Abstract

Collaboration in the studio art classroom is an amalgamation of students, materials, ideas, and skills. This assemblage of human and non-human factors can create unique pedagogical experiences for students. It can also create a support network that helps students in their early careers as artists and art educators. The idea of the artist as a lone genius persists from modernism even though many galleries, biennials, and art fairs have embraced collaboration as a way of art making. The lone artist, working away in the studio on the next masterwork is dispelled by other artist periods and movements, where we see other ways of working such as the apprentice and master model, or more artist collectives and groups where ideas are interchanged, such as Dada, or the Bauhaus.
In this study we look at the experiences of students, professional artists, and post- secondary instructors who utilize collaboration. Using these experiences, the study outlines an orientation towards collaboration that can help instructors plan collaborative assignments in their class. This study uses both phenomenology and Actor Network Theory to describe the experiences of participants. Phenomenology allows for deep description of the experiences of participants, however, it does not fully account for the agency of non-human actants and privileges the subject. Therefore, Actor Network Theory has been utilized to account for these non-human factors while still privileging the experience of the participant. This was done through an interview process where participants recounted their experiences privileging both their relationship with their collaborators as well as with materials and technologies that they used to collaborate.
These interviews overlapped in many ways and three major categories helped organize the experiences of the students, artists, and instructors. They were ‘flexibility’ and ‘openness’, ‘structure and process, and ‘community and relationships’. Flexibility and openness described the participants relationships to each other, as well as the materials that they used. Structure and process helped participants navigate the exchange of ideas that is necessary for collaboration without becoming fixed on the end result. Finally, community and relationships were the overarching frame and ethos that allowed for collaboration.