What is true collaboration? And how can you spot it in a project? When a project is neatly wrapped up and presented to an audience through film, audio, or a website, it’s possible that the collaboration that created the project will get lost. In the “about” section we will read only about the creators of the project, while the people whose stories actually give the project an existence come across as characters in the drama.
It’s hard not to feel that there is a limit or barrier to the ability to collaborate. Maybe it has to do with the limits of my own understand of what collaboration is and can be. Previously, I figured collaboration possibly happened through the storytelling done by someone being interviewed and the gathering done by the journalist or media producer. The two are working together in a sense, but then the producer leaves and edits the film/builds the website/actualizes their total vision. So, I have had some skepticism toward how collaborative a project can be, though I have had amazing connections with people whose stories I was gathering.
This process I described above isn’t really collaboration. jessica ross points out that is more like resource extraction: Professionals go into communities and extract resources that are the used by others. She points out that it is important to do reciprocal projects. You, the producer, are getting something out of these people, so why shouldn’t they get something from you?
Saving the Sierra comes across as the most collaborative project because it has the reciprocal piece in the form of the Sierra Business Council. The people who have given their stories about the land receive something they can use to implement programs to protect the environment. Though within the audio pieces created for the more creative side of the project it stills feels like it is following the traditional extraction process. And maybe this is just the side of the project where we see the producers getting what they came for: The stories. The way some of the stories were gathered incorporated a level of collaboration. They did use a mobile storybooth to let community members talk about their love of the sierras and the importance it has in their lives. Still, the producers then take this material and edit it.
I can’t help but see the extraction model at work throughout all of this week’s projects. Even in Public Secret, the one that had me struggling to pull myself away, there seemed like a big power differential. The women who are telling these stories are stuck in prison while the media producer leaves to make a fairly high concept website. Still, something about how the stories live on the site feels like collaboration. The stories we listen to are signified by the women’s quotes. Their words represent themselves, but this image is created by the producer and not by the women.
While Highrise is a beautiful and exciting world to enter, “Out My Window” seems to rely on its creator’s vision more than its participants. Helen does raise a good point by comparing this expensive project with Mapping Memories. In that project the content creators were also the participants. Their projects weren’t as flashy, but they had a resounding honesty that made them feel authentic. Plus, they took their project offline through the tours of their neighborhoods. The world they built was tangible. The world that Highrise builds feels otherworldly in a way because of its interactive collage. Having said that, I did feel like the “One Millionth Tower” showed a level of participation by and collaboration with people actually living in the highrises that relied on their vision to reimagine the spaces around the highrises and not the filmmaker’s.
Collaboration is slippery and hard to pin down. One moment you see and then at another the producer’s hand is shown. So, while these projects are all fascinating, I have a hard time teasing out the moments where collaboration happened and the moments where a producer just extracted resources. It’s hard to see the benefit for the participants, even though I know they can be there in subtle ways.
Questions for Jessica:
When do you know the collaboration and community engagement you were hoping to incorporate into a project is actually happening?
In the finished project, where do you think the collaboration or community engagement shines through?
I’d agree with you that at times I felt like there was extraction happening with this week’s selections, rather than collaboration. When I think collaboration my mind goes more to projects like Engage Media, where participants are involved in the entire creative process…perhaps that’s just semantics?
I don’t think it is just semantics. I think in engage media or even mapping memories you do see what I would consider or of a collaborative process where the people who are participants are actually making the media that is disseminated. This is often why the material in those project feels more amateur or beginner. The participants aren’t usually professionals in the field. I just have a hard time understanding what the collaborative element of this week’s project is. They seem just like traditional projects made by producers but with innovative transmedia formats. Obviously they developed good relationships and that allowed them to get great material, but I don’t know if developing a good relationship is actually collaboration.
Again, jesikah addresses these concerns in her interview, and the responses to your questions are quite illuminating. She speaks directly to what collaboration is with partners, stakeholders and organizations, and what her methodology includes.
I am quite fascinated by your use of the term extraction. I have never thought of a collaborative piece to be an extraction of one’s personal stories, but I think you pose a great question here. Im looking forward to watching the interview with Jesikah to see what her insight is into this concern.
I struggle with the idea of “story extraction” and the responsibility of the filmmaker to work in solidarity with the films subject. This point is most clearly understood when you talked about the power dynamic inherent in the prison piece, and the fact that the producer is out of prison working on a flashy website while the women are in jail.
One of the things that I think we all need to ask ourselves as multi-media artists is what our role in the process is. If we determine that all highly produced art has no place helping the people’s movements of the world, because it is produced as a result of privilage, then we end up reserving highly-produced art for mindless or corporate projects. The key is to find non-exploitive ways of interacting with communities that enables us to operate as the multi-media artists that we are. Do folks have ideas on ground rules to do this well, in addition to what jesikah mentions?