territory

As a group of three, we’re used to negotiating territory within the context of putting together events or shows, but this is the first time we have collaborated on constructing an actual piece of work.

It’s whole different kettle of fish…

Having established the overall territory of the work (the tarp as boundary) we set about placing various objects we’d collected, playing with the space and getting a feel for the potential of the project as a whole. It was interesting (but hardly surprising) that each of us chose an area that wasn’t directly next to another’s ‘work’, and already we were each very aware of ‘boundary’ ‘territory’ and ‘ownership’. It also quickly became evident that, while not wanting to constrain each others’ ideas, some sort of structure needed to be agreed before we could really crack on. So:

We agreed that it was likely that a large part of what would be constructed would evolve from found objects, but that we weren’t limited to this.

We quickly abandoned any notion of ‘relative scale’, and decided to let the work unfold organically to see where it was going. If we found that we wanted negotiate things like scale, placement, use of materials etc. during that process then we would, but the overall feeling was to have this ‘metropolis’ unfold organically and reactively rather than be mapped out beforehand.

We talked a lot about territory, and what that meant, particularly in the context of ownership of the work. Who owns this? Is it the sum of its parts or do we each have a claim to the bits we do? Is that important? Are we going to become territorial? And if so how will we resolve any potential conflict? What happens when one person constructs something and another doesn’t like it or thinks it encroaches on something they have already placed? Or, what if someone wants to demolish or change an existing ‘area’ altogether? How is this negotiated?

We agreed to incorporate an urban planning strategy, whereby ‘planning permission’ would have to be sought and approved regarding changing existing work. But even this can be a stumbling block since we aren’t always in the studio at the same time and issues can’t be resolved immediately. But it makes it interesting in that this process mirrors reality in a way; planning permission in ‘the real world’ is never an immediate process. So the waiting and negotiation becomes a part of the unfolding of the work. It’s also another means of documenting the very real process of collaboration. 

We haven’t put forward any applications yet, although a piece of work was accidentally demolished, but has since been reconstructed.