly collaboration. askew from the column grid so that they would read as something different. Daniel: I think collaboration is a way to describe a labor relationship that recognizes elements of social Going back to the diagram, an office reciprocity rather than command and was needed, but one that could allow the control. But, then again, if you pursue equality, you’ll never get it. When staff and the visitors to see one another. So you described the sweater project, I a series of screens grew off our anchors that thought of your role as being this could frame the space but keep it open. filter, a gatekeeper. That’s an important position because you’re a curator who decides there’s an input and there’s an output. What about the Coalition of the Willing, the people who wanted to invade Iraq? Is that collaboration? [General laughter]

Michael: Coercion, I think.

58 Print 65.1, February 2011 Daniel: Yeah or coordination. Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity 59 They’re definitely there together, but they’re not collaborating. With their exposed studs, without dry wall, Collaboration—All together now? the screens have the actual qualities of a wall but also allow for shelving to store the library and archive around the office.

There was a lot of interest in having a kitchen, although there wasn’t enough money for that. Instead, the coordinates mapped out a space that a kitchen could go in, so we also factored in the plumbing and gas to make that option more feasible at a later date.

The screens themselves are based just on the module of the wood, which set up the clear story of the office. Likewise, the distance between them is dictated by the function of the shelves and circulation.

There was then a long discussion on whether Opposite, top to bottom: In the Wyoming project we decided to put to paint these screens, as painting could David: But let me ask again, what’s the Artists Space under in a facsimile of Aldo Van Eyck’s “ring” in the create some form of hierarchy. In the end, value in calling that a collaboration construction, featur- ing exposed studs as central exhibition space. This ring, which it was decided to leave them blank. rather than “working together on a “screens” for shelving and project”? We’re using “collaboration” office use. Photo courtesy Van Eyck developed from looking at the as a special term, and Tina is defending of Common Room. View form of the circle in various anthropological The floor was left unfinished, just sanded what she did as a collaboration when, of brochures on display, in fact, it could be described as, with Charlotte Posenenske studies, serves not only as a platform or down. This was pragmatic, as there was installation behind. “I contracted this sweater from Sarah meeting place for communal exchanges, little money, yet it is also risky as you Photo courtesy of Manuel Morris” or “I commissioned this Raeder. Artists Space but also as a support that could be used in think of maintenance long term. sweater from Sarah Morris” or “We were brochures in leporello hired to do this.” But we’re calling format. Photo courtesy various ways. For example, a plank could that a collaboration for a reason, and of Manuel Raeder. Artists be placed across it to form a table. All in all, the idea is to have something that is Space vitrines in finished my question is why? What’s being added space. Photo courtesy of not finished, to have something that has the when you do this? Common Room. There was an idea that various barriers quality of a wall, of a shelf, that could be added Alec: I think the important idea is could work as a kind of hindrance so that to in the future. Also, this allowed a relationship that it wouldn’t have existed otherwise. contingency can set up a starting point to be established where we would be working There’s a band, Animal Collective, who for interaction. In other words, make on the project over a longer time, together. just made a shoe. They would not have made shoes unless a shoe manufacturer something that someone has to deal with, came to them and said, “Come to us, as well as a base from which some form New York is unique because it has three design a shoe, and we will put it out of context could be established. These generations of artists living and working side there.” coordinates play into that, however, we felt by side. So there was also an idea to David: Does the world need Animal there should be a greater intervention. get these people talking, but how could design Collective shoes? be used as a tool to open up new questions? Alec: I think that’s a better question. The idea for interpretation was carried on in a design for a bench. This The calendar and announcements Prem: Going back to the question that bench, much like the bar in Munich, needed to be clear and consistent. So the David brought up before: If we were to ban the word “collaboration” from could be used for people to meet. mailers are designed on a serial leporello our speech, how would we define these format that allows for variation, but situations? At first the bench was to be placed in could also be collected to form a book. That is, Angie: But I think the only the corner where the old director’s office they create their own archive. Also, when tractable question is how the word was removed to show the transformation they are unfolded, they become a poster, which is used. We cannot say what collabora- from a private closed space that fits evenly on the screens in the office area. This tion means. There wouldn’t be a talk here if it weren’t for the fact that the approximated a corporate model to way, there is an extension of the 2-D into the word is being used in a variety of dif- a now open and generous one. architecture as the posters fill out the library. ferent ways.

Rob: Sometimes, the word is used in a way that makes work feel not like work. As work becomes more socialized, there is less of a division between the office and the home.

Angie: But I think that’s where it can be very coercive. Whose purpose does it serve to call something a collaboration and in what particular 60 Print 65.1, February 2011 context? Where do you stop defining Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity 61 where collaboration ends in any kind of production? It’s funny: The identity for the space began Collaboration—All together now? as a kind of joke. In the past, Artists Space had a circle for their brand, then there was later a square, so why not a triangle? Then you get something that approximates the letter A, but also get something that looks like a strong corporate logo.

Sometimes if you play with history it becomes too heavy.

It was decided to unfix the bench so that it could be used for other functions as need be, and not serve as a souvenir of a past memory.

