"No artistic collaboration is ever either a natural or linear progression towards a higher state of aesthetic perfection. A collaboration can seem to take you backwards even when you are meant to be progressing at double speed. Learning to collaborate is often perceived as a contradiction. It is assumed to be as natural as breathing. However, submitting to the needs of others, presenting your own within a shared space, and then allowing the dialogue to shape the outcome can test the limits of an individual's faith and maturity. To develop ideas in an open environment is to risk seeing them in a naked and unformed manner, it may reveal their greatest potential but also expose their deepest flaws. This gesture requires unequivocal trust in your partners. There must be a confidence that the process of revelation is not betrayed in ways that would harm the other.
Collaboration presupposes mutual understanding, shared languages, common goals and the ability to negotiate across differences. These qualities and skills are not common, nor are they often presented as part of the identity of the artist. The mythical images of the artist are mostly as solitary figures, rebelling against social rules and pushing the boundaries of institutions. However, the myth of the artist as an outsider is a destructive self-image. It fosters contempt for the complex ways in which the artist is entangled with others."
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"Creativity never occurs in a social vacuum. All forms of artistic practice are structured like a language. The proliferation in forms of practice has also extended the need to multiply our codes of reference and our dexterity in cultural translation. Learning to recognise and respond in the various languages expressed in any group activity is an essential task for collaboration. These qualities can only be achieved with familiarity, good will and an extended period of exchange. The time to develop a collective experience and the personal confidence to express inner needs are crucial elements in any collaborative process. Collaboration can either lead to a new hybrid work, in which the conjunction enhances or cancels the sum of its contributors. Collaboration can create a new third way of seeing the connection between things or it can deepen the rift between. To see a bridge may be as useful as to witness the gulf, either way the difference of others needs to be recognised. Following from here is the challenge of living with and leading towards new spheres of connection, the search for new media which contain both positions and perspectives, and a form which enables the integrity of the individual as well the space that comes from being in a collective to grow."
[http://www.capelan.com/texts/ethics.htm]
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