Sitage

SITAGE I: The Swimming Hole COLLABORATION
Amir Parsa, for the collaborative residency of the group, Swimming Hole Players of the Elastic Circus of the Revolution: Maria Baker, Luke Degnan, Alex Goldberg, Amir Parsa, Megan Suttles.

Begin with an actual piece in mind, and all contributing to it, in their own ways.
Soon: abandon: that is not a true collaboration, but contributions of various to the idea and vision of one.
Abandon: then what: all around a central concept.
Or all in one place, and we go from there. We grow from there.
Who, even. And why.

II. The Framework

The first ingredient: gather a group of people you know to be good in spirit, chill, a plethora of skills, like to work with others, not overly dramatic or self-centered, enjoy expansion of their zones and their processes. That’s the first ingredient: the people. From there, all will flow.
Gathered: now: how do we proceed.
Not a predetermined method of collaboration–something we have all done, and that can easily happen. For example, one among us set up two artists once who were showing in a gallery: each would continue the construction of the work of the other, without knowing them, and only seeing the work in progress. We know of other mechanisms. These worked. They had pre-determined systems of collaboration.
But we: are approaching without a method–and without a final piece in mind.
Which then means a very exciting thing: we will in effect create a framework for collaboration. Itself.
Our work: thinking about, investigating, constructing a method of collaboration, rituals for collaboration, an approach to collaboration.
The collaborative framework is not determined. We will create the collaborative framework.

III. Launches

Get the group of people together.
Drive to the place.
Bring a bunch of stuff.
Lay out the stuff on the big table.
Check out the spaces and the land.
Make some prompts and generate some constraints
Begin… to mess around.
Conversations: continuing and generating.
Do and act: the yarn, the sun spots, the frames, the photos and printings and…
The methods of collaborations being developed. The rituals of collaborations being fashioned. The contours of a type of collaboration being devised.
Is this collaboration going to become a method? Or: is the spirit of this type of collaboration what can remain for others: that is, not the method, but the ingredients, the major ingredients, the approach. An invitation for all to fashion their own rituals and rules for the collaboration. To embrace, every once in a while, the potential for collaboration, and dive in, uncertain of the results.
Like we jumped in the Swimming Hole itself: did not not know how long we could stay in, what the effects would be, how it would affect us. Dove in, stayed in for thirty seconds, came out–and yet, came out transformed, in many ways.
Fashion a collaboratory, that is a call–however temporary: allow the questions to come up. To the end. Maybe nothing at the end. Conversations and playful extensions.
Fashioning the collaboration itself.
The collaboration? About collaboration itself: its merits, its results, its ways and means, its contours, its purpose and function. And how much of a place it should have in our lives…

IV. Threads

We had a theme when I was in Morocco, AG says. Everyone did. And in a way, we connected the threads of what we did.
Here, we do have a central node. And around that and through that we all work, all together but with reactions and ideas, individually or in small groups. The collaboration is the heart of the matter. Not just the connecting of the individual threads.
The threading is done in conjunction with the ideas coming up, in and through the central node. Not projects weaved together. Weavings that create the project. Not individual pieces connected. Connections that make the piece. Not threads assembled into a whole. A whole created through the threads.
Always then, in progress towards the final piece, still unnamed (ultimately), still unclear, perhaps never done, except when so declared. Because the threading continues to happen. Continues to go on.

V. Collaboratory

If you think of the typology…
There is the deliverable-driven collaboration: a car; a policy; a shed: everyone works on several parts, some work on specific parts because it’s their expertise. Everyone has a role. Can be hierarchical or not.
Method development. Create and generate a method of creation that inevitably leads to a new type of work, with all players involved in it for the final piece–because the pieces rest on multiple subjectivites and actions bringing it to a conclusion.
Process-based collabs: final pieces matter not: just the processes and how folks collaborate on creating the processes and/or go through particular processes together, that then inevitably bring about a new piece–or not.
The sitage: a constellation of pieces created by any number of groupings within the collaboration ensemble (perhaps even by all, or by one), and perhaps through methods created above. At some deadline, a group curatorial effort connects them all, brings them together, threads them together, sews them together: sitage: the threading collaboration.

