Collaboration: Writing the Possible

Abstract

Like the fresco paintings of medieval Europe, which employed the skills of large numbers of people under the supervision of a master painter, cinema is often described as an intensely collaborative activity. Does collaboration simply mean the contribution of a large number of people and their skills towards a given project? Social psychologist, Karl Weick, suggests that organisations come into being when individual (or, sometimes, individuals) realises that the task they want to complete is beyond their abilities. They can choose to abandon the task or collaborate with others. When the group comes together it has already identified a purpose and task and, over time, the interests of the individuals gradually become enmeshed.¹ Sans Façon, the long-term collaboration between architect Charles Blanc and artist Tristan Surtees, notes that collaboration is often used to describe a number of people with a specific skill, each working on part of a project. In Blanc and Surtees’ view, however, ‘collaboration should ideally take the project somewhere else — a place where you didn’t expect it to end up, as the input of all the collaborators reshapes the project into something altogether new’.²