From Individual to Collective Creation. How Art can strengthen the individual and play a role in the Transition to a Socially Just, Sustainable Society.

Practice-based research in the field of visual arts questioning the working methods and the processes used in a body of work from individual to collective creation. My vision is to co-develop productions that both speak their experience and vision, and are art works in their own right. In this study, I want to interrogate that process, what it yields for the community and for the world of art, in the case of my three most recent projects (one sculpture, two films): 1. 'Skull3'(Moscow Biennale, 2015), an installation constructed with artists/non-artists; 2. 'The Return of the Swallows' (Brussels, 1999-2004), a multimedia project with migrant/refugees communities, 3. 'I watched the white dogs of the dawn', (Duncormick-IRL, 2015-2017), my latest filmproject where I used collective memory and the notion of 'disenchantment' of a fishing community as a base for the creation of artistic work. I will develop the following elements for my theoretical&artistic framework (these elements will intersect and resonate with each other): 1.Trauma and resilience, 2.The role of the arts in community development, 3. The artist as agent in the community. The data I will analyse are my own plans/records of the dialogic process as it developed, and the visual data of the projects themselves: therefore, I will use the autoethnographic methodology. I will investigate the work of Beuys, specially the expanded conception of art, which includes one's values, attitudes and ways of thinking and will put it in a contemporary context. I will seek to ascertain 'if' an artist can play a more engaged, active role in society where s/he becomes a "partisan of the real", where through the collective work in these projects, we can reflexively and critically disrupt individualism in all its facets, from auteurism to neoliberalism to market-driven, globalization.

Keywords:EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA

Disciplines:Experimental film, Performance, Social and relation art

Project type:Collaboration project