Play: Collaboration and Co-creation

While creation is often portrayed as a solitary act—the authorial “I” in writing or the lone painter toiling away alone in her studio—collaboration and co-creation have long informed creative practices. So, too, has play. The surrealist practice of “exquisite corpse,” in which words or images are collectively assembled by different creatives, began as a game. From rap collectives to artist collaboratives like Gelitin, four Viennese artists who met at summer camp and are best known for installing a giant plush toy bunny (Rabbit) outdoors meant to decay; creative collaboratives often incorporate play.

Our first roundtable, Play: Collaboration and Co-creation, explores biomimicry as a framework for how artists might use nature to inspire cooperative creation. Biomimicry encourages us to view nature as a collaborative partner in the creative process. By studying how organisms and ecosystems work together to thrive, artists can learn to incorporate principles of cooperation, adaptability, and resilience into their own work. This approach inspires us to collaborate not just with other people, but with the natural world itself, drawing on its wisdom to create art that is both innovative and deeply connected to the environment. It highlights the power of working in harmony with nature, leading to more sustainable and impactful creations.

The questions we will consider:

• How can artists from different disciplines use biomimicry principles to foster a more inclusive, supportive, and sustainable process in co-creating work?
• How might interdisciplinary collaborations benefit from adopting natural systems approaches, such as symbiosis, self-regulation, or resilience?
• How might biomimicry influence the design and dynamics of interdisciplinary art collaborations to promote creativity and efficiency across various media? In what ways does nature serve as a model for innovation and problem-solving?
• How can individual artists integrate principles of biomimicry and collaboration into their creative practices?

Questions to kickoff the conversation:

• Can you provide examples of successful interdisciplinary collaborations that have drawn on biomimicry? How did nature-inspired approaches shape the creative process?
• What challenges might arise when integrating biomimicry into interdisciplinary art collaborations, and how can they be addressed?