The Ouija Board as collaboration

It sounds like the premise for a bad joke, but I honestly think the ultimate collaborate tool is the Ouija board.

You're with other people, all doing the same thing, you try to get into the same frame of mind and then you listen to one another until something moves. Which part of that isn't collaborative?

We did an exercise a million years ago called Pineapple-ing. You take a slick piece of paper or foil and a paint pen. Then two people hold the pen, look at the pineapple and draw it. If it feels like the other person is just drawing with your hand then you're allowed to take your hand away. You have to agree (non-verbally) on which direction you want to go in and a myriad of other decisions. The idea was that from then on, if you were collaborating with someone who'd been in that workshops you could shout "PINEAPPLE" and they'd know to step back and make sure you were moving together.

When you both agree you've finished you have a drawing that neither of you did, but which you both drew.

That's how collaboration should be, neither of you is 'in charge' but the work you made would be different without the other.

Last year my excellent friend Emma Jayne Nagouse approached me with a request to collaborate on some work about Dinah from Genesis 34. She left me voice memos. I made her a collage. We chatted and I made work. It was easy and easily some of the best work I've ever made because I didn't do it alone.

For a long time my collaborative efforts were painful for me. I made comics, podcasts and other small projects with a partner and then I'd walk away feeling like I'd been managed and that the output wasn't really anything to do with me. It's only now, having experienced really nourishing collaborations where the work wouldn't exist without either person and is better for it that I see I was being Pineapple'd.

If you're collaborating with someone and feel like they're moving without you, just take your hand away. If they value you as a collaborator they will correct their behaviour, if they don't then they don't deserve your hand.

We're starting the second phase of our collaboration by looking at Bathsheba and doing some inclusive workshops with other women. I'm so excited to get back to the Ouija board and see what we spell out together this time.