NON-COMPETE AGREEMENT (4)
More collaborative classes, more classes on collaboration
THINGS I’D LIKE TO SHARE:
Marc Fischer of Temporary Services/Public Collectors has started a public spreadsheet for artist-publishers to share how they did at various art book fairs. You can see and contribute here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aFo5MjNHVaAFBni_G2v3q6wGkcx16MRoIgoI34hYpy0/edit?usp=sharing
[color/shift], a collection of open-source Riso color separation profiles: https://colorshift.theretherenow.com/
I will be tabling at the CODEX Bookfair in Oakland, CA, February 7 - 10. I’ll have a new, big book project of my own, Day Book, which is featured in the recent “Monthly WIP” posts. https://www.codexfoundation.org/events/book-art-fair/
And of course 2026 NewLights Press Subscriptions! https://www.newlightspress.com/store/newlights-press-subscription
Some more possible classes on collaboration (probably also taught as collaborative classes as described in the “Non-Compete Agreement 2” post, with students signing up for each class in collaborative teams that they have chosen):
A seminar on collaborative structures that operate in the “real” world, such as partnerships, non-profits, co-ops, businesses, collectives, bands, platforms, protocols, theater groups, unions, etc. This class could be part research and part practicum. The research would be about historical and contemporary examples of collaborative structures and specific collaborations. That information could be gathered into a publication, either something on the web that is always updating and expanding and/or physical publications that become a multi-volume set. The practicum part would be where the students actually try some of these things out. Depending on the length of the class, that could mean making detailed plans and iterating on them, or trying to use the structures to produce creative projects. Business classes use a variety of simulations where students create a fictional business and then those businesses are put through multiple scenarios where the students have to make decisions about what to change, see what happens, etc. It’s a kind of game. I wonder if something like that could be done with these fictional collaborative groups, perhaps more RPG than statistical game: Your NEA grant was revoked, what do you do? The landlord is raising the rent on your studio space, what do you do? A romantic relationship in your collective ends badly, what do you do? One of your collaborative publishing projects becomes way more successful than you had thought possible, what do you do?
Another possibility, and I feel like this probably already exists or has at some point, would be an art history course about the infrastructures that have supported movements and artists. For example: the dealers, collectors, and writers that promoted Cubism/Picasso/Braque in Paris in the early 20th century (or pick any of the 20th century modernist movements); how Warhol’s Factory and the people in it actually worked; how different individual artists from “the canon” have supported themselves in addition to making art; the turn away from the “artist alone in their studio” to the “executive artist” overseeing assistants and fabricators; etc.,1 and what the actual working conditions and career prospects are for those studio assistants. A history of unseen infralabor.
This class, or another class, could also focus on “minor artists” or the “long tail” of movements. To go back to Cubism: there were many Cubist artists, but very few of them are written about in larger art histories. How did their work help to create the discourse/myth of Cubism that we understand now? How did the work of those “minor” (or even unknown at this point) artists help to prop up Picasso and the other “majors” of the movement?
I also want to elaborate on an idea from the previous post (Non-Compete Agreement 2), a book arts class where students would work in collaborative teams, with each person on the team taking on a specific role in the production of a book (or books) over the course of the semester. I don’t think that there would necessarily be any set roles to fill, but they could include things like editing, design, printing, papermaking, binding, etc. My impulse is to have each group collaborate with another person or maybe two people, outside of the class (probably other students, maybe in a linked but technically separate class?), that would produce the content2 for the book.
But now I find myself getting stuck on the question of who should be responsible for the content. My initial impulse to separate it out from the group of other bookmakers in our imaginary class is because I was picturing them as a publishing enterprise where they would seek out authors/artists to work with. But they could also be a “band,” where the group produces the content together and each person has their specific instrument. Maybe the class could allow either option (or would there be enough time to include both?) and it would be up to each bookmaking team to figure out which direction that they wanted to go at the start of the course.3
Each person in the group would be in charge of their particular area, but I imagine that everyone in each group would participate in all aspects to some degree, depending on timing, scale, etc. That would, of course, be up to each group and figuring all of that out is part of the learning experience.
This last idea would be very difficult to pull off, but it could have amazing results. I call it the “gesamtkunstwerk class.” It would actually be a cluster of linked classes: one for writing, one for performance, one for music, one for set/costume/environmental design, etc. But then there would be collaborative project groups composed of one or two students from each class. The student in the writing class would be responsible for writing in their project group, while the student in the music class would be responsible for the music in that same group, and so on. So each student would be able to develop their area in conversation with both other students working on the same aspect in different projects and their specific project group. And the projects? Well, some sort of gesamtkunstwerk, whatever that might mean to each group. I’m imagining multimedia performances, but I think the projects could also go in many different directions. I could see integrating smaller, ad-hoc independent studies into the cluster if a group wanted to go in a direction not covered by the core cluster. I think ideally the class meetings would be scheduled so that any of the students could attend if they wanted. This would probably work best in an intensive format, where this is essentially the only thing that the students are doing for a set period of time, but it could also potentially work in the semester format. This would be a class that would happen maybe every three years, and it would always be an event. Maybe in a school that is small and focused enough it would be a time where everyone is working on one of these projects.
I wouldn’t be surprised if something like these ideas already exists or has been tried before… I know that at Colorado College there was some discussion of linked classes, but I don’t know if they were imagined as collaborative as well, where students from technically separate classes are working together on projects at the same time. That could be an interesting approach to handling multi-disciplinary collaborative classes. It might retain the advantages of engaging the students in collaborative work but also a) give them autonomy in their own area, b) make sure that area and their work is getting the feedback and attention that it needs, and c) still keep individual students accountable and avoid the inequity trap of collaborative projects.
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This idea, and the part about Warhol’s Factory, are covered in Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, by Caroline A. Jones (University of Chicago Press, 1996).
I dislike using the word “content” here because of the connection to the “content creation” in the current enshittified media platform landscape. But I don’t want to say “author” either, because one of the things that all of these classes are about is opening up and exploring authorship.
I have a feeling that I will return to the publisher vs. band thing in a later post. Maybe I will mix the metaphor even more and make it auteur vs. band vs. publisher.