Search Results

This book aims to understand the psycho-social dynamics of forming long-term collaborations and creative partnership—intellectual and artistic collaboration and co-construction of knowledge—that is part of a broader grasp of a cultural-historical project in human sciences. Through general observations of long-term collaborations, interviews, Q-sort commentaries, and biographical information, the book has developed theoretical approaches and models explaining collaboration. In addition it is useful to identify emotional and cognitive collaborative dynamics or to undermine long-term success and to document how experienced thinkers engage in joint efforts in a societal culture geared towards individual achievement. In the context of the dynamic interdependence, the research in this book stresses on Vygotsky's culture-historical psychology and feminist theory.

This chapter examines Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. It suggests that this opera was a landmark collaborative creation of U.S. modernist artists engaged in early-twentieth-century efforts to establish a distinctly and genuinely American voice in transatlantic high culture. It also highlights the queer expressive potential of artistic abstraction within the homophobic context of twentieth-century U.S. culture, and the crucial confluence of queer lives and culture with artistic activity and culture.

This chapter describes experiences in collaborative projects through the 1990s and from 2009 to 2010 that have made an impression about how ethnographic work builds collaborative contexts. It provides a commentary on the perspective in collaborations with Doug Holmes, who co-authored an account on sustained collaborative friendship, and Keith Murphy, who tried to introduce a design-influenced pedagogical form that teaches the model of ethnographic research in a collaborative form. It also talks about the collaboration with Luke Cantarella and Christine Hegel on the atelier model of artistic collaboration across ethnographic projects based on scenic studio design and workshop methods. The chapter explores the heightened assessments of change that was brought on by the self-consciousness in the 1990s. It mentions a series of annuals by the University of Chicago Press on recruiting those with specific ethnographic experience to document change.

This chapter focuses on the collaboration between the Trey McIntyre Project from Boise, Idaho, and the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company from Seoul, Korea—a key example of the “collaborative turn” in American cultural diplomacy, a hallmark of twentyfirst century approaches to dance-in-diplomacy. It follows the two companies as they tour the United States with a new piece, The Unkindness of Ravens, created by McIntyre. Featuring dancers from both countries the United States and Korea, the project was funded by the State Department after TMP’s tour of Asia through DanceMotion USA.

This chapter discusses the experiences of the author and Lan Jun in facing the realities of life in Australia. Though they were receiving unemployment benefits from the Australian government, they immediately went to work creating art and holding exhibitions. This chapter explains that during this period, her collaboration with Lan Jun had somehow led her to hate art and she felt that they only continued to be together because of their mutual dependency.

This chapter introduces Harold Bruce Forsythe, a musician who became one of Still's enthusiasts and commentators. It shows that while Forsythe's comments on Still were largely ignored by the popular writers of the Harlem Renaissance/New Negro movement, he had significant artistic collaborations with Still and even influenced Still's personal life. This chapter follows Forsythe during his early years, his journey to Los Angeles, and finally, the friendship that he shared with Still.

This chapter discusses the author's travel to the U.S. after she was persuaded by her college friend Meng Meng to go there. It relates the author's realization of the need for her to do what she had to do without obeying orders or request from Lan Jun. It also describes how the author took a white fiberglass cast of Lan Jun on a performance work in New York. She believed that it was their one and only work of collaboration in the true sense of the word.

This chapter is dedicated to Monty Cantsin, a multiple-use name adopted by North American and European mail artists as a personification of their collaborative practices. Because Monty Cantsin was released with no instructions for use, it became subjected to individual appropriations that compromised its communal character.