Although the triangle brand has a clear form, the color often changes. It will stay like that for now to establish the identity, but in the future it will probably

get played with, and it should mutate. Above and below: Foil stamped business cards and stickers for The bench has moved around over the Artists Space, employing last few months. For a while it was in front a triangle in flexible usage as a mark. Photo courtesy of the office, however it wasn’t used much. of Manuel Raeder.

We hear through the grapevine that things have been changed or that new furniture has been built, but we seldom get that information first-hand. David: It would be good to track some basic contexts where the word is Well, the design was kind of reused again in used. Your collaboration is different from a graphic designer’s collaboration, another project, and I feel a bit cheated by this. which is different from a collaboration in theater. We are happy that it is unfinished, but Rob: Right. I was talking to a friend would be unhappy if it stayed this way. of mine who was an assistant director on Law & Order who says he’s taking out the trash, but at the same time, they’re calling the project a “family” and a “collaboration.” Using the term might suggest you’re not at work even when you are. In order to not feel as if one is not working all the time, one makes the claim that some work is “collaboration” whereas other work is just “work.” What is working with your friends when they’re under contract? Which brings us back to the topic of weak ties: Is participation enough? Is knowing your colleagues enough to collaborate with Above, clockwise: Interior of Artists Space them or does it require more than that? office area and desks, 2010. Photo by Henrik L an T hao: It requires a lot more. Knudsen. Installation view In my experience, it takes much of Danh Vo, Autoerotic longer to finish a project with five L an T hao: Well, this particular Asphyxiation, September 15 – November 7, 2010. collaborators than if I completed a collaboration [referring to Lin + Photo by Daniel Pérez. project myself. In my mind, it would Lam] works for me. Each time we begin Courtesy of Artists Space. be perfect, right? I have this vision, a project, it’s an agreement. On each Installation view from I have this idea, let’s say it’s a project, my collaborator asks, why is Charlotte Posenenske, sweater, and I could do it, and it would your vision perfect? And that is the June 23 – August 15, 2010. Photo by Daniel Pérez. be perfect. But then when you introduce moment that I come back to myself and am Courtesy of Artists Space. collaborators to the discussion, the challenged and grow. process is challenged, so it takes four times longer for the sweater to happen. Lana: I think it’s discursive. You’re Students often ask, what’s the secret? offered another voice outside yourself And I say, be prepared that it will take but one that’s not on equal ground. a lot longer. Working together is great, sure, but there are a lot of ruptures. Michael: So it’s therapeutic? 62 Print 65.1, February 2011 Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity 63 Michael: Why do you tolerate it? There Lana: It can be but, as I said before, has to be something on the plus side. it’s a kind of productive antagonism. Tucked away in Queens, Linco has become the printing plant du jour. The LITTL E pr inter t hat Cou ld Text: Drew Dernavich title typography: Boutique engraved by Timo gaessner Photography: Henrik Knudsen

If you don’t count Japanese pears as one of the fruits of collaboration, then you probably haven’t worked with Linco Printing. Tucked into an industrial Long Island City neighborhood that literally sits under the Midtown-Queens Expressway, this rugged New York City printing company is the last place you’d expect to find a backyard garden overflowing with sunflowers and okra. But it may be one of the intangible reasons for Linco’s success. They’ve got roots. Linco is your classic family-run business. Andy Lin, originally from Taiwan, founded the company in 1975 as a printer of community newspapers: Chinese and Greek dailies, among others. Their original location was in a cramped A worker keeps an eye Chinatown basement, where they prayed that on the presses at Linco Michael: But do you think that the to do it. But in the end, I didn’t paper deliveries would not occur on a rainy day. Printing, Long Island City, product of it is somehow superior to the get to make my shoe, and you didn’t New York, 2010. Photo by They left Chinatown for Queens in 1980 and have individual labor? get to make your wings, because we Henrik Knudsen. since upgraded their capabilities with brand-new, got so caught up in incorporating two Lan Thao: I would say it’s different different points of view. sheet-fed machines that enable them to produce and it’s not where I could have gone by all kinds of glossy publications: posters, catalogs, myself. Alec: But collaboration isn’t just and independent magazines. about the product, it’s about the Lana: And since you might not have process. I hate calling myself a writer. Seventy percent of their work, however, is thought of it on your own, you think of When I started collaborating more, and still done on the Helvetica of paper materials: it differently. I stopped calling myself a writer, I was newsprint, a material traditionally chosen not for also saying I was tired of being lonely. David: Let’s say we don’t know each Collaboration is more interesting than its look but because of its cheap price. Given the other at all, but we say, “Hey! Let’s that, and I don’t care what comes out anemic economy, that may sound about right. see if we can make a shoe with wings!” of it. What may be surprising, though, is that last fall, We have nothing in common, except that you like wings and I like shoes, but Michael: You just want friends we’re so committed to solving this [laughing]. 64 Print 65.1, February 2011 problem that we succeed and we feel The Little Printer That Could 65 like it’s a huge artistic success just Alec: I just want some friends. because we put ourselves through hell I just want you to like me. Collaboration—All together now?

