Artistic Bedfellows, Histories Theories & Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices

New Book

Artistic Bedfellows, edited by Holly Crawford

Released 9/28/09 Published by UPA/Roman & Littlefield.


Although the modernist notion of art as autonomous
has been thoroughly contested, the discourse of the
artist as celebrated individual persists. As a counter
to that, this eclectic collection of writings on
'collaboration as a cultural practice' starts from the
standpoint that collective approaches have been a
characteristic feature of artistic production
throughout the 20th century and that a rich cultural and
artistic interchange results from shared experience
and dialogue. Informed by contemporary notions of an
emergent 'relational' sensibility and participative
forms of social and cultural activity (such as the
worldwide web) the editor, Holly Crawford, brings together a series
of interviews, essays, conversations
[img][img] and remarks on collaboration. International visual
artists, critics, writers and musicians explore a
range of histories, discourses and theories relating
to communal, collective practices including FLUXUS, Zero, GRAV
and SPUR in mid-20th century, women artists in the GDR and
the Critical Art Ensemble in the Eighties and the
experimental New Social Art School set up in Aberdeen
in 2004. The resulting anthology, a considerable
collaborative project in its own right, challenges[/img][/img]
orthodoxies and engages in the vital and current
debate within the global artistic community about
participative cooperative approaches.