Paris 8 University / Legacies and modalities of co-creation practices

Screenshot, film still from an archive film (André Ferrer collection) from Maude Mandart’s research.

While co-cre­ation based artistic prac­tices that engage with the social field have been sub­ject to a growing interest in Anglo-Saxon coun­tries over the last 15 years, they have rarely been ana­lyzed in France from crit­ical, his­tor­ical or the­o­ret­ical per­spec­tives until today, when they occupy a cen­tral place among these dis­courses. Among such prac­tices, we would like to dis­tin­guish « cre­ative par­tic­i­pa­tion » — or when « the vis­itor pro­vides the con­tent for an ele­ment of the art­work, within a struc­ture estab­lished by the artist » (according to the def­i­ni­tion sug­gested by Pablo Helguera in Education for Socially Engaged Art) from « col­lab­o­ra­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion », which inter­ests us in the first place. The latter allows the col­lab­o­rator to « share the respon­si­bility for devel­oping the struc­ture and the con­tent of an art­work, in col­lab­o­ra­tion and in direct dia­logue with the artist » (Helguera).

« Collaborative par­tic­i­pa­tion » or co-cre­ation neces­si­tates an ini­tial inde­ci­sion — in the con­struc­tion of the pro­cess, its goals or the modal­i­ties of encounter. Hesitating, allowing for dis­cus­sions, con­fronta­tions and adjust­ments that are inherent to col­lec­tive cre­ation will stim­u­late the con­struc­tion of rela­tions as well as indi­vidual cre­ativity. A set of ques­tions regarding the pro­duc­tion mech­a­nisms of an art­work and its trans­mis­sion thus arises. Co-cre­ation gen­er­ates a space of freedom that trig­gers a reflec­tion on power rela­tions and on the dis­tinc­tions artic­u­lated between pro­fes­sionals and ama­teurs. It also allows us to acknowl­edge our polit­ical agency. Thus, we believe it is impor­tant to think about co-cre­ation prac­tices in rela­tion to alter­na­tive ped­a­gogies: in the South-American tra­di­tion ini­ti­ated by Paolo Freire as well as in people’s edu­ca­tion move­ments, they too aspire to be eman­ci­pa­tory tools, notably through coop­er­a­tion. Lastly, we observe that such prac­tices favor frag­mented forms like ellipsis, mon­tage, col­lage and/or assem­blage. By making the place allo­cated to the other sen­sible, these pro­cesses high­light the hetero­geneity of the col­lec­tive, and allow the con­struc­tion of mul­tiple voices wherever these prac­tices rely on orality.

The research pro­gram “Le­ga­cies and modal­i­ties of co-cre­ation prac­tices” began on December 5, 2015 with a study day at MAC VAL con­tem­po­rary art museum in Vitry. We are now devel­oping a series of invi­ta­tions in the frame of the sem­inar “Ex­pe­ri­ence and ter­ri­tory: col­lab­o­ra­tive artistic prac­tices” orga­nized by Marie Preston at Paris 8 University. This research is sit­u­ated at the cross­roads between artistic, soci­o­log­ical and anthro­po­log­ical fields, just like co-cre­ation prac­tices operate at the junc­tion of var­ious dis­ci­plines.

Research pro­gram ini­ti­ated and run by Céline Poulin et Marie Preston, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stéphanie Airaud.
University Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (Équipe Teamed). MAC VAL con­tem­po­rary art museum in Vitry-sur-Seine. In part­ner­ship with Kadist Art Foundation and Villa Vassilieff.

See the detailed pro­gram and sem­inar dates in the article Events.