1. Introduction

2. Protocols and coordinates

3. Three maker practices

4. Marie's account of process

5. Martin's account of process

6. Alan's account of process

7. Reflective discussion

8. Conclusion

9. References & acknowledgements

Conclusion

The 3WI project asked how the use of evolving creative constraints in interdisciplinary peer-to-peer reciprocal coaching can contribute to the effective development of creative and creative-critical projects. We won’t attempt here, in closing, to offer a definitive answer to that question because the experience of the 3WI project was different for each of us, and the individual creative undertakings reached different stages of completion or achievement within the project period. We also don’t wish to disguise the distinct perspectives of the three participants, and when we reflect, say, on the best form or tone that constraints should take in order to be generative, we find that we agree on some characteristics but not on others. Consider, for example, this alliterative list, derived from the reflective discussion above, of desirable characteristics for constraints: concrete/concise/constructive/capricious. Note that the last two features, ‘constructive’, taken from Marie’s account, and ‘capricious’ (meaning obstructive or destructive), from Alan’s account, may very well be opposites. Our distinct temperaments, creative preferences, and aesthetic objectives mean that our perceptions of the process — what we experience as under- or over-constraining, say — remain individual to each of us, and would be different again for another person who undertakes a similar process.

It is, moreover, important for us not to pretend that we have undertaken a scientific or even social scientific experiment. The experimental design or apparatus of 3WI was intentionally porous and its results ‘compromised’, in a sense, by the fact and the messiness of the participants’ pre-existing relationships, something that gave a particular cast to the encounters in the monthly meetings. That said, we feel that the messiness or impurity of the project is part of its value, because relationships of power and care are always present, but in 3WI they are registered rather than disavowed. As suggested in the introduction, it was part of our purpose to deploy the differences and existing relationships between the three makers: the apparatus of the 3WI project was the means to put such differences to productive use.

We acknowledge, though, that to describe 3WI in this way is to raise ethical questions that have been implicit in the conduct and account of the project. A first question concerns the element of risk that one is exposed to in the receiving of constraints that might be artistically, mentally, or physically challenging (or dangerous) to satisfy. What are the limits on the nature of the constraints set, and how are those limits arrived at? In the 3WI project, the setting of constraints was strongly guided by the use of the meeting protocol derived from the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process. Following this protocol over the course of four meetings allowed a respondent to understand the character of the creative goals of the maker presenting work, and facilitated the building of trust between maker and respondent. So, while there was no explicit limit set, there was an understanding built into the protocol and project design that constraints were at the service of a creative project and maker practice.

To say ‘at the service of’ is to raise another question, however: one with special relevance to the ‘capricious’ or ‘aggressive’ approach to constraint-setting mentioned by Alan in the reflective discussion. In certain understandings, to be ‘at the service of’ a maker practice may be to attack that practice. This is an attitude modelled in The Five Obstructions, in which Lars von Trier aims to frustrate the habitual detachment of Jørgen Leth’s filmmaking. As Hector Rodriguez comments:

In this context, questions of ethics naturally come to the foreground, because of the obvious possibility that one person might take advantage of the other. Von Trier’s obstructions often have an element of sadistic aggression. The line between hostility and compassionate care is difficult to define with any degree of certainty. [… T]he boundary between aggressivity and kindness is often blurred. (2008: 52)

What makes such a blurring generative and not merely problematic is the fact that von Trier has a genuine respect for his mentor, and that Leth himself gives ongoing consent to the experiment, even as he in turn tries to frustrate von Trier’s intentions; but it is also of course that the two men have an equivalent status as respected white male Danish film auteurs. The question, then, for any activity of constraint-setting where the interlocutors do not share a status is whether the blurring of the boundary between aggressivity and kindness is in effect an expression of the power of one maker over another.

Such a question can also be asked of the 3WI project. Our answer is that the interdisciplinary and peer-to-peer ethos of the project meant that the three participant-makers started from a position of mutual respect and equal if distinct expertise, and that each aspired to make themselves equally vulnerable. Discussing the experience of 3WI while revising this conclusion for publication, we spoke of ‘opening up the creative process for someone to intervene in quite an intrusive way’ (Marie), ‘no risk, no gain’ (Martin), ‘accepting failure in front of an interlocutor’ (Alan). There remains in our discussions, despite the project having taken place several years ago, a sense of the irreducible complexity of the encounters with the other during 3WI: a sense of how agency and authority constantly circulated from maker to responder, and of how the values and assumptions of one’s own practice were challenged in the activity of setting as well as receiving constraints.

Given this ‘irreducible complexity’, it would be wrong to extract any straightforwardly generalisable takeaways or standardised method from the 3WI project. Instead, what others might learn from our experience concerns the particularity of the encounters between participants. Certainly, an ongoing relationship between peers (a series of meetings rather than a single one) allows an interlocutor to learn what constraints and feedback might be productive for an individual practice. A maker might choose a peer coach because of that coach’s expertise — you might ask to work with a musician for their knowledge of sound, for example, or with a dance artist for their expertise on embodiment. This would be a deliberate and, as it were, instrumental choice and deployment of the peer-interlocutor. But you might, conversely, choose an interlocutor precisely because of the absence of certain defined sorts of expertise: you might, potentially, experience their feedback as clumsy, but it might also be surprising, emerging from ‘left field’. What seems essential is the unpredictable and unreproducible character of the actual encounter. That which is valuable, challenging, generative, or destructive emerges in the uniqueness of the encounter with the other in the reversible roles of coach and creator: this unpredictability and particularity is what is to be cultivated in order to take the work to unexpected places. 

To cultivate this unpredictability and particularity is to allow oneself to be vulnerable and open to challenge in the encounter with the interlocutor and the tasks they set you, or indeed in the tasks you set for them. Your sense of your project, even of your practice, might be destabilised in the process, but you may also become more familiar with that practice: ‘Working with constraints means I know myself better as an artist and that I have a deeper understanding of my craft and its processes’ (Martin). ‘Dictating constraints seems to mean making your poetics explicit and so open to refusal’ (Alan). ‘Since 3WI, I attack my work more, I’m less afraid of confronting it and failing with it. The project has encouraged me deeper into the rigour of being in a process where I accept that I will sometimes feel sore, frustrated, and dissatisfied, because working with constraints has taught me that I will come out of it again’ (Marie).

Writing of The Five Obstructions, Rodriguez has suggested that the encounters in the film between von Trier and Leth are ‘the occasion for a rich interpersonal interaction, at once playful and profoundly serious’ (2008: 39). We believe that the experience of the 3WI project offers a model and testimony of a series of rich interpersonal interactions of this complex sort. The project offers a lesson in valuing and cultivating the particularity, the irreducible complexity, of the encounter with the other in the development of one’s own practice and that of one’s collaborators.

Continue to References & acknowledgements