some of New York’s highest fashion houses sought out Linco to produce their Fashion Week lookbooks on, yes, newsprint. When the design firm Pure + Applied made a brochure for the November opening of the Noguchi Museum, they did the same. And when MTWTF created a set of maps for the New York City MTA and a book for the Design Trust for Public Space, they intentionally designed them for newsprint. As Pure + Applied’s Paul Carlos told me, “A good designer knows how to maximize a shoestring budget.” Is a medium This spread, left to 1922–1960 (2010), de- that traditionally screams “thrift” now whispering right: Inside the offices signed by Pure + Applied; “haute couture?” of Linco, with potted The Studio-X NY Guide plants and rolls of paper. to Liberating New Forms “Newsprint does fit with the DIY aesthetic Photos by Henrik Knudsen. of Conversation (2010) A selection of recent and What is Affordable that’s been big for a while now,” says Tammy Lin, books and publications Housing? (2009), designed Andy’s daughter. “But because the paper absorbs printed at Linco, includ- by MTWTF; X (2009), ing: Dot Dot Dot number designed by Glen so much ink, it has a nice, soft, vintage kind of 19 (2009), by Dexter Cummings and Adam look.” And indeed, newsprint has a tactile element Sinister; On Becoming Michaels; and Act Patriot An Artist: Isamu Noguchi Act! (2005), designed by which makes it more appealing than the reflective and His Contemporaries, Project Projects. sheen of the glossy page. It feels rich without

conveying decadence. Carlos says he believes Alice: I’m wondering if our conversa- designers are choosing it for nostalgic reasons, David: I think that solo work tion would change if we talked less not just economic ones, mourning the fact that really valorizes the product, but about luxury — having the luxury to collaboration valorizes the process. collaborate. Does it change the terms what was once a common printing medium is at all if the situation is urgent? When slowly disappearing. If newsprint is the new black, Rob: It takes resistance to build you consider situations in which team- it’s because it’s a warm and intimate hue. a muscle. The kind of thinking work is required, they always have to that develops in dialogue is often build a survival kit, don’t they? Or a Either reason is fine with the Lin family, who, much clearer, more nuanced, deeper. bridge across an insurmountable river, as a business, shares newsprint’s familiar, no- When meeting with someone, I can a life or death situation. frills sensibility: There are no job titles here. draw a complete blank while trying to recollect the things I wanted to Prem: Which opens up our dialogue Tammy’s business cards are stacked in a box that talk about. And yet the minute we sit about collaboration versus coordination says “SALES,” but there is no actual selling going down, there are many, many things to versus cooperation, which are the terms on: Linco’s business has always arrived via word- talk about. There is something about we sometime use in such situations. social norms, being in circles or In that context, the word “cooperation” of-mouth. And despite the many technological sitting around a table. Also, someone has a different nuance, a connotation advances in the industry, those I talked to stressed taking issue with a point that you’re of necessity. that printing is still an art. “The ink levels in these making helps break open your ideas and deepen them. Daniel: But the goal is also clear before the whole thing starts. You 66 Print 65.1, February 2011 Alec: It is interesting to talk about know you want to build a bridge. The Little Printer That Could 67 what’s sacrificed in collaboration and Collaboration can change the goal as maybe it’s idiosyncrasy. you go along. machines have to be adjusted by eye, depending Collaboration—All together now? on how you want the image to look,” said Felix Lin (Andy’s son), who directs the offset printing. For instance, images that look dark and rich on your backlit computer monitor just might cause the ink to become oversaturated, causing the pages to stick together during printing. Getting it right is a fussy trial-and-error process. That’s why Linco is fond of press checks, where clients can come in and proof the actual printed product them­ selves, before Linco commits to a huge print run. In all likelihood, Linco’s success owes as much to their approach to collaborating as it does to printing. Having your roots in newsprint has clearly been productive for the Lin family, whether it’s in the machine room or out in their garden. “We just grew some husk tomatoes,” Tammy says over the hum of the expressway. “They’re these strange little things with a papery shell. But they’re really good.”

A aron: Yeah, it does seem that collaboration is a much more conscious choice. You identify something or someone you want to surround yourself with. There is a difference between forced cooperation and the luxury of collaboration.

Carin: It is a commitment to this shared space, this shared time, and that is very, very valuable. I’d be interested to talk further about ways of coming together without any goal in mind and without a long-term idea.

Alice: It would be a salon. It could Opposite, bottom: This page, top: stacks of be a collective salon. Newspaper bundles ready leftover newspaper and for distribution. Top: a files in the office. Bottom: David: While I’m not denying the worker catches up on At work on the presses. productivity of that, I wouldn’t call newspaper reading in the Photos by Henrik Knudsen. pre-press room. that a collaboration.

Carin: One aspect of that is your physical presence: being in a space together, making the commitment to spend hours together. I think it’s a different experience from just hanging out.

Michael: In collaboration, somehow you always achieve something you’d never achieve on your own, right? In the case of the Sarah Morris sweater, it forced you to work in a way that enlarged you, which is the ideal aspect of collaboration. It breaks you out of your well-defined space and it makes you do something else.

