Rust Never Sleeps: Nuances In Collaborative Creation (2022)

By Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas

0. The talk that we presented during the symposium was abridged to meet the time restraints imposed by the power outage and the resulting relocation of the meeting. This is the original document that we had prepared.

We have colour coded the talk to indicate who is speaking: Valerie is blue and Daniel is red.

1. When Tom (Konyves) asked us to speak about collaboration, we thought we should remind ourselves what it means. We decided to focus on some of the two-person collaborations that we have carried out.

But, if the conversation was expanded to include everyone here, each of us would probably be reminded of their own joint projects and partnerships that would fit under the concept of collaboration. Within the expanded concept, we might all find our relation to the alliances Tom put into motion when he decided to create this exhibition. Thank you, Tom!

“THOUGH WE SEE THE SAME WORLD, WE SEE IT THROUGH DIFFERENT EYES.” – VIRGINIA WOOLF, THREE GUINEAS, 1938.

Three Guineas

2. WAYS WE COLLABORATE

Because we have been working together for over 30 years, some of the things we have lined up to talk about are things that we have absorbed and usually do not have to discuss. That being said, it seems that after all of this time, we could each know what the other is thinking, and sometimes that is the case, but it is not something we rely upon.

We found out that we are often thinking from opposite ends of the spectrum

– Maybe it’s a language thing?

But we think that this is a key point in holding our interest in and curiosity of working together.

We should mention that we continue to carry out individual projects as well.

3. While video and film are forms of creation that can use the labour of a multitude of persons, poetry writing, for us, is an individual gesture.

In the beginning, we wanted to be together and realized that if that was to happen, we would have to set up a framework to work within. We sat down to write scripts together; some are still floating in our files.

4. WE SET OURSELVES UP TO WORK UNDER THE TITLE OF LIMIT(E) PRODUCTIONS.

5. The first videopoetries we made under Limit(e) Productions were Slices of Life (1990-91), a series of five works.

While creating that series, we began a way of collaborating that stuck. Since that time, we often work in series, creating short works intended for individual screening / or to screen as a program. Another effective way of collaborating was to apply to work together to do our Master of Fine Arts Degrees at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1991-1993. This was not something that was done at that time but they accepted our proposal and that’s how we went ahead. slides of Transitory, then In Transit.

6. At The School of the Art Institute, collaborating gave us the chance to develop two substantial projects: the multimodal installation Transitory and the video In Transit. We put In Transit (1992) together as a cut and paste from our notebooks. (In 2019, we re-edited the video.)

7. SOMETIMES WE BASE A WORK ON A QUOTE FROM A WRITER AND WE CONSIDER THIS TO FORM A COLLABORATION, NOT ONLY WITH EACH OTHER, BUT WITH THE WRITER QUOTED.

8. Pilgrimage from our Everglades series uses a quote from David Henry Thoreau’s Walking: ‘When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable, and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum.’

9. Everglades is an example of a project stemming from a residency. Often, we work holistically, within a framework that allows for individual sensitivities to bubble to the surface. As we hike and explore, we experience the same locations from our individual perspectives. We are in the habit of recording a lot of material when we get out. At the end of the day, we review the video footage, photographs and soundtracks, highlighting our favorites. From there, we work on poems and stories inspired by our research. Sometimes we revisit sites to gather additional material.

10. EVERY COLLABORATION BEGINS WITH A DISCUSSION

11. When an idea arrives, there is often a vision of the media and direction it needs. Usually only one of us writes the poetry or poetic prose but each works on proofing.

If the writing involves poetry, it may develop into videopoetry. While making videopoems is a big part of our text / image / beat work, we also write essays and scripts. When we write poetry with a book in mind, we sometimes get out to photograph specific images, other times we consult our banks of moving images.

When we are invited to residencies, we get out to work with two cameras and sometimes a separate audio recorder. When we get to the editing stage, there is sometimes negotiation around who uses what. There has to be some give-and-take as, when a work is completed, the visuals and sound tend to create a certain branding.

12. Leaving São Paulo is one way we have collaborated. We each create sound mixes; Daniel is also a musician. For LSP, I wrote the text. Daniel created the music / sound mix and edited the video using footage we recorded during the taxi ride out of the city.

13. THAT WHICH DIGITAL MEDIA HAS GIFTED TO CREATORS: IF THERE IS A VISION, IT IS POSSIBLE TO REALIZE IT, TO HAVE IT VOICED AND SEEN.

