Why make art with others?

by Johnny Bunker

I would like to draw on my experience as a co-founder of the 'Shoal Collective' and by doing so make some kind of reply to the question above.

I studied on a practical Degree course dedicated to examining and debating notions of a 'social history' of the visual arts. For the last seven years I have been developing an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to performance languages. My work is stimulated directly by working with other people from various backgrounds, ex-offenders to professional Opera singers.

The Shoal Collective was born of the frustration and enthusiasm of six London based arts practitioners including a musician, video maker, physical theatre maker, dancer/dance maker, actress/theatre maker and myself. All of us had an interest in what is known as 'experimental' or 'alternative' performance forms from various cultures and sub-cultures, from the position of having made and participated in this kind of work for several years. Much of this work may have been 'radical' in it's intentions but through processes such as commercialisation fulfilling funding criteria etc., had come to rely upon alienating conventions and unquestioned relationships between 'performer' and 'director' and 'performer' and 'audience'. Shoal was about exploring, practically, notions of a 'democratic' and non-hierarchical arts practise while maintaining a strong performance presence and focus on issues relevant to broad and diverse audiences.

We began by meeting regularly, each of us taking turns at leading sessions and gradually introducing each other to our different attitudes to performance and training. If a particular session seemed to generate material that the group as a whole were happy with, this could be re-interpreted by other members leading other sessions. A movement / dance session led by Claire the dancer and Ben the musician might trigger an idea for a session based around a text and the use of the voice by Catherine the actress. This in turn might trigger an idea for a video shot at a particular site and so on. Gradually improvising and playing with each others languages, we began to build up layers of material informed on some level by everybody's input. These sessions were incredibly useful in getting us to articulate our individual mind-sets and aims for exercises that we would otherwise, in our own work, take for granted.

The joys of working like this can be hard to pin down in words. It can happen so fast and can be so subtle as individuals or sub-groups add to and evolve original starting points and ideas way beyond any one persons conception of a possible resolved end product.

Let's take it as "red" that no one likes too much criticism. In the hierarchical structures, mostly employed by the theatre and dance worlds, you become used to being told what to do and being " told off " by your director or choreographer if you don't do it. We, on the other hand, were free to "have a go at" who and whenever we liked, criticising each other's input and ideas, sometimes, to extremes. This issue of being free to disagree took on a whole new meaning and intensity when the opportunity to make a piece of work for a venue in Brixton, South London, arose. Availability and commitment became key issues. Some of us were holding down full and part-time jobs and others were struggling to find work in their chosen fields. Important decisions had to be made, sometimes without everybody present. We all had to go through the process of missing rehearsals at some point or other and then dealing with how the material had evolved in our absence.

Our working process was supposed to question and propose alternatives to the idea of following the " vision", preoccupation's, obsessions and values of one dominant individual making work. But, as we committed ourselves to producing what all of us considered a coherent product, which all six of us felt happy to perform to an audience, the discussions - arguments about the form and content of the piece, were incredibly useful and insightful. Playing devil's advocate to someone else's devil's advocate can be exhilarating and by turns, intimidating. I do believe we began to understand, on a deeper level, our insecurities as practitioners and performers. This level of honesty and vulnerability became a central theme of the show itself and in the end connected us with audiences on a felt and very human level.

The piece itself incorporated choreographies informed and performed by supposed "non" dancers and elements of Stand-up Comedy. The musical score combined song writing and singing with both analogue and digital sound. Played against a back-drop of video footage, six performers moved between acting genres and conventions establishing characters, being themselves on stage and using stories from their every day lives and histories. It became our ability to work as a team, in a schizophrenic and fragmentary combination of mediums, that gave the piece cohesion and sincerity.