Simultaneous Arrivals (simularr) is an artistic research project on novel forms of co-laborative practices within the FWF PEEK framework, running from 2022 until 2025.
Global instabilities demand new practices of sharing responsibilities. Artistic research seems a predestined field to develop models for collaboration and togetherness from which a world in multiple crises could benefit.
Despite a rich history of collaborative practices in the arts, still artists-researchers work often isolated in their core capacity in the arts and through the arts, and co-laborations are still conceived in traditional forms such as collectives or functional divisions. What if collectivisation and dependence are routed in temporal regimes of tight coupling and synchronisation, and we imagine a different spatio-temporal regime—simultaneity—as an enabler or warrantor for preserving and fostering multiplicity and otherness within an artistic endeavour?
We develop a concept of simultaneous work that does not reduce to a utilitarian “next-by-next”, as indicative of a residency or group exhibition. A different form of adjacency or contact must be embedded in the concept; the term simultaneous arrival points at the necessity of a site where people and things come together in curious spacing. It points to the importance of spaces (workspaces, aesthetical creations, and thought spaces), their affordances and conditioning.
Simultaneity derives from Latin simul, for “together, at the same time.” For us, the word carries a sense of co-presence that does not imply a hierarchy or stimulus-response, neither a tight interlocking as in synchronisation (shared temporal regime); simultaneity permits for multiple rhythms to intersect and overlap, things and beings are in contact but do not need to assume the same positions, they remain in a balance of proximity and distance. We ask: How are space/simultaneity generative (of forms of togetherness)? How are space/simultaneity generated (by togetherness)?