VI.

Investing in the investigation of new forms of collaboration; seriously considering a new frame for collaboration.
Also means encountering obstacles, challenges… We all have our ways of working, we all have our methods and processes and even conceptions of what matters…
Difficult to connect at times but.
Overcome: conversation: genuine care for others: openness: allowing selves to reconsider, redirect…
Investing seriously in investigating what collaboration can mean and help define a project: and the type of project: and the type of outcome…
Some pieces set; some processes set; some sub-collaborations set; deadline set; curatorial directors set; soon to thread all.

VII.

Rhizomatic collaboration.
Swarming collaboration.
Expansive collaboration.
Vectorial collaboration.
Other sub-collaborations.
The players of the elastic circus of the revolution assembled for the swimming hole residency and developed, through action research and praxis, the arboresque collaborative framework. SIGNPOSTS IN THE SITESCAPE, a collection of pieces created individually and/or sub-collaboratively, includes the creation of the framework itself (even as the framework allowed/generated the creation of other pieces).
In addition, The Immersive Arboresque Collaboration allowed sub-collaborations of different types: the Swarming Collaboration–everyone contributing to a small piece in rapid ways; Vectorial Collaborations–where sub-groups of two or three launched parallel pieces and projects that, as much as they could be part of the Signposts in the Sitescape ‘album’, could also expand beyond the residency into future work together; Assistive Collaboration, where one or two artists genuinely and with deep interest helped with one particular artist’s vision of a piece that emerged through the residency and through interaction with others; Atmospheric Collaboration: where proximity, discussions, explorations, visual clues or concepts devised by one or another member, would provide inspiration/direction to other members. These sub-collaborative methods and approaches really emerged through our praxis at the residency, and contributed to the IAC. We intended to explore the possibility of new forms and types of collaboration, and we are very excited about our discovery, and NAMING, of these forms of collaboration.

SITAGE II: The Swimming Hole PIECES
Amir Parsa, for the collaborative residency of the group, Swimming Hole Players of the Elastic Circus of the Revolution: Maria Baker, Luke Degnan, Alex Goldberg, Amir Parsa, Megan Suttles.

The lure of a performative piece, of a conceptual piece, of an artistic intervention in the landscape.
Stories that connect, across the field, across the trees.
Signposts.
In the landscape.
If we can all connect them, in some way, pieces created individually, pieces created collectively, the one piece stands as a form of–what? Art? After all?

II.

How to go about it.
Constraints. Prompts. Ideas for actual actions. Start a document with possible paths.
The collaboration starts without any clear and absolute method.
That’s good.
Soon, questions: what does it mean to ‘intervene’ in the landscape? Why would one even do that? For what purpose.
Our presence alone is an intervention.
And what is a landscape?
Change the title: Sitescapes.
The prompts, the constraints. Certain rituals.
Investigations and questions: perhaps the words ‘intervention’ and ‘interjection’ are a bit overused. And fraught. Feels a bit ‘violent’ even. The natural scape is in fact a type of constructed scape and also an organically developed one. A managed one.
The pieces that are seducing for me: writing on rocks. Standing in the sun spots. Performances of sorts.
Others: the framing. The frames. The branches into a sculpture. The yarn on the trees.
Perhaps there is no need to do anything after all: document the process of attempts at fashioning something: to lead to, in the end: becoming branch… becoming blade of grass…
Juxtaposition of methods of creation, prompts, rituals, pieces.
The signposts: not anymore only one type, as in: put branches in the path, or stack the rocks on top of each other. In fact, an ouverture: multiple ways of conceiving ‘signposts’ and how these connect.
Understanding that the signposts are not exhaustive.
Understanding that we are fashioning a taxonomy of possible signposts: the frames–the framing–turn what exists into a signpost itself. The movement within the space becomes an ephemeral signpost itself. The sunspots: becoming signposts through the action of the sun, and how one allows it to transform us. Going up the trees: the elements of space make us act a certain way, constructing the stories, fashioning the signposts.
And then of course: the vertical history: the stories of the land, the concepts of the land. Belonging. Attributions. Acknowledgments. Whose and when. And what happened, on this soil. What is the vertical history, what are the invisible signposts.
And then of course: the networked history and present: the ‘laws’ of the land; the economy of the land; the rituals and the transactions of the land: in our day and age.
Happily then: moving away from just interventions in the landscape configured horizontally only, and diving deeper into the horizontal, the vertical, the networked, along with a typology of signpostia.

