DOCULEKTIV: A Curated Conversation on Creative Practice and Collective Work in the Time of Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated what Judith Butler describes as the exposure of our precarities through the "falling away" of many support systems within our society. Within these conditions of distance, disconnection, and precarity, the Aurora Artist Residency Program and Space (AARPS) Collective strive to gather and examine (their own) practices of collective making and collective-making through Doculektiv, a process-led research project in multiple iterations presented in this manuscript as, first, Doculectiv, a three-part series of curated conversations released in July 2020, and “Doculektiv,” this manuscript—as a continuation of the same conversation that articulates the process of intercapturing that occurs between process and iteration, and within and among the collective as the participants of the research/creative practice. It presents the self-translated and self-edited transcript of Doculektiv: Curated Conversations, in which the AARPS Collective unpacks the term "collective" and describes how each member approaches ideas of processes and relationships, and how they work within the collective through these interweaving valuations and embodiments of "collectivity." At once research and creative work, this manuscript ventures to capture the fluidity of such dynamic practices as, in this case, performance, collaboration, and collective work, and to understand collective-making as critical practice, as creative process, and as ethos of care and accountability. These words are fuelled by notions of history, care, ethics, failure, and trust, on which are built the resolve to gather despite, in spite of, and regardless of our precarities.