Together: Writing About People Who Work in Groups
Welcome to Together. This is a regular column and irregular series of longer features we will write for Proximity. Together is devoted to the subject of collaboration, and will feature writing and interviews with pairs and groups who create and maintain creative projects.
A special focus of Together will be groups of two, duos and couples, and especially ones that have multiple kinds of simultaneous relationships. For example, we might write about people who are currently both lovers and working together on a project. There is a dearth of information, both critical writing and published personal reflection, on making collaborative work in groups of two, often because of the intense emotions and intimacy that are a part of being a couple. A couple is a unique micro-power structure that can be inaccessible to others or a source of great tension in a larger group process.
Couples, and coupling, have brought about the dissolution of many highly creative, prolific, art groups. There were important art groups that fell apart because couples within them were abusive to the larger group, or because secret relationships destroyed trust.
We know groups that posited themselves as an alternative, or organized themselves in such a way as to not repeat the dominant culture. Relationships within a group can bring additional challenges, especially when they disintegrate. When it comes to the raw betrayal, lies, personal pain, and many other things related to romantic breakups, theoretical analysis stops and typical human behavior takes over.
We don’t think that this means that these people, or their groups, were inherently “bad.” Things just weren’t discussed, and solutions weren’t found to keep the groups together and mediate the pain. We think that these difficult situations should be talked about openly, so those who want to can learn to make better collaborative groups and partnerships.
Our own collaborative work began in earnest, but also obfuscation and romantic notions of utopian collectivism. These ideas of how to treat each other made it hard for us to pay attention to our needs as individuals. We had to overcome them to build healthy working relationships with ourselves and other collaborators. Some people got chewed up along the way for really petty reasons. It is our hope that this column can repair some of the past damages and prevent others from doing similar things.
We think it’s important to start with introducing ourselves so you know why we think that collaboration is important enough of a topic to cover in an art journal. We are currently collaborators. Our shared work in the group Temporary Services (accom- plished along with our long-time collaborator Marc Fischer) is probably how most people know our output.
Last year, the three of us wrote and edited a book, Group Work (Printed Matter, 2007). It is an invest-igation into the reasons why people work in groups. We inter-viewed several people who have collaborated with artists, writers, activists, music-ians, and others, and asked them to reflect on the good and bad aspects of working in a group. The book listed the names of nearly 400 historic and currently active artist groups.
We have also created several projects together and with others. At one point, we were a couple that lived together while working on projects. Living with other people is always a challenge, whether they are family, roommates, or a lover or spouse. This is not to say that our situation was always hard. There were many great things about living with a work partner, as there are many benefits to living with a love partner. We could keep track of shared projects easily within our shared space. We had a shared language and experience that came from our relationship, which can often come in handy when creating ideas or helping others to understand your shared work.
There were some not-so-great things as well. It was hard to let our-selves take a break from shared projects. There was enormous pressure on both of us to work at a fast pace, mostly because each other’s presence reminded us that work that needed to be done. When things weren’t going particularly well in our relationship, we fell prey to the habit of letting that tension, anger, or sadness leak into our other projects. This worked in the reverse many times as well. If a project wasn’t going well, it was hard to let it go in our home life.
Sometimes it was great to have a roommate and lover with so much in common: goals, ideas, friends and work. However, that can become problematic. A loss of personal identity can happen. Many couples laughingly complain about this after a few months. For example, you might find the inability to go anywhere by yourself without people asking you where your counterpart is.
For people who work together and live together, the possibility of being forever publicly linked to another’s work and personality can be not only frustrating, but consequential in a very good or very bad way to your own future work. It’s hard to initiate projects on your own when your public face is better known as one of a group or pair.
For many reasons, mostly because Brett was an asshole and because Salem is a total bitch, our relationship broke up. We’re now attached to other people romantically, but continue to work together.
During our break up, we were both part of two groups, one that had a large number of members. One of us started dating someone else, who later became a member of one of the groups we were both in. Beyond being a complicated situation for ourselves, it initially made the other group members obviously uncomfortable. It was tough for both of us, and sometimes perhaps even worse for those that we worked with. We strived to work as well as we had in the past, but we still argued a lot in front of other people.
We made a conscious decision, as hard as it was, to keep working in those groups even though sometimes our presence in the room at meetings caused unspoken grief and tension, for each other and for others. We tried to be fair to our other collaborators—to take arguments outside when they were unavoidable, excuse ourselves from decisions in which our opinions might be affected by the break-up, and take long breaks from the shared work one at a time.
It’s been a long time since we were a pair “that way.” We’ve been lucky that our friendship and working relationship have turned out to be the kinds that last, even though our romantic partnership fizzled. But we’ve had the best shared luck in finding the people that we work with—collaborators who were willing to ride the uncertain moments along with us and continue working for the long haul.
We had talked for several years about taking on a project like Together, and could have really benefited from others’ experiences when we were splitting up and trying to continue working. We hope to compile various installments of Together into a book that can function, in some respects, as a guide for working in groups and dealing with being in (or undoing) romantic coupling while continuing a work relationship.
