Re: [-empyre-] third texts, third bodies, third minds

[Anna Munster <a.munster@unsw.edu.au>]

Charles Green, in his book of the same name, calls artistic collaborations 'The 
Third Hand'(uni of mInnesota Press,2001). I agree that that there is something 
transformative about these kind of collaborations - the process and outcome are 
often passionate and have an intoxication that comes from producing something 
else, something outside, beside, alongside the individual parties involved. 
I've definitely experienced this in collaborative working situations - often 
with a partner but also with programmers and technicians, where, all of a 
sudden it becomes possible to traverse territories, languages and techniques 
that are unfamiliar to each of the parties and to go somewhere that the 'one' 
could not have gone alone.
I think the thing is, though, that so many artistic (and intellectual) 
collaborations get re-integrated socially and discursively into the model of 
the couple. In the couple, one term usually becomes privileged over the other 
(Deleuze over Guattari) or else it is only in the endless reflectiveness of the 
couple and their acts that the outcome takes place (Ulay and Abramovic). Often 
part of the couple then has to break free in order to work again. It's 
necessary to constantly work against this recuperation perhaps by multiplying 
collaborations with different people, by continuing to work outside them in 
one's own space, and by hanging onto the passion generated in them rather than 
losing oneself in the safety of their identity,
cheers anna
 
> What I like is the transformative aspect of the these 'third' terms,
> creating something something else. Quite different from the drugs
> experience. One can only guess the problematic part of such dreamy terms,
> but at least they open up spaces of imagination and show pretty exactly what
> happens if you passionately create something together.
> 
> Geert
> 
> 
> 
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