Un-naming Collaboration

‚Continuing with what has started without knowing it has‘ was the first chapter of the research on un-naming and collaboration of artists Susanna Ylikoski and Raz Mantell. We approached the thematic through the act of walking and taking a walk. Our sub questions revolved around questioning female bodies and ownership. The research was shared in a performative frame in Dock11 theater in Berlin in 2022, where the audience was invited to engage with the research through both viewing a dance score and reading a booklet archiving the research material. The work was invited later to perform at Stadt theater Spandau Art in the City project in 2023. 

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‚Continuing containing‘ is the 2nd chapter of the research, where we are more in-depth with un-naming. We wanted to explore how by the act of things coming together creation unfolds. In the work, alone our bodies aren't saying much. The clothes we are wearing aren't saying much. The sound alone doesn't perhaps say much, neither does the light. The stone placed in the space in a puddle of water doesn't say much: it's neither big nor small. But perhaps over time all these elements begin to speak and sing. The 2nd chapter was shared in a performative frame in Dock11 in 2023. 

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In the 3 chapter, in ada Studios Berlin residency, we asked: What is collaboration? What shapes can it take? And what is enabled within and through collaboration? We have been looking into the means and spaces in which an exchange happens. And how this exchange is a creative act. 

We perceive collaboration as similar to biological processes. A specific environment is created depending on the pre-existing vegetation, soil, and climate. Our bodies and the past bodies of our research are perceived as the vegetation, the space as the soil, and the climate as the current winter time.

We want to challenge our relation to social hierarchies: exploring and breaking ideas of beginnings and endings, initiating and reacting, creating and executing. In that way, it gives space for a view on coexistence - a web, a forest, a society, a collaboration. Within it, everyone and everything contributes to a force, to something to become. 

"Jade is praised as precious

but its strength is being stone."

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, as translated by Ursula K. Le Guin