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The beautiful yin-yang chaos of collaboration in creativity
2 Oct 2018
Artist, maker and activator Chris Auret led attendees of the September Creative Mornings Cape Town session through "collaborative art experiment", effectively an interactive process of seeing the effects of working together to make order of chaos in creativity.
Told to bring our favourite 'mark-making device' along with us, whether it was a pen, crayon or even ink, we were intrigued to find blank paper plates on the seats in Friends of Design’s talk space. These weren’t for the vegan doughnuts provided by That Doughnut Guy – though we did hear that the Creative Mornings Cape Town meetings will soon include a doughnut wall.
Rather, we were meant to mark our paper plates according to how we’d ticked our icebreaker name tags, indicating that we either bring order to the chaos or chaos to the order.
Described as a ‘Creative Mornings session on steroids’, it featured everything from marching bands to balloons, and will result in exciting changes to the usual running of Creative Mornings' sessions going forward.
Fighting order, turning to chaos
Elaborating on the theme of chaos in creativity, Auret stretched and did a few turns at the front of the room before introducing himself and sharing a bit of his life story, as he calls himself: “A walking example of chaos and collaboration.”
Auret shared that when he was first approached to present a talk on the topic at the Creative Mornings' session, he was excited, then he thought he should turn it down as he was too busy, and then he thought he simply had to it.
Auret says too much stress is placed on creating order by society, whereas we need a bit of chaos, too. It’s almost a yin-yang relationship.Then, getting our creative juices flowing, Auret asked us all to close our eyes and connect through the unconscious web. We did some deep breathing, then expressed our feelings with our selected mark-making tools on our plates.
Over the course of the talk, we passed along our plates to the person on our right and effectively created order from the chaos, through collaboration.
Much of his own process came from unlearning the structures put in place while he was at school, and rewiring those rules based on various choices. He left the ‘six days a week’ rigmarole of rugby to rather focus on art and design.
Then after leaving school, he faced another big choice – fine art school or the more structured, collaborative world of advertising?
He went for the latter as it seemed to offer a more secure future, despite really wanting to follow his passion for art. In doing collaborative art work on the side, Auret saw the magic of bouncing different perspectives off of your own.
Then the travel bug bit, and Auret calls the result a “beautiful level of chaos”. He started blogging while on his three-month solo travels in London as a way of sharing his experiences.
On his return to SA, he soon found a job through LinkedIn – a solid ‘9 to 5’ – while also expressing himself creatively after-hours at an art studio.
Follow your passion
Auret’s next big turning point came from spending time in hospital after a stomach operation – this led to lots of introspection, and he finally left the world of advertising to focus on becoming an artist.
Since then, he’s branched out into large-scale, collaborative art and murals in the public space. Know that ‘cool giraffe’ mural in Muizenberg? That’s Auret's.
Despite his successes, Auret says chaos and collaboration can be uncomfortable and even frustrating, especially at first. But the end result is so much more when you collaborate.Illustrating this, by swapping the paper plates we were working on every few minutes, we were effectively using our personal skills to enhance what someone else had created. That’s collaborative chaos at its best – making something new and harmonious.
Stop, collaborate and listen
Auret also spoke of a few of his most recent projects, like #1000printsnofootprints, the Valhalla Afrikaburn long-house concept, and his current To We, From Me work.
It’s about creating collaboration and integrity between the ‘we’ and ‘me’ through poetry, movement, and more from his residency at Muizenberg's Imaginarium space.
But as soon as you’re just listening, you’re no longer doing, so you need to get the balance right – there’s that yin-yang analogy again.
Follow Auret on Twitter and Instagram for more on his collaborative work, and keep an eye on the Creative Mornings Cape Town feed for their latest updates.
About Leigh Andrews
Leigh Andrews AKA the #MilkshakeQueen, is former Editor-in-Chief: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com, with a passion for issues of diversity, inclusion and equality, and of course, gourmet food and drinks! She can be reached on Twitter at @Leigh_Andrews.
