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Editorial Rosa Olivares
Teamwork is always a mystery: Who does what? Does one think while the other acts, or is the entire project carried out jointly…? To what extent is the personality of each team member distinguished? Is a perfect union required or is the debate between opposites essential? These doubts and many others may arise when we are contemplating the work created by a group of authors, a team or an artistic society. There are certain types of creation that are inevitably carried out by a team of specialists, but each one of them maintains the authorship of a specific part, despite the fact that the work as a whole may have one identifiable signature alone. Such is the case in film, or architecture, where engineers, computer technicians, specialists in materials and other fields all intervene, although the architect’s signature stands alone. In music, from the traditional orchestra to the most modern group, the team is established from the start, but we know who the pianists, singers and composers are. However, before a work by Gilbert & George, no one knows who has done one part and who the other, especially when we may not even be able to tell them apart. In the opera, considered the highest form of art of the late XIX century, or in the theatre, the good work of a grand team is fundamental. Perhaps it is in literature where teamwork is best concealed, those so-called ghost writers being subjected to the overriding importance of a single author. By groups, teams or couples, only scientific studies, legal treaties and perhaps even essays are written, but never a poem or an adventure novel. In fine art, the workshop was what most resembled a team, although almost always with a maestro, or the anonymity of commissioned work, but this is only conceivable due to the lack of social category artists had until three or four centuries back. The team, two or more artists who present themselves as a single
author, is characteristic of contemporaneity. Therein, the differentiation
of functions is hidden by the univocal attitude of the group members.
Gilbert & George affirm that when they create, they are one.
There are no differences in interests or objectives, and the individual
experience serves as a complement, not as rivalry. Nonetheless,
this attitude is paradoxical considering one of the most representative
characteristics of the artist: the need for recognition. Teamwork
allows for the deeper exploration of an idea and a form, but it
also implies that the isolated individual fades into the bosom of
the group.
During the past XX century, teamwork reached its height, and it evolved most within the artistic avant-garde, always with strong conceptual, social and even transgressive undertones. And indeed, there have been and still are teams on the cutting edge of contemporary art, photography, performance and conceptual art, something which had never occurred before. Names like Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Patrick & Anne Poirer, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Gilbert & George, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, The Boyle Family, the Equipo Crónica, Art & Language, General Idea and the Guerilla Girls are all in the books on contemporary art and many of them have set trends that have withstood the passage of time and remained in the limelight. The union of two or more artists may be temporary, such as the cases of Abromovic and Ulay, Fontcuberta and Formiguera, ZAJ, or Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy. At times they are united for certain periods of their lives, and at others, for a specific project. They may carry out joint projects and then split up to go off on their own. But most often, the union of several artists leads to a signature which, regardless of whether the members are known by their own names, belongs to a single artist. This is the most customary case, such as the most classic referents of Gilbert & George and Bernd & Hilla Becher. At times, groups consisting of more than two members alternate over time and new members come and go, yet this affects neither the group’s task nor their development, and most often, these “staff” changes go unnoticed for the public at large, for the artist’s name is that of the group. The main problem is living together, living through the creative process with one another, sharing ideas, time, efforts and dreams. How to be oneself and part of the other, how to accept that another person is part of you, that he shares your desires and your fears. Sharing that sometimes unconscious territory where ego, pet peeves and ambitions cohabit. Accepting the loss of part of oneself in order to acquire that same proportion of the other is always the problem of cohabitation. Totally committing 50% of life that, according to Freud, is the world of work, and, almost always unavoidably, sharing the other 50%, the private, intimate and passionate life as well. This is the ultimate challenge of every union. Two dominant typologies can be established regarding the formation
of artistic teams: those who are also united in their private life,
who live together and are real couples, and those others who are
joined by an ideological, aesthetic or social cause and who are
united only at work, maintaining their private lives independent.
Among the most frequent reasons that lead a number of individuals to create an entire body of work together is the most radical social activism, such as the fight against AIDS or for women’s rights, and, naturally, the criticism of political and economic power. Guerrilla Girls, General Idea, Group Material, Komar & Melamid and AES Group are paradigmatic along these lines. Of General Idea’s three members, two have died of AIDS and their work has become the emblem of an unending fight. Guerrilla Girls are an authentic symbol of the struggle to improve women’s roles in the cultural world as they protest, by way of billboards, actions and campaigns, employing a poignant feminism not exempt of humour, against the more or less blatant discrimination we face. Another fight which has not yet been won. Especially worthy of mention are the unions among brothers or sisters, most often twins, who develop their work united beyond the umbilical cord. In these cases, the union, the symbiosis is not only elective but, to some extent, genetic. The resemblance, the obsession and the development of their work are parallel even when they are separate. This is the case of the Wilson sisters, Jane and Louise, both of whom presented the work of the other during their art studies, work that had been carried out separately at different schools. Jake & Dinos Chapman, Mike & Douglas Starn, Liesbetth and Angelique Raeven, MP & MP Rosado Garcés, are other examples of brothers and sisters united in their work. In many of their pieces, alterity, double presence and reflections of the other also form a part of the essence of the work, like an obsession about its own origin. In general, all teamwork in the artistic sphere has very specific characteristics, despite the fact that no schools or general associative lines can be traced. Nevertheless, doubtless, the work of a group reinforces a sense of security, and the need for recognition becomes less besetting. Dialogue, the act of sharing ideas, time and projects favours the growth of the works that emerge in different ways, almost always with a characteristic and emphatic consistency. Working and living together, thinking in duo, problems of cohabitation in an increasingly individual world: exceptions full of quality and value.
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