Paper short abstract:

How can we best understand authorship and locate agency in the context of collaborative art practices? This project explores creative process through art collaboration and co-curation of a digital art exhibition Inroads to creativity, building on the use of 360° video.

Paper long abstract:

In the Japanese context in particular, considerable importance is placed on relationships with other people and with material objects, and on the influences these have. For many contemporary artists in Japan, art events and the highly social, collaborative interactions they facilitate provide an important frame for creative production. At the same time, descriptions by artists themselves of their creative process also emphasize the importance of creating a solitary or private space, an interiority as it were, in and for the process of making. How then is authorship to be understood in the context of atmospheric creativity? My current research project engages this question through ethnographic research alongside artistic collaboration and the co-curation of a digital online exhibition using 360° video and photography. In moving beyond the conventional white-walled gallery space, 360° photography allows the artists to arrange their works in the inner and outer spaces they themselves have selected and captured. As they guide viewers through these spaces they can further distribute authorship, and share it with viewers, encouraging them to contemplate the experience of creativity itself and share the artists’ inroads to creativity.