Colaborative Projects.

I enjoyed reading the article about Colab and their metamorphosis. I especially liked how in the beginning the group started as just meetings for artists, then bolstered by common thinking and mutual respect the group realized that they had a call to action. They had something to say as a group and the public needed to hear it. Despite being a large group with many different media, everyone could participate and add their creative thoughts. Colab was not only collaborative, they were building a commuity.

Another aspect I liked about Colab was their choice to bypass alternative spaces and to register as a non-profit agency in order to receive funding. Even as an alternative group they understood that in order to spread their message they would need to "play the game". I feel as though today artists who take pride in being "alternative" feel that a lack of audience validates their "alternative" status. But many times alternative artists are only reaching their friends and like minded individuals. I think it is even more impressive to be an alternative group and to be able to deliver an alternative message to the greater public. Maybe the public will disagree and maybe they wont get it, but the more people you reach out to the better chance you have of being heard. I feel like the fact that they were a recognized non-profit gave some validity to the collaborative. These weren't just some crazy artists with ideas that they were spewing out. They had funding, they had a name, they were organized and had the ability to work together to produce works of art and a message.

I also thought it was interesting, I read the Colab article and an article about a band "Of Montreal" on the same day. The band describes having to come up with different forms art in order to sell their music (beyond the traditional T-shirts and music videos). In a way this is kind of the same idea as Colab. A group gets together expresses their artistic vision in a variety of media. Maybe their are more collaborative art groups out there that aren't even aware of following in the steps of Colab.