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Art history is traditionally presented as the individual's lone struggle for self-expression, yet over the past fifty years, there has been a notable increase in the number of artists making work collaboratively. Co-Art : Artists on Creative Collaboration explores this phenomenon through engaging and candid conversations with leading artist duos and collectives, who offer their insight into how to work creatively and effectively with others.

The twenty-five co-art groups featured in this book were selected to offer a wide range of formats and approaches to art-making. Their relationships range from family to romantic couples, childhood friends to art-school peers, and purely professional associations. They are located internationally— from Europe to the Americas, as well as in India, Japan, Vietnam, and the Middle East. The book is organized chronologically in relation to the start dates of their collaborations. [editor summary]

« Celui qui n’est libre que dans son temps libre est prisonnier dans son travail »

Urgences professionnelles, deadlines imminentes, clients mécontents, projets chronophages qui empiètent sur la vie personnelle : le rythme de travail des créatifs est effréné et souvent stressant. Dans une société où tout – des technologies aux cadences de vie – va plus vite, il est nécessaire de faire une pause et de prendre du recul.

C’est ce que propose ce livre, en mettant l’accent sur les grands courants spirituels encore influents à notre époque (philosophie zen, bouddhisme, christianisme) et en exposant les vertus de la pleine conscience, du calme, du silence et… du thé !

Ces éléments, apparemment anodins, sont non seulement bénéfiques pour la créativité, mais ils permettent également d’atteindre le bien-être dans la vie quotidienne, de se sentir libre dans son travail, en un mot d’élaborer un véritable art de vivre. [résumé de l'éditeur]

“Every practice is a mode of thought, already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday: a thinking of the world’s varied ways of affording itself.” —from Thought in the Act

Combining philosophy and aesthetics, Thought in the Act is a unique exploration of creative practice as a form of thinking. Challenging the common opposition between the conceptual and the aesthetic, Erin Manning and Brian Massumi “think through” a wide range of creative practices in the process of their making, revealing how thinking and artfulness are intimately, creatively, and inseparably intertwined. They rediscover this intertwining at the heart of everyday perception and investigate its potential for new forms of activism at the crossroads of politics and art.

Emerging from active collaborations, the book analyzes the experiential work of the architects and conceptual artists Arakawa and Gins, the improvisational choreographic techniques of William Forsythe, the recent painting practice of Bracha Ettinger, as well as autistic writers’ self-descriptions of their perceptual world and the experimental event making of the SenseLab collective. Drawing from the idiosyncratic vocabularies of each creative practice, and building on the vocabulary of process philosophy, the book reactivates rather than merely describes the artistic processes it examines. The result is a thinking-with and a writing-in-collaboration-with these processes and a demonstration of how philosophy co-composes with the act in the making. Thought in the Act enacts a collaborative mode of thinking in the act at the intersection of art, philosophy, and politics.

An integrative introduction to the theories and themes in research on creativity, the second edition of Creativity is both a reference work and text for courses in this burgeoning area of research. The book begins with a discussion of the theories of creativity (Person, Product, Process, Place), the general question of whether creativity is influenced by nature or nurture, what research has indicated of the personality and style of creative individuals from a personality analysis standpoint, and how social context affects creativity. This wide-ranging work then proceeds to coverage of issues such as gender differences, whether creativity can be enhanced, if creativity is related to poor mental or physical health, and much more.

The book contains boxes covering special interest items, including one-page biographies of famous creative individuals, and activities for a group or individual to test or encourage creativity, as well as references to Internet sites relating to creativity. [editor summary]

Créativité est le nouveau manifeste d’un maître de l’impossible sur le processus créatif. Bien avant 1974 et son épique traversée entre les Twin Towers du World Trade Center, Philippe Petit se consacrait corps et âme aux exigences de son art – sur la corde raide, mais aussi en tant que magicien, jongleur de rue, artiste visuel, conférencier et écrivain. Il nous livre dans cet ouvrage illustré de sa main sa grammaire de la créativité. Très tôt, Philippe Petit se découvre hors-la-loi, poète, et cultive la rébellion intellectuelle pour créer des instants éphémères qui réjouissent et inspirent. La créativité, c’est l’illégalité devient sa devise. Mais qui dit illégalité ne dit pas absence de méthodologie. Le processus de création, contrairement aux idées reçues, n’est en rien une succession d’actions aléatoires. Il est aff aire d’organisation, de planifi cation, de préméditation. S’appuyant sur sa conception inédite de l’initiative artistique, Philippe Petit révèle dans ce manuel des voies non conventionnelles pour aller au bout du processus créatif et réussir son “coup” : le passage à l’acte créatif. Il fait du lecteur son apprenti, un complice invité à découvrir, explorer et maîtriser le périmètre de son propre “crime” intellectuel ou artistique. Il décrit la manière la plus sûre de faire évoluer son projet de l’inspiration à la parfaite exécution, et livre en chemin ses découvertes sur les bienfaits de la ténacité, de l’observation comme source du savoir, de l’intuition comme source d’énergie. Avec habileté, il invoque les qualités cachées au fond de chacun de nous, qualités que nous sommes rarement encouragés à exploiter et qui sont pourtant essentielles à notre accomplissement. Ce processus créatif non conformiste et insubordonné, qu’il partage avec enthousiasme et irrévérence, inspirera celles et ceux qui luttent pour réaliser leur rêve. [résumé de l'éditeur]

