Common Affairs | Collaborative Art Projects – Arboretum

The Ziggurat Project is an artist community, working together since 2013. The main foci of their interest are cross-sectoral collaborations, site-specific works and projects focusing on social issues. One of the founding members of the company initiated the Arboretum project to tackle elderly loneliness and lack of knowledge-transfer, with the aim to build a bridge between two adult, but different generations of artists. In the last years, the cords between generations have loosened. Arboretum aims to establish and strengthen meaningful relationships between generations. Company members, arriving from different art forms such as painting, sculpture, graphic design, theatre, puppet theatre and music have each chosen one artist to collaborate with who has a wider experience and has been working in the same art field. The six pairs that were formed in this way have been working sometimes alone, sometimes together in a group. Visual and performing arts have received equal emphasis during the creative process, highlighting the diversity of visions and opinions. There were several workshops devised in order to get to know one and other and the different art sectors, consequently these workshops turned into the main tools for knowledge transfer. These occasions helped to formulate a real community from artists who have never or only by chance met before.

The long term aim of the project is to raise the level of empathy and develop a method based on the gained experience, helping generations to understand and value each other.

“Arboretum is a medium, an idea that metaphorically preserves and nurtures a set of values. Arboretum provides us with a space where the new evolves naturally, fuelled by the old. It is a space where generations share their experiences, and accept constant change and transformation as ability. Free-thinking people of different age, world view and attitude observe and thoroughly analyse processes based on their similarities and dissimilarities. All of this could be illustrated by a spherical system in perpetual motion, operated by the mutual interaction of diverse forces. Arboretum is characterised by the freedom of movement in mental, intellectual and physical terms, which is the basic requisite of coexistence and constructive ideas.”

The point of departure for the Ziggurat Project interdisciplinary group’s initiative was the exchange of knowledge and experience between adult generations, or rather, the lack of it. Arboretum is an attempt at forging a community from artists coming from six different art forms and two adult generations.

In the course of collective work involving the participating artists, over time, focus shifted towards the creation of individual artworks. As a result of the emerged conflicts and their resolution, the group gave up their primary objective of creating artworks to be exhibited. A demand for consensus arose, inspiring the community to formulate new goals and questions, such as community building and management, as well as the development of an independent common language within the group.

Throughout the creative process, diverse questions arose regarding the life of communities. Is an artificially formed community capable of functioning efficiently? To what extent can two distant generations be open and tolerant towards each other? What is the role of interdependence within a project?

Other important tasks involved solving conflicts, developing respect for each other and lowering the priority of individual interests for the sake of community-building. We had to abandon some possibilities on account of problems with communication.

We have divided the story of our group into three parts. First, we show it in the form of a short documentary, which is followed by the presentation of the workshops and the artists’ works. Finally, through interactive installations in the form of games, we offer insight into the situation of the artificially created community of Arboretum and the challenges and experiences of becoming a community.

members of Arboretum

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„Az Arborétum egy olyan közeg, egy olyan idea, mely metaforaszerűen őriz és táplál egy értéket. Az Arborétum olyan teret biztosít számunkra, melyben az új természetes módon épül és táplálkozik a régiből. Egy olyan helyként fogható fel, ahol generációk adják át tapasztalataikat, adottságként fogadják el az állandó változást, átalakulást. Különböző korú, világlátású, szemléletű, szabadon gondolkodó emberek figyelik meg és vizsgálják mélységükben a folyamatokat, azonosságaik és különbözőségeik alapján. Mindezt egy gömbformával szemléltethetnénk, melyet egy egymásra kölcsönösen ható erők által működtetett, állandó mozgásban lévő rendszerként képzelünk el. Az Arborétum jellemzője a mentális, szellemi és fizikai értelemben vett szabad mozgástér, amely az együttélés és az építő gondolatok alapfeltétele.”

https://www.facebook.com/arboretum.capp/

Kristóf Szabó – KristofLab visual contemporary artists

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