Unravelling the frontiers of artistic collaboration: an exploration of the space of improvisation

This practice-based inquiry examines the concept of ‘collaboration’ with artists from different disciplines who have an improvisatory practice. It explores how the disciplines unravel in the intricate array of interactions that take place in the making of a collaborative piece and it also examines the complex dynamics of improvisation in relation to collaboration. There are two principal objectives; firstly, to investigate the frontiers of collaboration when artists from different disciplines work together. Secondly, to explore the concept of ‘space’ - and its various dimensions - in improvisation as experienced by the artists participating in the research.

The research methods include auto-ethnography and narrative inquiry as approaches to interacting with and documenting of the process. The primary data for the investigation emanates from two works (which were performed live in the course of the research), Beginnings in the Dark and Flux: Five iterations of Becoming. Along with the live performances and the audio-visual recordings of the works, the transcripts from the voice recordings of the three artists in dialogic conversation during the creative process forms an exceptional foundation for this research.

A number of findings have emerged. Firstly, the shifting of boundaries in an essentially ‘emergent’ process means that they ‘dissolve’. This is suggested by the transformations they undergo in the exchanges that take place in experiential discourse. Secondly, collaborators ‘build’ a customised improvisational space which is ‘shared, conceptual and experiential’; each new collaboration is identified as having its own unique space. Thirdly, the term ‘pre-disciplinarity’ – referring to discourse that takes place before or outside discipline-specific notions - is proposed to identify the process of finding what is in common and what is essential to the making of a new work.