III.

Thus: no longer an ‘art’ project, but a project? Or perhaps not even that: an investigation generated and manifested through remnants of these methods, processes, rituals. Design? Political tract?
A story though, maybe, after all: connecting the signposts, in the end, almost as if each signpost is a word, a phrase, juxtaposed with others.
Recognizing its own fragmentedness.
Celebrating its own limits and succinctness.
Any portrait is only a composite of multiple fragments.
The sitescape: a portrait made of signposts, telling and constructing a story of a life, a passage, an ongoing existence.
Complexity coming through the consciousness of insufficiency, of fragmentedness.
No longer art? Or maybe art, but not ‘land art’ or ‘intervention’ or ‘installation’ but a new type: an investigative art, a journalistic art, a truly collaborative art.
Not only because it comes through individual constructions gathered together (in fact, little of that) but because it could not exist without the various players all contributing and fusing their ways and actions.
Could not happen without all together.
A method of creation: SITAGE: an investigative collaborative (art)work and process that brings together multiple fragments and types of pieces to construct a map, a portrait, of a site, through signposts.
For now.

IV. Sitage

The grand piece is not.
One.
A constellation of pieces. Done with one or two or three or four.
Constellation.
Sitage: a group of people come together. They create prompts, constraints and rituals. They generate actions and pieces through those. Simultaneously, each creates whatever of importance, urgency, relevance to themselves. One person and their piece. Or: in pairs, threes, fours. They go through processes that make them feel what they want to feel. Go through processes that are important to them. That are full of relevance to them. Sometimes through play with material. Sometimes through play with ritual. They explore together and make stuff. They also do their thing on their own. At some point: there are artifacts, there are documentations that act as pieces (videos, photos); there are documentations; there are pieces. A curatorial effort links them, connects them, creates a whole. An album of sorts. Songs. Each a song. The songs of the sitage. The final album.

V. Signposts

… are not permanent…
… are not of the same type…
… are not always visible…
… certainly are not interventions…
… although they can be…
… all together tell a kind of story…
… a chaotic one and a crazy one and a sometimes incoherent one…
… but altogether pretty coherent…
… you just have to make the connections…
… visible and invisible…
… objects and non-...
… frames: that make you see the non-signposts as a signpost…
… human, and everything else too…
… and in different ways: moving, performing, being, becoming…
… becoming branch…
… becoming blade…
… of grass…
… images of…
… images un-...
… roots: sewn together…
… time cards with secret messages is what they’ve always been…
… photos generated…
… layered… and layered again… and layered again…
… sun spot: story of: coming to this place…
… of leaving this place and making your way… home…
… this spot… story of…
… branches recomposed…
… and their shadows…
… rocks with writings on them thrown to the waves…
… who’s afraid of them…
… a chronicle of our conversations…
… the conversations as such…
… the vertical history and the networked history…
… and the brutal history of these… worlds…
… our texts and talks manipulated, taken through the grinder of… ai…
… yarn on trees…
… music, composed, mixed…
… a play, solo, in the forest, among roots…
… and trees…
… becoming branch…
… becoming blade…
… of grass…
… one.

VI. Album not-Album: an approximation.

Album analogy.
But not call it that.
Organizational principle.
Physical pieces left here.
Archives box.
Website that’s the Album-not-Album, along with digital archives.