Tina: When collaborators come together, David: The issue might be less about do they need to be equals, or does it process and more about credit. Tina, even matter so as long as everyone is when you were collaborating with Sarah open to growth? Morris, your ego as producer didn’t conflict with her ego as artist.B ut if Rob: Our conversation has centered she started to take credit for calling so much on wearable items. What if Scotland, or if you started to take the product isn’t something that credit for the artwork, then you might one wears? I keep wondering how it have a problem. would change if we swapped the winged 68 Print 65.1, February 2011 shoe for a university course. What Michael: It’s still signed as a The Little Printer That Could 69 is the difference between teamwork product that way, as a product of Sarah and collaboration? Morris somehow. With a major retrospective in London approaching, veteran artist and filmmaker Jonas Mekas shows no signs of slowing down.

Text: paddy johnson title typography: PDU skeleton by Dries Wiewauters Photography: Henrik Knudsen

Daniel: How do people look at this in the age of Facebook? We’re part of a society in which collaboration is the new competition. Successful collaborations bring about positive social ties and hold promises of another successful collaboration. But ultimately, that individual occupies Nabbing the last cold beer at James Fuentes a special position in a network. Even Gallery felt good, but it did not lessen the though he’s listed among the names of other people who collaborated, this insufferable heat at the Jonas Mekas opening person does not completely disappear last September. It was stifling, in part because the into a network. place was packed with 20-something hipsters.

Alec: For a while, I had a thing with They were there to show their support for Fuentes’s Facebook where I would only friend inaugural show—he’d moved his location from people that I had already met in person. St. James Place to Delancey—as well as for Mekas, If someone tried to add me as a friend and I didn’t know who they were, I would the famed 88-year-old filmmaker. email them. But I’ve given up. Weak ties The thick crowd made sense for an artist have defeated my strong ties. whose work cannot be separated from social expe-

David: You would expect that the most rience. Everyone knows him. Frequently touted as basic, most conventional use of the Godfather of American avant-garde cinema, Mekas term would involve face-to-face contact. is lauded for far more than just filmmaking, to the And if there’s not face-to-face contact, you would assume that the collaborators extent that his recognition in each field has been at least know each other, right? If a uneven. “Most magazines focus on my early video,” bunch of people I would never bother to Mekas complained after I told him I would be fo- email are all busy correcting a Milli Vanilli entry on Wikipedia but we never cusing on his more recent work. “I’m more known talk to each other, then intuitively, as a filmmaker in Europe. Here [in New York] I’m it’s not a collaboration. It can be a known as an organizer, maverick.” collaborative process, though. Worse titles have been bestowed. It was out Daniel: But we all have this of necessity, Mekas tells me, that he came to binding goal, which is Milli Vanilli. collaborate with so many people. “Now I am just And there’s a Wikipedia supervisor involved, too. focused on my work, but I went through those other stages,” he says, listing a seemingly endless David: I’m most interested in the number of publications and organizations he’s utopian connotations of it: We’re going to beat this system; we’re really helped establish. In 1955 he founded Film Culture going to know one another for no purpose with his brother Adolfas, the first publication other than — of its kind to provide in-depth analysis of all

