Poetic Collaboration - Day 1

I started a ten-day creative collaboration with two amazing poets yesterday - Maureen Alsop and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller. I live in LA, Maureen lives in Palm Springs and I don’t even know where Josh lives, I’ve only met him online through Maureen. Thanks to my days as a software product manager I’m used to working collaboratively with people who are geographically remote, communicating and working from the Bay Area with teams in NYC, Cincinnati, Minsk and Melbourne. I’ve always been intrigued with the potential of doing similar with art and this will be my second time. The first was with Orly Aviv who lives in London and did a lovely worldwide collaborative video project called Sea of Seas.

My premise with Josh and Maureen is simple. From Dec 20-30 I’ll be taking photos and posting them here as inspiration for them to write poetry. They’ll be writing either as a response to my photos or on their own and sending them to me as inspiration for me to shoot in response. It’s more interactive than the Sea of Seas, reminds me of improvisational jazz. We don’t know where it’s going to go beyond these posts but have thought about a self-published book and an audio-visual installation.

Bottom line, I’m excited about the process and am using it as a way to overcome a limitation in my creative process, namely excessive attachment to the outcome. What do they say? “Don’t worry, be happy.”