Unsettling action and text: a collaborative experience

The original abstract for this text was written in 2009, and reflected the beginning of a collaboration informed by two individuals’ research confidences and disciplines. A work titled ‘Oral/Response’, which combined the documentation of a performance within its structure, allowed a conversation to emerge between disciplines and ways of working, of live action and its textual documentation. ‘Oral / Response’ explored the dynamic, but often disjointed relationship between these two linked but separate elements within the performance itself. The simultaneous dialogue between action and text in this work aimed to highlight the ways in which performance and its legacy as documentation can be reflexive and co-dependent. By making the text as evanescent as the act it describes, this work became the foundation of a new form of practice for both collaborators, a nexus of theory and practice that combined different languages, different ways of knowing and experiencing. The rules and regulations that direct and confine solo compositions in text and action became less rigid, more malleable and symbiotic. In the interim and beyond this work the collaboration has developed in such a way that the distinction between these disciplines, specifically in critical theory and arts practice, has become insignificant. While initially the partnership provided access to each other’s disciplines there is now fluidity, confidence, and trust whereby the roles ascribed to each varies depending on the requirement of the work. The lines have become blurred, and the separation of roles foggy allowing each collaborator the safety and space to take risks by entering domains that are less familiar research methodologies. Therefore the collaboration, aside from the actual work produced, has a significant extra dimension - it allows each partner to become confident and articulate in the others field. Dynamic elements have been liberated for the possibility of an analysis of the range of co-efficiencies and motivations that abound from this fusion, and speaks of the nature of collaboration itself. A reflexivity in approach and position has reshaped, informed, and re-informed the possibilities for emergent research, where trust allows each participant to be confident in a range of methods for creating knowledge. This chapter traces the development of the collaborative relationship from its beginning in two distinct areas of expertise and strength to a partnership where there is now more overlapping of roles.