Daniel: To be unpaid. 70 Print 65.1, February 2011 Mekas in the Middle 71 David: Yeah, we’ll all be unpaid together. cinema, including the avant-garde. The Village Previous spread: Jonas A companion film titled World Trade Center Mekas, 2010. Photo by Voice began publishing “Mekas’ Movie Journal,” a Henrik Knudsen. This Haikus projects shots taken between 1975 and weekly film column, in 1958. It was the first of its spread, left to right: 1995 when Mekas lived in SoHo, the World Trade Installation view from kind. Four years later he invited Andrew Sarris to “World Trade Center Center looming on the horizon. Like the previous cover commercial cinema at the Voice so he could Haikus” at James piece, the footage is all handheld, and initially Fuentes Gallery in New focus more on independent filmmaking, and then York, September 2010. visually indistinguishable from most home video. Installation view of spearheaded the founding of The Filmmaker’s Jonas Mekas’s exhibition But in the same way a reader draws more from a Co-Op along with 20 other filmmakers; today, it at the Museum Ludwig, Alec: You have to separate what poem through contemplation, a viewer gathers 2009. Installation view happens before, during, and after a is the largest film archive and distributor in the of framed prints from greater knowledge of Mekas’s experiences through collaboration. Both before and after, world. Finally, together with Jerome Hill, P. Adams “To New York With Love.” extended viewing. In one particularly long shot, Installation view of Jonas it can be a very cynical thing,but Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage, he Mekas’s exhibition at the during a collaboration, you inevitably the artist holds the camera while turning 180 formed Anthology Film Archives in 1969, which Museum Ludwig, 2009. feel closer to your collaborators — degrees and panning the camera up and down. All photos courtesy of you identify with them, whether you like James Fuentes Gallery. now serves as both a reference library and the host them or not. Generally, collaboration Adding to this footage, Mekas threads together of a widely recognized innovative film program. is an idealistic thing, but the other zooms of the buildings, including one or Interestingly, much of the sensibility that relation­­ship between collaborators is two shots that rest on the World Trade Center. often entered and exited in a cynical drove his work organizing communities also way, I’d say. Kind of like sex. The buildings do not seem remarkable, they are runs through his new films. The two wall-sized Michael: But if we try to work simply part of a New Yorker’s daily experiences. projections on display at James Fuentes, for towards a definition and look at the Michael: Going back to the question The work underscores a theme that had etymology of the term, there’s some of intent, I was thinking about how example, came together as a result of personal common purpose. There has to be some you fill gaps in yourself through come up in conversation recently with Ed Halter, history and social exchange. “He used to reside on intention, which describes a lot of collaboration. By choosing your the co-founder of the film and electronic art Orchard Street many decades ago with [his brother] spiritual junk that makes collaboration collaborator, you choose someone who’s venue Light Industry. “Whether it’s in his role as different than other kinds of labor. going to allow you to do something that Adolphas,” Fuentes says, beginning the narrative you couldn’t do yourself, because you an artist over the years, or as a programmer and of how the show came to fruition. This history, Prem: This goes back to Angie’s opening see these failings in yourself which curator or writer, his whole concept of cinema combined with the gallery’s new location, sparked remark that she doesn’t even think of are filled in someone else. can’t be separated from the idea of filmmaking collaboration; it’s like air. Either the new work in the tradition, which Mekas named, there is an assumption that one works Carin: But then you would define what as a community as a social world,” he says. “In Diary Cinema. Shots taken between 1953 and 1956 within a social context that is shared the failings are. I don’t know if it’s that way, all of his work is collaborative because of street signs, crowds of people milling around with others, or collaboration is a such a specific prosthesis. he is responding to and interacting with and also separate thing to be valorized. the street, and his family are threaded together. Michael: But in fact, maybe the building this social world. To him, cinema can’t be The camera is handheld, and the film often slightly David: What I resent about the term prosthetic is part of the collaboration. disentangled from social experience.” overexposed or out of focus and is slightly bluish “collaboration” is there are a million You don’t collaborate with someone with As it happens, Mekas’s work spills over into unique, specific ways in which people all your same skills, you collaborate in tone. This is probably due to its age. work together toward a common goal. The with somebody who augments them in other fields as well, particularly over the course In one sequence, a shot of Mekas holding a term, in spite of its utopian elements, some way. of the last 15 years. He’s created installations, leather shoe cuts to a picture of his wife outside a tends to reduce everything to the same prints, and performance art. A recent project sentimental thing rather than serving Carin: But you don’t always know your storefront soothing their baby, and then to a blurry as a force for greater individuation shortcomings. involves an improvisational performance group image of the Allen Street sign. Nothing happens— and greater complexity. he calls “Da Gang,” which includes his brother it’s just life. Michael: No, that’s the problem. Adolphas, his son Sebastian, Benn Northover, and Lana: I totally agree with you: We only You’re discovering them all the time. use the term for pragmatic purposes, And often you see collaborations that 72 Print 65.1, February 2011 to separate the work we do individually are started midstream because that lack Mekas in the Middle 73 from the work we do collaboratively. only becomes apparent as you get into Not to valorize but to distinguish it. something. Collaboration—All together now?