14. The progress of our work in video has reflection in the advances of video production technology. This can be said for both our collaborative work history and our individual projects.

In the mid-to late 1990’s there was a lot of talk circulating about the promise of media accessibility. It sounded great but also like something like ‘too good to be true – not to be trusted’.

But when digital access became truly available in the early 2000’s, it provided a major change in technology accessibility for artists.

As much as video creation technology had slowed the realization of projects, computer use speeded the progress. And, by then, the Internet was making research easier.

It was a time that presented freedom from the need to rely on technicians to assist us in doing our work. In Canada, the top-down / tech heavy legacy of film culture had been chipped away at during the 1980’s as artists-run centres provided access to then state-of-the-art, analogue video suites. A lot of experimental work was done during those times, but you still had to stay ‘close to home’ to access the technological advantages afforded by the centres.

15. A truly great advantage presented itself when digital cameras became available and it became possible to edit on home computers.

Back in the mid 1980’s, many artists became accustomed to working on word processing. Desktop publishing was available, since the mid 80’s, so the headspace of the videopoet was already familiar with ‘file formats’ when it became possible to edit video on laptops.

16. THE INTERNET AND THE GLOBAL VIDEOPOETRY COMMUNITY HAS CREATED ACCESSIBILITY AND SPEEDED UP THE PROCESS OF GETTING IDEAS OUT – OF BEING SEEN AND HEARD THROUGH FESTIVALS, WEBSITES AND FORUMS

17. We started out as visual artists, and, at that time, the visual artist had to take control of all aspects of a production: from idea to finished work. It shaped the way we worked when we made the move toward independent video production and still does.

18. We fit into the category of Artist-Entrepreneurs and we have learned to work within a structure that we could call a PME. (Petit et Moyenne Enterprise, or – a small to medium sized business)

Some of our videopoetry projects have characteristics in the structural example of Georges Méliès. He probably represents the best example of the artist-entrepreneur concept. In addition to the important contributions he made to early film development, and experimental editing, he re-invented himself many times during his career.

When we met, we each had already been working as artists, exhibiting, and starting to create videopoetry projects.

19. I started art school in the heyday of conceptual art, then I left to find work, mostly in labour jobs. I returned to school 9 years later, to study in a hot glass program.

By the 4^th year, I was more interested in the surface of the glass and cold working. After that, I moved quickly through various forms of plastic arts before starting to work with moving pictures and sound. I was ready to get out of the studio, away from the sawdust, the smell of paint, and I wanted to work in nice clean electronic suites. I also wanted to have more dialogue with other artists and public audiences.

When I first approached the idea of working with moving pictures and sound, I wondered if it was possible to make the leap. I had been working with text, in drawings, sculptures, and installations, but before making the switch, I was questioning if my ideas would work when animated on the screen. It took a leap of faith.

20. I always wanted to do everything, to touch as many forms as possible.

One of my early childhood memories is that my mother would give me jars of water and food coloring. The game was to add the colour to the water and mix them up.

In a sense, I always wanted to combine forms and media, and to not only play purely with water or colour. The same thing was going on when I began to work in video and videopoetry.

I can see now that I always believed in what could be called ‘contamination’ or ‘cross pollination’.

Today, it seems we have gone beyond the differences between painting and sculpture, between space and time, but surprisingly there is still resistance to the desire of combining media.

When I started to work with moving images, there were also streams of texts, sounds, and poetry that could be included. It felt as if I was playing with the water and colours again.

21. LANGUAGE AS A COLLABORATIVE PLATFORM

22. Another element of our collaborative involves reaching out to both French and English audiences. I handle most of our inhouse French translations; Valerie handles the English. We check back and forth – and we usually have a third person proofing if the work is going to book form. We have found that moving texts back and forth between languages helps us spot if anything is not clear.

23. We have often moved for our work and we grew a certain independence during that process. Along with the freedom of relocating comes a stigma: the un-investability of the less-well known. With independence from belonging to institutions other than those of your own making, the responsibility of being out there can present challenges to finding your audience. For example, if you are not a teacher or a student, you might find the need to begin your own PME.

24. Here is how we dealt with being ‘in-between’ venues. We moved from Calgary to New Brunswick, and rather than waiting to get re-established, we opened an installation space in the trunk of our car. Some galleries were actually interested in the idea of us setting up outside during the opening receptions for exhibitions inside. We were able to exhibit some of our own work as well as several other local artists before winter conditions made it impossible. (1996-97)

25. GOLD / RUSH
The second iteration of TRUNK came in 1999 when we had invitations

from the artist-run centres: Hamilton Artists Inc. and the Eastern Edge Gallery.

