Creative Comrades: Collaborating with Other Artists

“The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind.” Thomas Carlyle

Cell, Taylor Gammage, and me, performing in 2003

My collaborations with other artists have been rewarding, creative experiences. Over the years, I’ve worked with musicians, a dancer, and other spoken word performers, co-creating works of art that I could not have otherwise done myself.

What is Artistic Collaboration?

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. Oliver Wendell Holmes

In the simplest sense, artistic collaboration occurs when artists combine and integrate their art forms and creative skills for an art project. Mark Dunhill & Tamiko O’Brien of Collabarts.org suggest

“Artistic collaboration still raises some interesting and crucial questions about the nature of authorship, authenticity and the artists’ relationships to their works & audiences that inevitably disrupts the persistent and popular image of the artist as a ‘heroic’ solitary figure…Common to most if not all collaborative practices…is an implicit critique of the idea of the artist as a figure that stands outside of society engaged in an internal singular dialogue.”

In other words, collaborative art skews traditional notions of artistic authorship as unique, individualistic, and singular. Instead, it suggests that artistic vision can be a shared cultural and historical phenomenon and that the creative process can be a conversation among artists. Thus, the results of an artistic collaboration are not simply the art object, but also the shared conversation itself.

For some artists, this questioning of traditional notions of artistic authorship is an overtly political statement.  However, I’d venture to guess that, for most artists, collaboration is simply a way to artistically “play” and experiment with other creative minds.

Rewards and Benefits

Among the many rewards and benefits of collaborating with other artists are the opportunities to:

• connect with other creative minds
• engage in the creative process in a new way
• grow as an artist
• produce a work that artistically and creatively surpasses its individual creators

Personally and creatively connecting with other artists can enhance one’s own skills and creative vision. Also, learning to engage in the creative process in a whole new way can become the foundation for new art practices. Growth as an artist can mean the production of better, more-challenging work. Finally, producing art that grows and lives outside the confines of the individual and his or her identity is a significant goal for many artists.

Artistic Collaboration in Practice

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. Theodore Roosevelt

Collaboration is a creative practice that requires mutual respect and cooperation among artists.

If respect and cooperation are missing, then the process of creating a collaborative art piece will be an unhappy one for everyone involved. However, even when artists respect each other’s talents, creative skills, and artistic work, differences in how they create art will inevitably appear.

The challenge is to use those differences to strengthen the art work.

When that happens, a collaborative piece of art surpasses the creators who give birth to it and comes to take on a whole life of its own. This miracle of a collaborative creative birth and the living art that it produces keeps me going back to collaborations.

Collaborative Possibilities for Spoken Word

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. Alexander Graham Bell

Here are just a few possibilities for collaborations that include spoken word:

• Creating poems for collaborative performances. While I’ve never co-written a piece of poetry, I have written poems that were intended for two or more voices. My poem “Spectator” is a piece written about my long-time partner and our romantic relationship. While my partner is not a performer, I’ve been able to convince her on several occasions to perform this piece with me. Working with her and coaxing out her creative talents made for fun and rewarding experiences. Another poem intended for two or three voices is a piece I wrote entitled “This is a story,” which relates women’s experiences of different forms of violence.  While I believe this is a good piece, it simply doesn’t convey the full-range of its potential meanings when I read it solo. Rather, the addition of other women’s voices strengthens and intensifies its meanings. Thus, the piece when performed collaboratively surpasses what I can do alone and comes to take on an artistic life of its own.
• Creating performance showcases. My collaborative experiences with other spoken word performers are a mainstay in my work. Over the years, I’ve participated in several collaborative performance showcases. One of my formative experiences in collaboration was my participation in Cliterati, a touring performance group which consisted of revolving performers. Often enough, however, my poet-comrades Karen G., Amanda Kail, and myself took up the mantle of Cliterati and crafted collaborative spoken word performances which we presented on stages around the U.S. The process of creating these performances required that we know each other’s poetry well enough to make suggestions about the line-up of poems. It also required that we negotiate an equitable amount of time for each of us to perform. Finally, it required lots of encouraging support of one another and enthusiasm and respect for each other’s poetry. A similar performance showcase in which I participated was Dyke Verse City, which included music by Sonia Tetlow and poetry by Amanda and myself. Not only did each of us offer our individual contributions, but we also performed all together or in various pairings. With Dyke Verse City, I had an opportunity to learn how music and poetry could creatively coalesce for a kind of rock opera.
• Creating music. I’ve collaborated and performed with several musician friends, but most of my musical collaborations have been with the co-producer of my upcoming CD, the songwriter Ross Falzone. I wrote a rap for his song “Ain’t It A Shame,” which appeared on his CD Radical Heart (2004), as well as another rap that was featured in “The Truth Has God On Its Side” on his CD Life Here On Earth (2008). Also, on Radical Heart, Ross included a musical cover version of my piece “The Crapitalist.” Finally, Ross wrote music for my song “Mama Got Da Blues,” and we’re in the process of putting music to my rant, “War.” Creative flexibility and open-mindedness are crucial to the collaborative process. For instance, one lesson I learned from these collaborations is that how I hear my own words may not be the best musical rhythm for a piece.  Thus, I’m learning to slow down and shift the rhythm for “War” in order to accommodate a new and interesting beat, laid down by the teenage musician, Rosario Falzone. By doing so, not only is “War” made stronger, but there’s more space for the lyrics, making it easier for the listener to absorb them.
• Creating a choreo-poem. My collaboration with a dancer involved writing, performing, and recording a spoken word piece that might thematically enhance choreography. Through this experience, I learned how to watch and interpret modern dance in a whole new way. The result of our collaboration was a performance that delved into the universality of fear. But what I took with me was the reward of learning an entirely new artistic skill.

Other collaborations for spoken word artists may include working with videographers, photographers, and other visual artists as well as playwrights, screenwriters, fiction writers, and other poets. Also, many spoken word artists have worked with DJs and sound design artists. In the end, the possibilities for collaborative work are limited only by our creative imaginations.

Collaboration as Experimentation and Connection

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have an apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. George Bernard Shaw

In the best sense, artistic collaboration is one way in which artists creatively “play” with one another, experimenting with different art forms and the way they may coalesce, contradict, enhance, or otherwise “speak” to one another. It is through the creative processes of experimentation and play that one gains not simply art but also a sense of artistic camaraderie and creative connection.

Have you participated in artistic collaborations? What were they? Did you experience conflicts or problems? What were the rewards?

If you’ve enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it. Thanks.