Kind of a Collective..... Stafett and the
uncertainties of collaboration.
(...)
What is the difference between influence
and collaboration? What is the difference
between the flows of ideas and images
that circulate the world and come to land
here, or there, in a brain or in a work,
and the deliberate co-operation of two or
more artists on the same object?
The question already assumes oppositions
between the general and the specific,
between flows and a thing, between
"everyone" and a small group of people.
These oppositions that are too fast and
take too much for granted. The artist's
collective Stafett – comprising of Minda
Andrén, Jennifer Gelardo, Flavio Palasciano
and Alexander Jackson Wyatt –
deliberately evades such presumptive
distinctions, because they utilise various
modes of influence and collaboration in
the fluid medium of their process.
Their work, or works (depending on how
you look at it) emerge from a group
dynamic that begins from direct influence,
produces individual works, and ends in
a collaborative curating of the exhibition.
But where precisely influence ends and
collaboration begins in this process is
difficult to pin down, and quite charmingly
evades effective definition.
(...)
words by Stephen Zepke, Vienna 2018