We created GOLD / RUSH (Daniel was GOLD, I was RUSH) and we brought the exhibitions to both Hamilton, Ontario during the Aquafest, and to St. John’s, Newfoundland for the Contemporary Arts Exhibition.

26. The Trunk 75 (2001) event was an exhibition organized to be set up in the parkade of Alberta College of Art + Design. We were teaching in the Media Arts + Digital Technologies Department and asked to instigate a TRUNK exhibition to celebrate the College’s 75th anniversary.

Planned out during the summer months, the event took place on September 29 + 30, 2001. The events of September 11 made it a very difficult time to carry through with the project. But for the Students, Instructors and Independent Artists who participated, the event offered chances to socialize during that very difficult time period.

28. WORKSHOPS

Workshops are great for sharing collaborative ideas. They offer chances to experiment and the talks that go on during the get-together of exploring the how-to are always interesting.

29. The Visible/Invisible workshops enabled discussions surrounding ideas of reducing our footprint / impact when visiting natural areas.

These are some locations where we carried out workshops:

2015 (spring) Anthropocene Exhibition, Conference + workshop, U of Miami, FL. Also, preparation in the snow – before leaving Moncton.

2016 (fall) Art/Nature, slides + short video, U de Moncton, Moncton, NB.

2018 Conservation of the Gulf Coast, presentation and workshop during residency at Osprey, FL.

Visible/Invisible (2016)

31. After completing three ecologically-based projects in the South of Florida (2014 – 2019), we wanted to do a project based closer to home, so we got out to investigate the Fundy biosphere.

There are some overlaps with the dates of our longer projects. For a while before COVID-19 arrived, we had several projects on the go at the same time.

33. Fundy is an installation and book based on a series of 15 videopoetries that we created from material gathered during our exploration in and around the biosphere. The book includes a series of short essays we call capsules and an essay by Curator Laura Ritchie of the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, NS.

Earlier this year we revisited sites along the Fundy coast and saw firsthand some radical changes to places we had featured in our videopoems. As a result of winter storms, extreme erosion had eaten away some of the coastline. The cave in our NOW video no longer exists. Although we have always enjoyed sharing our work as documenters, we suddenly got a keen sense of the value of our recordings.

Another aspect of witnessing this erosion is that, as layers have been stripped away from our coastlines, we are now able to look back into geological time. We see proof of earlier layers of existence.

34. THE FUTURE OF ART: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

35. Festivals that offer free entry do not often offer remuneration, but they represent chances to be seen and therefore to find audiences. Videopoetry has both poetic and political potential. There is a renewed interest in poetry and, in a sense, it never goes out of style.

While Free venues have a place, invitations to participate in exhibitions that pay fees, place value on creation and the work of artists. This is something that all artists need.

36. In August 2005, Wired Magazine published a feature on the Internet  10 Years That Changed the World. At that time, there was still a lot of altruist content. Today, when you open any news article, a plethora of advertising, custom matched to your search patterns floods the article. And it is depressing when you are reading about a crucial world event; a tragedy or incident of war, infringements on human life, and suddenly those ‘darling’ shoes or ‘genuine leather’ travel bags are inserted into the story.

During the confined time period of Covid-19, the banality of social media content multiplied – parallel to the rise of Zoom and other useful tools. Currently with our own work we are really back to those basic questions of who are we, where are we going, and what role should poets / artists play as social media platforms continue to roll out.

37. The Alice Time Project

38. We are working on this project and have gotten out to record some material but it is still in the research stage.

So far, we know that it involves time, wormholes, giant spongy dinosaurs, bicycling, a tall hat, and it might have links to Alice in Wonderland.

39. In an expanded sense, one of the great characteristics of poetry, videopoetry and installations is that they can open the thought process of the artist / creator into a physical / visceral representation that becomes, with the audience, a shared studio.

In summing up, we can say that as we work holistically, each work we complete becomes part of our oeuvre. While some works seem to be off on their own, we see patterns that develop over time. While one of us might have the original idea and perhaps writes the text for a work, by the time a collaborative project is finished, we feel that it belongs to both of us.

40. To close, during the Q & A, we will play the videopoem Illumination, 2016 (without the sound) it is important to say that sound (or no sound) is really 80-90% (or more) of the impact of moving pictures but in order to bring all of these points to our talk, we have concentrated on using stills for this presentation.