Collaboration, Violence, and Difference

Abstract

We are Colin Poole (UK) and Simon Ellis (NZ) — two dance artists who collaborate as Colin, Simon & I. In this chapter we reflect on the nature of collaboration using Slavoj Žižek’s thinking about distortion and violence featured in The Parallax View² and Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.³ Without Žižek’s permission — indeed, by pulling his ideas from the contexts in which they were written (isn’t that what we do in performance studies?) — we massage his words and ideas to harness our curiosity and ask questions about how we make and perform choreographies. The writing reflects our artistic experience — particularly with respect to the development and presentation of our performance project Because We Care⁴ — in building, maintaining, and challenging collaborative relationships. Whereas collaboration is conventionally thought to demand care, patience, and harmony, we propose that it prospers under conditions that welcome antagonism, difference, friction, and even violence.

It would be better if you went upstream and built your own village, for our customs are somewhat different from yours. Not knowing each other’s ways, the young men might have differences and there would be wars. Do not go too far away, for people who live far apart are like strangers and wars break out between them. Travel north only until you cannot see the smoke from our lodges and there build your village. Then we will be close enough to be friends and not far enough to be enemies.

Maximilian 1843, cited in Lévi-Strauss¹