#collabortation

Waterfall

Collab with @helstoneart / @margarethelstone - she made the lineart, and I colored! <3 (There’ll be another collab coming where this has been reversed ^^)

I actually colored this twice hehe, because I wasn’t happy with the first version :o (happens sometimes!). I just knew that I wanted to experiment with blue, because I think it suits Heather well ^^ (and the expression you chose too!)

Artist Collab for BTS’s Wings Album

Humans are all a part of one mechanism. No matter how different we are from one another, in reality we are one. We need each other to survive and advance. Our dependance on one another is vital to our survival. No one person can survive and advance without collaborating with another human being. We are in a sense all a part of one being.

A human being is one person.This person has many different organs that work together in order to keep them alive. If one of the organs fail, the others follow. The human body was not created to function internally solely on one organ, but rather a necessary collaboration of many different organs. In fact, An organ is made of several types of tissue and therefore several types of cells. For example, the heart contains muscle tissue that contracts to pump blood, fibrous tissue that makes up the heart valves, and special cells that maintain the rate and rhythm of heartbeats. All in the end, organ collaboration is necessary to ensure healthy survival.

We are literally internally and externally dependant on collaboration. Since history could note, we have functioned as societies: individual members of one body. Each person contributed a specific role which enabled the advancement and overall survival of their society. Even till today, we depend on each other to function. We need teachers to teach us, cooks to feed us and doctors to heal us. One person cannot survive nor advance very long on their own.

I believe this to be especially true in the world of business as well. Successful companies operate as one body, but internally are a collaboration of highly talented individuals. An enterprise is not a one-man-show. It’s a team of people working together to achieve specific objectives. If they work well together on those objectives, then they will be successful. However, if they cannot collaborate well together they are doomed to fail. Similar to how in the human body if one organ fails, the other organs cannot continue to operate for long.

We all need each other. I am glad to have understood that early on in life. Now, I can focus on learning from others and search for ways to contribute back. I’m never shy to ask for help, because I am there for anyone I can be of help to. I really hope to one day see a world where everyone is happy to collaborate as much as I am.

(Written collaboratively with co-authors Lauren Dymke, Matthew Foreman, Jules Gibson and Ella Lowgren)

The process of blogging is a writing form which is self-reflexive by nature and by the merit alone of all of the students in this class having to practice it, there are certainly common themes. Convergent thinking, even. The themes that we’ve found have arisen again and again are anxiety, vulnerability and openness. After reading the class’s blog posts, we found that these themes not only arose in regards to the nature of blogging, but were also commonly discussed in relation to the experience of writing for the anthology, editing Chinese students’ work and reflecting on what it means to be a part of an inter-cultural collaboration.

To go overseas and engage with anyone from a different culture is daunting in and of itself, but to work collaboratively and produce literature together seems to be bringing with it an added trepidation. This trepidation stems from a kind of vulnerability. To work on this project is a process of being vulnerable.  It is an exercise in vulnerability, both for the writer whose second language is English, and in the accountability of the editor, and in the choices they make along the way. Much in the way that Ashley feels (in her latest blog post), that she is unqualified to edit these manuscripts (that she should just know).

Just this week, Matt asked Lauren for help regarding the rules for indenting. He finished a story for submission, closed the document, and then stared at a Chinese manuscript thinking “I really have no idea what I’m doing here”. Jess writes in her blogs about a similar issue, about ‘toeing the line’ regarding editing, and co-authorship. We cannot change our students’ voices in their work. Editing is, as Jules so accurately observes, a process of questions circulating the mind and before one knows it, three weeks have passed and no work is done.

As writers, we approach vulnerability in a number of ways, many of which are unusual. At times we loathe to put ourselves out there, our non-fiction revealing a sacred inner space, the work scrapped in the bowels of a hard drive. As Ella expressed in one of her blogs, ‘I have become afraid of being vulnerable’. However, sharing that inner-space on such a public medium like a blog can bring with it a kind of freedom, as Georgie notes in a blog post, ‘it’s kind of liberating’.

It seems that different students have their own set of very real fears and anxieties. Some, like Matt, are concerned with cultural sensitivity, he notes that ‘differences are indeed inevitable’, while others, such as Natalie have expressed concerns with dietary requirements. She observes that ‘food is social, and I don’t want to refuse the exchange of food sharing’. It makes this whole experience feel more human to see the other collaborators struggling with their own fears and worries.

Moving on, we feel the need to address what it means to work collaboratively. Francesca defined it beautifully, ‘collaborate is an intransitive verb meaning to work jointly. The whole point is to labour together, to make something happen through the doing of it’.

Travis makes the thoughtful remark that ‘we all have different reasons for writing. We all have different ways of seeing the world. We’ve travelled our own journeys to reach the present day, and we have different destinations in mind for tomorrow, but all of us working on putting this collaborative Chinese/Australian anthology together have something in common’.

Matt reiterates the important and recurring theme of openness in the process of collaboration when he notes that ‘inherent to collaboration is an inner empathy and openness, a decision to forgo any posturing and strive together toward a common goal’.

Adding on to this, Jess Z discusses these integral qualities in regards to the editing process. ‘In structural editing intercultural work, we must stretch the muscle of empathy’. She also stresses the need for integrity in project management and respecting decisions in the democratic process.

In her guest post on Francesca’s blog, Paula Keogh reminds us to remain mindful in the process of creating a ‘unique ephemeral culture’: ‘We need a certain disposition, a certain way of being in the world, one that is curious, open, interested, empathetic, self-aware’.