even Marina Abramovic. Another, titled 365 Days, is a video podcast he produced in 2007, where he uploaded a new diaristic video every day for a year. It totaled 38 hours of footage. Possibly the biggest show to date is one that is rapidly approaching. In 2012 the famed Serpentine Gallery in London will present a survey of Mekas’s work, which will include a number of new pieces. “There will be no film except one,” Mekas says. “By the time I switched to video technology, I still had a lot of film footage unfinished. It’s my last movie as a film.” The still-unfinished piece began as a portrait of architect Raimund Abraham. Mekas thought it would run about 90 minutes—it’s now more than eight hours long. “I will show practically unedited footage. I have 20 hours of footage of Raimund Abraham. So I will trim it a little bit, of course, but when you become part of the life of this person, you begin to know more about it. . . So it won’t be a collage, it will be a real life.” Meanwhile, Mekas continues to collaborate with the organizations he founded when they need it. In 2009, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative lost their Opposite: Print from the location at the Clocktower Gallery when MoMA series, “To New York With terminated their lease to make room for Art Radio Love,” 2009. Courtesy of James Fuentes Gallery. International. Mekas stepped in, wrote letters of Above: Jonas Mekas at work in his studio, 2010. protest, and ultimately found them a new home, Photo by Henrik Knudsen. thanks to the help of Charles Cohen. “The Film- David: Right. But to me, the only makers Co-op has a place for the next five years for thing that would make a successful $1 a year and they can expand, they can expand collaboration would actually be the Lana: What if rather than having a end product. better services,” Mekas said, before reminding me relationship with someone who fills that beyond attending to outside emergencies like in your failings, you find someone who Tina: But I said these are the this, he is focused on making art. “I stick to what actually brings out the best in you? conditions of an ideal collaboration. If I walk out of a collaboration feeling I’m doing,” he says. “And I have a lot to do.” Tina: I like the positive spin. In like, “I learned a lot about myself, I order to go into a collaboration, you grew, it widened my horizon,” then that need to check your ego and you need to would be a successful collaboration. be willing to grow. Ideally, you become Does it happen all the time? No. a better person through it. And I think 74 Print 65.1, February 2011 that’s a successful collaboration. David: But a lot of times you get Mekas in the Middle 75 If those three things don’t line up, good artwork out of it but you didn’t it’s incredibly frustrating. widen your horizons or grow. A meditation by artist group During a recent visit to a museum of Raqs Media Collective manuscripts, each of the three of us in the Raqs Media Collective was drawn to different things in an exhibition on medical traces: On the Time One saw the glyph for an eye inscribed in an Egyptian Papyrus, another was arrested by a Hellenistic terracotta grotesque with anomalies in the limbs, the third was drawn to the botanic oftext: raqs media colleCollaborationctive annotations and floral decorations in a medieval title typography: neue haas grotesk display by christian schwartz Arabic herbal. The tropes that lodged in our triangulated consciousness during this visit may or may not add up to a detail in a future work, but they will keep bouncing back and forth in our conversations, possibly leading to a completely different, and even unrelated, set of ideas and images. The promise of collaborative energies Daniel: So how are we going to deal in such an instance would not emerge from with the idea of antagonism? Someone said that if two people always agree, the simple junction of the images of an eye, one of them is unnecessary. [It was William Wrigley, Jr. —Ed] I mean, I’m an amputated arm, and a flower, or from a bridge not always sure my idea is the best idea, so I need someone else to keep me between the time of their specific creations, in check. Now, to what extent is that antagonistic? And is antagonism the long ago, and our time now. They would flow right word for it, or is it actually something else? Is it friction? instead from the as-yet unpredictable form Tina: But maybe you widen your horizon Prem: I think conflict in and of (which may be neither eye, nor cleaved arm, by finding out what you don’t like. itself is interesting. It also asks the question: Is longevity a part nor flower) that might arise at their intersection. Michael: It’s interesting — of a successful collaboration? Or you’ve established the metrics for not? Can a one night stand be a great We do not necessarily know where the maps success. Is it a success when everybody collaboration? feels equally good about it? Is it a scanned by our three pairs of eyes will take us. success when you feel that you’re a Michael: A purer way to think about it better person even though the product’s would be a film production, which is It is this ambiguity that has kept us going for the stupid? How do you measure successful a temporary organization put together collaboration? If it’s measured only to produce one thing. A film past 19 years, and it is the desire to know what through personal enrichment, that’s production company really has nothing different than measuring the success except an office, and then everybody is might happen next, or how we may yet again be of a design project. brought into this one end to solve this task. You can judge whether or not it surprised by the sum of our cognitive parts, that Alec: Are you making a product or was a successful organization because are you getting together and having you have this product at the end, and will keep us going into the foreseeable future. a conversation? I think there are metrics do apply. different kinds of collaboration, and there are different ways of measuring Rob: American business is starting the success of a product: It sells well, to resemble these film crews. Temporary or it becomes historically important teams... or it lasts. Or it’s an Eames design, a chair that’s going to be produced Michael: So perhaps your projects for 50, 100, God knows how many years. then have a bit of that quality. I would argue against discussing You can assemble around a certain collaboration that doesn’t have a person who destabilizes your company, product. It seems like collaboration absorb it into your process for a while, has to leave some artifact. complete the project, disband, and then reorganize around someone else. Alice: I also think collaboration has You get these temporary conditions to be about something really big and which only have to exist for the difficult that you can’t do by yourself, lifespan of that project, which can 76 Print 65.1, February 2011 something meaningful or a complicated be one sweater or one garment, and On the Time of Collaboration 77 problem. Something where you need to you don’t have to see the other person combine expertise. again if you don’t want to. When artists collaborate, their actions Collaboration—All together now? Seen this way, collaboration is not are usually seen as instances of trust, as either something that one switches in and out of, leaps of faith across the gulf of individual depending on the season or on inclination. aloofness, or as betrayals of their fidelity to It persists as a decision to build a life of practice the cult of the solitary genius in favor of a along with others. It acquires a sense of creative more gregarious (and, it is said, a less singular) companionship and intellectual camaraderie practice. built not only on the foundations of projects In both these senses, collaboration is that succeed or on consensual agreement, but seen as the result of what individuals contribute arrived at along paths that do not necessarily to a process. Correspondingly, artists may be end anywhere, paths that often lead into seen as “joining forces” with others; this stance unknown territory, or occasionally even fork seemingly requires one to either commend into disagreements that are as generous to the his cooperation or condemn his refusal to go creative process as are moments of consensus. forth bravely alone. Like migrating flocks, the companions But there is another way of thinking of such passages through times of laboring about collaboration—that of seeing it as the together do not act collaboratively because they consequence and corollary of what individuals could not occasionally forage for themselves draw from (rather than simply contribute alone. Instead, they act in the ways they do

