Joint Forces | Collaborative artistic practices in Street art

Abstract

Collaboration in art has brought about many changes in the field, including a redefinition of the role of the artist and consequently of the understanding of art itself. Yet, this phenomenon has long been neglected in academic discourses. Only since the findings of creativity research in the 1990s, which started to locate creative processes in groups, have collaborations returned to the interest of research. This has been further strengthened by art projects in which artists collaborate with non-artists. As a result, however, joint endeavors between artists have increasingly receded into the background. Since there is still little literature on this topic, I would like to devote this work to inter-artistic collaborations and explore them in a new context, namely that of street art. Using a cultural-historical and feminist approach to collaboration, the aim is to examine the socio-psychological processes of collaboration between street artists and identify aspects crucial for the participants' success. Therefore, my research question is: Which factors are decisive for successful collaboration in Street art? With the method of semi-structured interviews, I collected data from six case studies of artists. All of them are engaged in long-term collaborations or have made experiences in project-based collaborations. The findings show street art provides a fruitful ground for collaborations to emerge, and that street artists are convinced that the combination of individual and collaborative practices unlocks full artistic potential.