In this dialogical performative presentation by two artists and an anthropologist, we engage with the different dynamics of collaborative practice that unfolded in the context of the INSPIRE Open Spaces – a workshop/residency approach of the INSPIRE research project - Studying Inspiration and Creative Practice in the context of war, exile and political violence based at Peace Research Institute in Oslo (2020-2024). INSPIRE studies the role of artists and creative practice in and after violent conflict. Collaboration with artists is a key element of the project's methodological approach to explore and highlight the plurality of knowledges. Recognizing the situatedness of knowledges (Haraway 1988) and the embodied and partial nature of knowledge, through artistic collaborative methods we aimed to explore how artists, art and audiences engage with social injustice through personal creative practice. In September 2022 and then in April 2023, we co-organized an open space in Geneva and in Khartoum, Sudan with artists who through their personal experiences and methodologies share their practices and created a hybrid, multilayered perspective on the issues related to exile, displacement and political conflict.
Open Space in Geneva, Switzerland and then later in Khartoum, Sudan became a platform for intimate dialogue and a collaborative opening towards the other. By reflecting on how different knowledges emerge in such collaborative spaces, we ask how different dynamics embedded in a variety of situated knowledges and positionalities as well as know-hows methodological tools that artists and researchers employ, shape and reshape experiences, perceptions and ideals of collaborative engagements. What type of knowledges about experiences of war, displacement and political violence emerge as a result? What are the potentials, tensions, conflicts and limits around narrations and knowledges of violence and displacement in such processes?
