Shared authorship

Conversation between Teresa Lanceta, Nuria Enguita and Laura Vallés Vílchez.

NE-LV During lockdown, you created the Raval canvases we discussed in the first chapter and developed the idea for a participative and transgenerational project on the Raval’s trades, which materialised in a series of co-authorships included in this exhibition. Community and collaboration go hand in hand with creation. As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that these co-authorships have been legally recognised, meaning questions such as ownership and rights are protected. It is also explicitly stated that there has been no subordination during the co-authored projects, so that how they are used subsequently is a matter for each participant to freely decide on.

TL I have always been curious about other people’s work practices, which is why I studied Middle Atlas textiles and fifteenth-century Spanish rugs, and sought to complement this with invitations, collaborations and co-authorships that have proved to be a great gift for me.

In the exhibition Adiós al rombo I invited five artists to each exhibit a work in a common space and add two collaborations. In Notificaciones, a show put on at the Centre del Carme de Cultura Contemporània in Valencia, the invited artists were students; and, on this occasion, I invited Isabel Carballo, Paula Crespo, Virginia García del Pino and La Trinxera.

I recently started a new type of working relationship that takes collaboration a step further. We are calling it ‘co-authorship’ or ‘shared authorship’: two or more people work together without subordination or loss of creative identity on any part. It may seem clichéd and simple, but it is actually very hard to maintain one’s creativity in a group, and no one should have to relinquish even the tiniest bit of it.

The co-authorships with Pedro G. Romero, Olga Diego and Leire Vergara, Xabier Salaberria and Miquel Tarradell Secondary School (teachers and pupils) and MACBA staff members, with Nicolas Malevé, all yielded very diverse experiences. Even the achievements have been different. I’m friends with all of them and in most cases we go back many years, and yet each project saw a unique relationship develop between us, with some being more fluid and on a similar wavelength, and others more challenging and even argumentative. But all experiences, including this most recent one, have been fun and have brought us closer together. The results are all excellent, as I hope this publication shows, because we have really tried to translate the processes into a format that works not only in an exhibition setting, but also in a book.