On your Marks: Difference, Collisions, and Incompatibilities in Embodied Post-Performative Collaborative Drawing

Abstract

 As part of ongoing practice-as-research that explores ‘difference, collisions, incompatibilities’ (Etchells, 1999: 56) in collaborative working, this Perspectives article focuses discussion on a series of performances I have set up since 2019 where I invite a group of participants to gather around a table with a sheet of paper and a marker pen and are then invited to hold the pen together at the same time and move the pen together across the page to mark the paper, responding to a series of sonic stimuli  Having explained the process and contextualised the work in relation to earlier iterations of my practice, I will then share and consider a selection of reflective remarks by participants having taken part. Chiefly, I will refer to the most iteration of the activity at Radical Repetition which I curated for London Critical Thought Conference. Part of this section of the discussion will include an exchange between myself and fellow collaborator Nick Eisen about our experiences at Radical Repetition and subsequent iterations including how we may translate the performance to the virtual/digital/online space. I will conclude my discussion by sharing briefly how I remediate the finished drawings resulting from these performances through the medium of film. 

Keywords

• drawing
• collaboration
• live performance
• discomfort
• participation
• presence