In the vein of The Creative Habit and The Artist's Way, a new manifesto on the creative process from a master of the impossible. Since well before his epic 1974 walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, Philippe Petit had become an artist who answered first and foremost to the demands of his craft-not only on the high wire, but also as a magician, street juggler, visual artist, builder, and writer. A born rebel like many creative people, he was from an early age a voracious learner who taught himself, cultivating the attitudes, resources, and techniques to tackle even seemingly impossible feats. His outlaw sensibility spawned a unique approach to the creative process-an approach he shares, with characteristic enthusiasm, irreverence, and originality in Creativity: The Perfect Crime. Making the reader his accomplice, Petit reveals new and unconventional ways of going about the artistic endeavor, from generating and shaping ideas to practicing and problem-solving to pulling off the "coup" itself-executing a finished work. The strategies and insights he shares will resonate with performers of every stripe (actors, musicians, dancers) and practitioners of the non-performing arts (painters, writers, sculptors), and also with ordinary mortals in search of fresh ways of tackling the challenges and possibilities of everyday existence. [editor summary]

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reveals what leads to these moments—be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab—so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly one hundred interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists, to politicians and business leaders, to poets and artists, as well as his thirty years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous flow theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the "tortured genius" is largely a myth. Most important, he explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world. [author symmary]

La créativité n'est pas réservée aux génies ! Elle ne relève pas non plus de l'inspiration ou du délire. Au contraire, pour Edward de Bono, elle est à la portée de tous si elle est structurée et rigoureuse. Dans cet ouvrage devenu un best-seller, l'auteur propose un ensemble de techniques de créativité dont l'efficacité est prouvée par les centaines d'entreprises qui y ont recours dans le monde entier. Cette méthode originale et puissante constitue la pensée latérale, une manière d'aborder chaque question sous un angle neuf et de générer facilement des idées nouvelles. Après avoir expliqué pourquoi la créativité est un besoin vital pour les organisations qui souhaitent stimuler l'innovation, Edward de Bono présente les outils qui ont fait sa réputation (les six chapeaux de la réflexion®, le challenge, le mouvement, la provocation...) et montre comment se les approprier et les mettre en oeuvre. Grâce à cet ouvrage, vos idées nouvelles se transformeront en projets innovants ! [résumé de l'éditeur]

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers, and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, “Basic Concepts,” is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and key concepts in the field of creativity. The next section, “Diverse Perspectives of Creativity,” contains chapters on the many ways of approaching creativity. Several of these approaches, such as the functional, evolutionary, and neuroscientific approaches, have been invented or greatly reconceptualized in the last decade. The third section, “Contemporary Debates,” highlights ongoing topics that still inspire discussion. Finally, the editors summarize and discuss important concepts from the book and look to what lies ahead. [editor summary]

This chapter provides a new approach to the study of creativity of adolescents and young adults by combining the idea of self-organization with theories of emotions. To gather data for this qualitative research, hermeneutic phenomenology/ontology linked with the narrative/biography methods was chosen. As a process of interpretation of the data, pattern models of the process of creativity are designed. There are some unique differences between the models of different participants’ creativity, but in general they share common phases such as differentiation/chaos, integration/complexity, and dissipative structures/creativity (products of creativity in the forms of new movements, new writings, and new paintings). Creativity of young people is intertwined with strong emotions of interest, joy, acceptance, which enhance mental activity to global, open, and exploratory modes of attention, stimulate their thinking and enrich their imagination.These cognitive processes then deepen their emotions to complex emotions such as curiosity, enthusiasm, delight, passion, resourcefulness, and love, which, through a reciprocal reinforcement influence their selves. Creative people become more sensitive, more open, and 2 receptive to the internal and external world. They develop into resourceful, imaginative, empathic, and spiritual human beings. [author summary]

Debates about the nature of leadership for creativity have been ongoing since the 1950s. But, despite the central role leadership plays in the management of creative processes, few contributions highlight the actual practice of leadership for collaborative creative ventures. This interview with the Director of Acrobatics and Coaching at Cirque du Soleil, Boris Verkhovsky, addresses the reflexive experience of a creative leader faced with the challenges of integrating multiple expertises around complex, technological, human, and poly-sensorial creative performances. In this context, leadership for collaborative creativity appears as a constant and dynamic balancing act between people, ideas, deliverables, and the position and personality of the leader. [author summary]

This article explores the process of knowledge production and creativity in the circus. In particular, it examines how the Cirque du Soleil has been able to forge an innovative and novel tradition of circus arts by drawing upon knowledge and competencies from the related fields of sport, circus, dance, and theater. Using the notion of translation developed in actor network theory, we trace how a variety of actors and entities, including both human and nonhuman actants, are enrolled in the creation of a contemporary circus performance. We explore how power and agency are distributed in the networks that foster creativity in the circus, highlighting their inherently unstable and precarious nature, and how the Cirque has created an open and unbounded space that accommodates fluid exchanges between actants (what we call a translation zone).