Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 60

Dorothy Miell:
The psychologist Abraham Maslow would say that you can only strive for
self-expression if everything else is okay—if you’ve got enough food, if
you’ve got shelter, etc. Others including Csikzsentmihaliya would say you’re
motivated to do it not primarily because of something inside yourself that
you need to get out, but because it’s a way of establishing a connection with
other people, which is the endpoint of your efforts. Other people would say
that it’s driven by some sense that you’ll get a reward for it.
J. P. Singh:
But that’s actually very useful, because it’s a romanticizing that, under various
conditions you’ll get various forms of creativity and genius.
Voice and Collaboration
J. P. Singh:
Let’s go in the other direction. I think this has been very useful in terms of
exploring why artists do what they do as dialogic agents. Another explicit
form of dialogue, however, is collaboration. Voice is an example. Can you
expand on the circumstances under which voice is most likely to happen
during collaboration?
Dorothy Miell:
Motivation is key. There needs to be a connection between two motivated
people collaborating with one another for voice to arise from their activities.
There’s no point doing it if one person is trying to get out of it something
completely different to the other. You’re not necessarily sharing a sense
of where you’ll end up in your endeavour, but a shared ambition and
understanding of the direction in which the collaboration will move both
parties.
J. P. Singh:
So, a duet, then.
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