Meet Me in the Middle: An investigation into collective expressions of artists through collaboration

This creative practice research is an investigation into what emerges from collaborative creative practices that are meaningful for artists. It reframes group-artmaking as co-creative expression and explores how artistic agency can be realised through relationality and group intra-action. This was explored with 12 pluridisciplinary creative projects involving live performance, recorded media, installation, and the creation of an art gallery. Additionally, eight established artists were interviewed about their experiences of co-creativity. The ‘middle’ or the vā, is a space where artists meet epistemologically through discourse, praxis, and materiality – and ontologically through relationality, emotions and expressivity. It therefore combines the empirical and the hermeneutical. Informed by Gilles Deleuze’s notion of difference-in-itself, and Karen Barad’s new materialist perspective of intra-action, the research explores how co-creative expression can leverage the group’s intuitive knowledge to optimise expressive agency. It was found that co-creative expression can be conceived as an entangling of artists’ different subjective perspectives and expressions, identifying that agency is an emergent property of the collaboration rather than merely an individualistic attribute. In this way, collective expression becomes meaningful when artists experience themselves as part of the agency rather than owners of it. What made the projects meaningful for artists in this research was qualified through co-creative discourse and praxis, when meaning unfolded through the doing together rather than satisfying predefined criteria. This often required the artists to think differently, challenging their usual processes and resulting in a reterritorialisation of their creative practice. As an inside artist-researcher, I was challenged to apply Barad’s concept of diffractive methodology, as my knowledge and reality was continually reevaluated by empathically enfolding the knowledge and views of my collaborators into that of my own. Additionally, benefits to artists’ creative practices from participating in co-creative inquiry are identified, as are conditions required for meaningful co-creation to occur. Implications for arts education are also discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Melhuish, Kingsley Spargo

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Lines, David
• Chisholm, David

• Collective expression
• Co-creation
• Intra-action
• Emergence

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/76263

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/76263