{"id":964,"date":"2018-09-12T19:59:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T19:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/?page_id=964"},"modified":"2021-01-20T15:41:02","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T15:41:02","slug":"theme","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/past-years\/theme\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 Storytellers’ Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year the <\/span>MDOCS Storytellers\u2019 Institute<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>MDOCS Forum<\/span><\/a> convene non-fiction makers working in any medium around a central theme. These themes generate productive exchanges around the subjects taken on by non-fiction makers, as well as self-reflexive questioning of documentary practices. In 2015, the inaugural Institute explored FAMILY; subsequent themes have addressed what constitutes non-fiction with <\/span>WALKING THE LINE BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION<\/span><\/a>, delved into placemaking and de-colonization in documentary with <\/span>SPACE AND PLACE<\/span><\/a>, interrogated the shared and divergent practices between documentary and surveillance in <\/span>SURVEIL\/SURVEILLED<\/span><\/a>, and playfully subverts the association of documentary with tragedy through HUMOR: LAUGHING WITH REALITY. Our sixth theme, Co-Cr<\/span>e<\/span>ation and its Discontents grapples with the modality of collaborative practice.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

CO-CREATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u201cAt its core, the idea of co-creation seeks to reconcile systemic power and singular authority. This fundamental principle extends beyond the creative process within media making, compelling <\/span>us all<\/span> to interrogate fundamental ideas of ownership, meaning-making, attribution and\u2014if we optimize the potential of co-creation\u2014realize a more just society.\u201d – b<\/span>y<\/span> Katerina Cizek<\/span>, <\/span>William Uricchio<\/span>, <\/span>Juanita Anderson<\/span>, Maria <\/span>Agui<\/span> Carter, Thomas Allen <\/span>Harris ,<\/span> Maori Holmes, and Mich\u00e8le Stephenson (from <\/span>Collective Wisdom- PART 1: \u2018WE ARE HERE\u2019: STARTING POINTS IN CO-CREATION<\/span><\/a>)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This<\/span><\/b> is a call to all collaborators, collectives and co-creators of knowledge! To those coming from activism, community organizing, and collective power building. To those willing to transgress artistic boundaries and academic disciplines in the urgent name of shared agency and more inclusive <\/span><\/b>institutions!<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

MDOCS Forum and Storytellers\u2019 Institute invite you to join us <\/span>in<\/span> June <\/span>4-7<\/span>, 2020<\/span> to think together about Co-creation and its Discontents. We are interested <\/span>in<\/span> building a conversation over the course of the weekend that complicates collaborative practices<\/span>;<\/span> not shying away from the fact that they can be incredibly frustrating, deeply flawed, and even exploitative. However, we also wish to explore the different ways that non-fiction artists collaborate, collectivize and co-create in order to engage with their participants and the public, ethically consider insider\/outsider dynamics, push back against capitalism, and blur the lines between art and life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Claire Bishop states in \u201cThe Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents\u201d, \u201c…the creative energies of participatory practices rehumanizes \u2013or at least de-alienates\u2013a society rendered numb and fragmented by the repressive instrumentality of capitalism. But the urgency of this political task has led to a situation in which such collaborative practices are automatically perceived to be equally artistic gestures of resistance: There can be no failed, unresolved, or boring, works of collaborative art because all are equally essential to the task of strengthening the social bond.\u201d\u00a0 Bishop reminds us how such an overridingly ethical\/political imperative to collaboration risks obliterating aesthetic valuations entirely. How can the non-fiction artist share power while maintaining an artistic vision? And for that matter, what is the nature and the limits of shared artistic vision?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, it asks too much \u2013\u2013is unrealistic, perhaps even utopian \u2013\u2013to see these co-creative practices as the answer to all of documentary\u2019s ethical pitfalls or as a means to the end of capitalism as we know it. The power dynamics at play in all non-fiction art making practices (authorial, interpersonal, extractive, etc.) are implicit and perhaps even more pronounced in co-creative practice, where collaborators will inevitably fall across different positionalities and accesses to power. Working in these practices, it can be easy to be exploited, exploit our collaborators, and exploit our audiences. Pooja Rangan shows how easy it is to fall into the trap of \u201cthe <\/span>pseudoparticipatory<\/span>,\u201d using collaboration as a tool for signaling at one\u2019s own humanitarian impulses instead of actually sharing or building power.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How do activists and organizers work with makers and institutions without losing agency? How do institutions engage in power-sharing without extracting demands of collusion on communities who might have contrasting aims? To think about these and more questions, <\/span>The John B. Moore Documentary Collaborative invites national and international documentary and non-fiction makers working in any medium to apply for the MDOCS Storytellers\u2019 Institute and MDOCS Forum.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 We hope to convene makers, activists, educators, students, and institutions during the summer of 2020 to share examples, methodologies and best practices in non-fiction co-creation practice.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Visiting Fellows (professional documentary practitioners)<\/a><\/p>\n

Student Fellows (select Skidmore and non-Skidmore students)<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each year the MDOCS Storytellers\u2019 Institute and MDOCS Forum convene non-fiction makers working in any medium around a central theme. These themes generate productive exchanges around the subjects taken on by non-fiction makers, as well as self-reflexive questioning of documentary practices. In 2015, the inaugural Institute explored FAMILY; subsequent themes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":357,"parent":548,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-964","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3262,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964\/revisions\/3262"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/storytellers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}