to) a common, shared matrix. In this sense, because their journeys require the reading of Michael: The exquisite corpse idea collaboration is not a mere “giving away” (either still has some individuality in its a map that is so complex that it can only be pieces. I like our Cyborgian vision — altruistically, or suicidally) of the resources of a super individual created by a pastiche comprehended in a networked fashion, across of all these skills put together that the self, but a “taking from” and, we might add, has one kind of shared ego. the minds of the flock. Across times of flight, a reciprocal “nurturing of” what takes place Carin: You assume this unity of nesting, and repose. time or space or product — I think between different actors. it’s important to acknowledge that we come together for collaboration just This requires us to think of acts of collabora- at a certain moment, and what comes Carin: If there’s no goal or no product, out of it is a manifestation of that tion along somewhat different temporal axes: you need to be able to return to your moment in very different ways. The own practice and feel that you have idea of a unified product, created by not as sporadic or even episodic instances of learned something. the same people at one moment, seems so unresolved for me and so limited. people joining hands to finish or start a project, David: So, collaboration is only successful when it’s over? Either Michael: I think the idea of time but as the traces of longue-durée processes of the criteria of success are based on manufacturing is exactly that. There a much older model of an individual are independent groups producing things the unfolding of an ensemble of desires. As the creating artwork or collaboration means that somehow come together exactly at going back to our individual lives the right time because of incredibly meander of decades of conversations that do not somehow enriched. My definition of sophisticated logistics and result in collaboration would be something that this product or idea. So you’re able to (or even cannot) get minuted. resulted in a good piece, period. coordinate discontinuous work that’s But with antagonistic situations, you highly dispersed, all the while still just think it’s good because it was working towards some end. such a hassle to get to the finish Right now, I’m closing a magazine line, right? And the “good” result of in China. I send a series of files to collaboration is that it looks like China, and when I come back in the the work of one “super individual” or morning, I get them all back again. one “corporate individual.” But there’s Something’s happened to them, and now this more modern, almost retro, and I have to deal with that reality of quite cranky vision of collaboration what’s happened to them. Then I do I can imagine where you express all something to them, and I send them all of the chaos — it would be like a Rem back again, and it’s this weird cyclical Koolhaas book! nature with a disynchronous time-zone quality to it. Angie: It’s a totally different model. Work is happening almost continu- It’s more like an improvisatory sketch, ously on the same thing. But what where you don’t negate, you add. happens overnight completely changes 78 Print 65.1, February 2011 what I have to do the next day. It’s On the Time of Collaboration 79 David: Yes, while a more typical quite a strange coordination of collaborative process is often an edit. activities. Contributors