We’re not interested in gossiping about ourselves or others, and will not do that here. However, we know our story the best, and we hope that telling it will create dialogue and maybe inspire others to think about their own collaborations and relationships. We welcome your stories as well. Please contact us at: salem@temporaryservices.org
by Brett Bloom & Salem Collo-Julin
A special focus of Together will be groups of two, duos and couples, and especially ones that have multiple kinds of simultaneous relationships. For example, we might write about people who are currently both lovers and working together on a project. There is a dearth of information, both critical writing and published personal reflection, on making collaborative work in groups of two, often because of the intense emotions and intimacy that are a part of being a couple. A couple is a unique micro-power structure that can be inaccessible to others or a source of great tension in a larger group process.
Couples, and coupling, have brought about the dissolution of many highly creative, prolific, art groups. There were important art groups that fell apart because couples within them were abusive to the larger group, or because secret relationships destroyed trust.
We know groups that posited themselves as an alternative, or organized themselves in such a way as to not repeat the dominant culture. Relationships within a group can bring additional challenges, especially when they disintegrate. When it comes to the raw betrayal, lies, personal pain, and many other things related to romantic breakups, theoretical analysis stops and typical human behavior takes over.
We don’t think that this means that these people, or their groups, were inherently “bad.” Things just weren’t discussed, and solutions weren’t found to keep the groups together and mediate the pain. We think that these difficult situations should be talked about openly, so those who want to can learn to make better collaborative groups and partnerships.
Our own collaborative work began in earnest, but also obfuscation and romantic notions of utopian collectivism. These ideas of how to treat each other made it hard for us to pay attention to our needs as individuals. We had to overcome them to build healthy working relationships with ourselves and other collaborators. Some people got chewed up along the way for really petty reasons. It is our hope that this column can repair some of the past damages and prevent others from doing similar things.
We think it’s important to start with introducing ourselves so you know why we think that collaboration is important enough of a topic to cover in an art journal. We are currently collaborators. Our shared work in the group Temporary Services (accom- plished along with our long-time collaborator Marc Fischer) is probably how most people know our output.
Last year, the three of us wrote and edited a book, Group Work (Printed Matter, 2007). It is an invest-igation into the reasons why people work in groups. We inter-viewed several people who have collaborated with artists, writers, activists, music-ians, and others, and asked them to reflect on the good and bad aspects of working in a group. The book listed the names of nearly 400 historic and currently active artist groups.
We have also created several projects together and with others. At one point, we were a couple that lived together while working on projects. Living with other people is always a challenge, whether they are family, roommates, or a lover or spouse. This is not to say that our situation was always hard. There were many great things about living with a work partner, as there are many benefits to living with a love partner. We could keep track of shared projects easily within our shared space. We had a shared language and experience that came from our relationship, which can often come in handy when creating ideas or helping others to understand your shared work.
There were some not-so-great things as well. It was hard to let our-selves take a break from shared projects. There was enormous pressure on both of us to work at a fast pace, mostly because each other’s presence reminded us that work that needed to be done. When things weren’t going particularly well in our relationship, we fell prey to the habit of letting that tension, anger, or sadness leak into our other projects. This worked in the reverse many times as well. If a project wasn’t going well, it was hard to let it go in our home life.
Sometimes it was great to have a roommate and lover with so much in common: goals, ideas, friends and work. However, that can become problematic. A loss of personal identity can happen. Many couples laughingly complain about this after a few months. For example, you might find the inability to go anywhere by yourself without people asking you where your counterpart is.
For people who work together and live together, the possibility of being forever publicly linked to another’s work and personality can be not only frustrating, but consequential in a very good or very bad way to your own future work. It’s hard to initiate projects on your own when your public face is better known as one of a group or pair.
For many reasons, mostly because Brett was an asshole and because Salem is a total bitch, our relationship broke up. We’re now attached to other people romantically, but continue to work together.
During our break up, we were both part of two groups, one that had a large number of members. One of us started dating someone else, who later became a member of one of the groups we were both in. Beyond being a complicated situation for ourselves, it initially made the other group members obviously uncomfortable. It was tough for both of us, and sometimes perhaps even worse for those that we worked with. We strived to work as well as we had in the past, but we still argued a lot in front of other people.
We made a conscious decision, as hard as it was, to keep working in those groups even though sometimes our presence in the room at meetings caused unspoken grief and tension, for each other and for others. We tried to be fair to our other collaborators—to take arguments outside when they were unavoidable, excuse ourselves from decisions in which our opinions might be affected by the break-up, and take long breaks from the shared work one at a time.
It’s been a long time since we were a pair “that way.” We’ve been lucky that our friendship and working relationship have turned out to be the kinds that last, even though our romantic partnership fizzled. But we’ve had the best shared luck in finding the people that we work with—collaborators who were willing to ride the uncertain moments along with us and continue working for the long haul.
We had talked for several years about taking on a project like Together, and could have really benefited from others’ experiences when we were splitting up and trying to continue working. We hope to compile various installments of Together into a book that can function, in some respects, as a guide for working in groups and dealing with being in (or undoing) romantic coupling while continuing a work relationship.
We’re not interested in gossiping about ourselves or others, and will not do that here. However, we know our story the best, and we hope that telling it will create dialogue and maybe inspire others to think about their own collaborations and relationships. We welcome your stories as well. Please contact us at: salem@temporaryservices.org
by Brett Bloom & Salem Collo-Julin