ROUNDTABLE and Preservation, an ad- to multiple publications, which designs printed Eric Olson is a type first-class honors from PARTICIPANTS junct professor at the Yale including Artforum, Frieze, matter (mainly books), designer and founder of ECAL/University of Art School of Art, and a visit- and Texte zur Kunst, for bespoke and retail the Process Type Foundry. and Design in Lausanne, Writer Alec Hanley ing lecturer at Tsinghua which he also runs a type­faces, and identity His work ranges from pub- Switzerland. His typeface, Bemis has been published University in Beijing. monthly column, “New programs. His typeface licly available typefaces Simplon BP, is licensed by in The New Yorker, The New York Letters.” Lyon Display, distributed to custom work for clients b+p swiss typefaces. York Times, LA Weekly, and Alice Twemlow directs by Commercial Type, is from The New York Times the LA Times. As a creative the Design Criticism MFA Prudence Peiffer is used for the subheaders in Magazine to the Walker Dries Wiewauters is executive, he has worked program at the School of a postdoctoral fellow in this section. Art Center. His mono- a graphic designer who extensively with musicians Visual Arts in New York. the Department of Art spaced typeface Kettler also happens to be an bridging the gap between She is also a Ph.D. candi- History and Archaeology Nikola Djurek runs is used for the running avid type designer. He art and pop, such as The date in Design History at Columbia University. Typonine, a digital type transcript in this section. currently lives and works National, Dirty Projectors, at the Royal College of Art She specializes in modern foundry and graphic in Belgium as a freelance Alexi Murdoch, and !!!. in London. and contemporary art design studio based Aurèle Sack is a Swiss graphic and type designer with an emphasis on in Croatia and The graphic designer special- for various clients, spe- Angie Keefer is a Daniel van der Velden abstraction and artists’ Netherlands, which he izing in type and editorial cializing in printed matter writer, based in Hudson, is a graphic designer, writings and has written founded in 2005. Djurek design. He graduated and custom typefaces. New York. writer, co-founder of for publications such as currently teaches at Art from ECAL/University Metahaven in Amsterdam, Artforum. She recently Academy–DVK, University of Art and Design in Carin Kuoni is an and senior critic at the contributed to the exhibi- of Split and University Lausanne, Switzerland in PROJECT PROJECTS independent curator and Graphic Design MFA pro- tion catalog Luc Tuymans of Zagreb. Djurek is 2004. In 2006 and 2010, Rob Giampietro critic, and director of the gram at Yale University. (SFMoMA, 2009). also a delegate for the he was awarded the Swiss Prem Krishnamurthy Vera List Center for Art Association Typographique Federal Design Grants for Adam Michaels and Politics at The New Raqs Media Collective Internationale. typeface projects. He cur- School. She’s the editor WRITERS was formed in 1992 rently teaches at ECAL. Marina Kitchen of Energy Plan for the by media practitio- Timo Gaessner, Berlin- Michael Christian Western Man: Joseph Drew Dernavich ners Jeebesh Bagchi, based typographer Christian Schwartz McCaddon Beuys in America, Words draws woodcut-style Monica Narula, and and graphic designer, is a partner, with Chris Cheng-Huan Wu of Wisdom: A Curator’s cartoons on scratch- Shuddhabrata Sengupta. studied at Gerrit Rietveld London-based designer Vade Mecum, and, with board—really cool if it Their work, which often Academy in Amsterdam Paul Barnes, in the type PRINT MAGAZINE Aleksandra Wagner, was still 1912. He won takes the form of instal- and founded studio foundry Commercial Type. Tonya Douraghy Considering Forgiveness. the National Cartoonists lations, online and offline 123buero in 2002. The Schwartz has published Dave C Frankel Society’s “Reuben” award media objects, and studio produces projects fonts with many respected James Gaddy David Levine’s artwork for magazine cartoon- performances, focuses for clients across the fields independent foundries Judy Grover examines the condition of ing in 2006. His work can on the convergence of of culture and business, and designed proprietary Aaron Kenedi spectacle and spectator- be seen regularly in The contemporary art, histori- such as Adidas, MTV, Kiss typefaces for corporations ship in theater, visual New Yorker and in the cal enquiry, philosophical FM London, and Gallerie and publications world- SPECIAL THANKS arts, and the workplace. most recent Flight comics speculation, research, and Kunsthaus Dresden. wide. His typeface Bau Athletics He is the director of anthology. theory. They live and work Pro is used for the folios in Julie Ault the Studio Program of in Delhi, based at Sarai, Berton Hasebe gradu- this section. maxime buechi the European College of Isaac Gertman is a Centre for the Study of ated in 2008 from the Type Common Room Liberal Arts, Berlin. designer, writer, educa- Developing Societies, an and Media Masters course Kris Sowersby Genevieve Cottraux tor, cyclist, and croquet initiative they co-founded at The Royal Academy of graduated from the Meghan DellaCrosse Inspired by a particular enthusiast. His writing in 2000. Art in the Hague (KABK), Wanganui School of Jesko Fezer site, historical incident, has appeared in Step and has since been living Design in 2003. After brief James Fuentes or political issue, Lin + magazine, DesignBureau, in New York. He currently employment as a graphic Becky James Lam (Lana Lin and H. and the design blog PHOTOGRAPHERS works as a type designer designer, he started the Stacey Kahn Lan Thao Lam) bring SpeakUp. His design work at Commercial Type. Klim Type Foundry in Stefan Kalmar together their back- has been recognized by Henrik Knudsen 2005, currently based in Tammy Lin grounds in architecture, the American Institute studied computer science The Aero typeface was Wellington, New Zealand. John Malta photography, sculp- of Graphic Arts and the and mathematics before designed by Village part- The Klim Type Foundry Manuel Raeder ture, installation, and Society of Publication taking up photography ner Chester Jenkins in markets its typefaces ex- Sarah Van Bonn time-based media. Lin Designers. He currently and graduating from Art collaboration with Jeremy clusively through Village. is faculty at Vermont teaches at Parsons The College in Denmark in Mickel. While Chester His typeface Tiempos Text College of Fine Arts and New School for Design. 1992. Currently based in avoids the spotlight, is used for the body text Jacob K. Javits Fellow in London and New York City, Jeremy will be delighted throughout this section. the Media, Culture, and Sarah Hromack writes Knudsen’s work captures to see his name in print Communication doctoral about the intersections of people and environ- in Print. The Aero typeface Emmanuel Rey is an program at NYU. Lam contemporary art, visual ments with a unique and is built around memo- independent type and is faculty at Goddard culture, and the Internet sensitive vision. Editorial ries of Roger Excoffon’s graphic designer who College, MFA-IA program. from Brooklyn, New York. clients include Dwell and Antique Olive. graduated in 2007 with She manages the Whitney Entertainment Weekly, Tina Lutz, co-founder Museum of American among others. of the fashion line Lutz & Art’s website, and is also a Patmos, graduated from former web editor of Art in Josh Melnick is an ESMOD in Paris in Fashion America and Curbed.com. artist and filmmaker Design and Pattern based in New York City. Making. Born in Germany, Paddy Johnson is a A forthcoming book on she has lived and worked New York-based art critic, his show at Art in General, in Paris, Tokyo, San blogger, curator, and The 8 Train, will be pub- Francisco, and New York writer. She is the driving lished in Spring 2011. since 1992. force behind the art blog, Art Fag City. Michael Rock is a TYPE DESIGNERS founding partner and Writer and curator creative director at 2×4 Adam Kleinman has Kai Bernau holds a in New York, director of programmed numerous master’s degree from the Prem: Sadly, as a counterpoint to the Graphic Architecture projects ranging from Royal Academy of Arts that fluid temporal vision, we are Project (GAP) at the intimate site-specific per- (KABK) Type and Media out of time. However, it’s been Columbia University formances to museum- program. With Susana wonderful to have this particular Graduate School of scale exhibitions and con- Carvalho, he co-founded Architecture, Planning, ferences and contributes Atelier Carvalho Bernau, group of 13 people together in one place to have a synchronous conversation! Thank you to everybody. 80 Print 65.1, February 2011 Michael: Thank you — and let’s collaborate some more...