5.3. (Non) inventory of (im)possible stages for cross-trans-multi-disciplinar-ity
by Pau Alsina
A stage delineates a zone of action and defines the limits of what will happen inside it, but it also inevitably draws up an exterior -off scene- that tends to be as, or more important than, the stage itself. Could we dare to imagine a specific stage for cross-trans-multi-disciplinary collaboration? How should that stage be? How about the outside that it delineates? What sort of stage are we talking about? Is it an Italian stage, an Elizabethan one, an arena, or does it adopt the shape of a lab or a black box? In short, what are the theatrical elements that might boost the cross-disciplinary creativity we are looking for?
The truth is that these questions open up new ones that lie hovering above them: Do stages exist before scenes, and thus shape them? Or is it the scene itself that makes and articulates the stage? There is clearly a relation of interdependence between the elements involved, and we should be able to establish which elements matter in this interrelation. If there has been such a range of stage configurations throughout history, it is because they belong to different dramatic practices and theories that draw attention to particular elements. If we were to translate this into the stage of cross-disciplinary collaboration, we would say that there are as many stages as there are practices or theories of knowledge.
After over twenty years working on projects described as “cross-disciplinary”, we have observed multiple and varied configurations of people, objects, spaces, time, contexts, and disciplines. It might be true that these could be grouped into stage types, bringing into play this or that semantic-material actor, and although this would add something to protocol, the truth is that the stages are still anchored to a space and time that produces a very specific alignment of actors, resulting in very concrete results.
One of the things that myself, and other members of cross-disciplinary projects I have participated in, have paradoxically invested most time in is in explaining ourselves in relation to others, and to our own original disciplines, in order to understand one another and make fluid communication possible. This traditional act of “giving an explanation”, always emerges at some point -sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly-, no matter how hard we try to avoid it and go straight into action, as a sort of saving board for the complex ins and outs of the onto-epistemology hovering above us. Every cross-disciplinary collaborative process seems to generate an unavoidable act of reflection and analysis connected to one's own production, and one's position within the framework that sustains the project under development. We could perhaps say that collaboration allows us to get to know ourselves better, or that cross-disciplines allow us to better understand the disciplines themselves.
It could be that, although some would say there is no pre-established “being” or “knowing” within disciplines and cross-disciplines, it is instead a becoming and a knowing that draws out an ethical-onto-epistemology in constant process and evolution, as if it were a structure, building itself with no beginning or end. A map does not build a territory, in cross-disciplines or in the discipline itself, because the paths to be walked are many and varied, according to starting point, time chosen, or the speed and direction taken, for example. If we look at it from a broad historical perspective, at the end of the day, what defines a discipline's borders? What are the limits of a discipline? When does one begin and another end? Which feeds off which? Or, should we reduce cross-disciplinarity to a mother discipline from which the rest of the disciplines feed off?
I recall an infinite number of bachelor or master thesis projects where a supposedly cross-disciplinary, naïve approach would transform the question itself, making it jump from one discipline to another, using a methodological excuse thanks to the complacent epistemological complex present ever present in the arts. I remember many other research projects that would apply to cross-discipline research competitions, year after year. Open calls where key words were like absolute mantras for salvation, and evaluations were based upon them. Terms such as “cross-discipline” itself, which, once used as a common cliché, lost its meaning, turned into ends in themselves regardless of the objectives or the results obtained.
I remember how during the process of questioning between artists, scientists, and technologists, the same ideas about what art, science, or technology in action were to those involved would emerge, as if they had a single, static, fixed definition that was never questioned, except when addressed by the others. The presumptions regarding the field of knowledge itself, as well as prejudices regarding others, allow us to draw out maps of conflict, consensus, or dissensus, where spaces for collaboration may be articulated. I remember the efforts made to translate basic conceptual vocabulary in order to create areas of communication between disciplines from which to think, from which to think oneself. I remember cases where cross-disciplinarity just happened, perhaps due to the lack of discipline of the disciplined, through the a-disciplinary interstices opened up by questions, or because questions don't know about disciplines, they only know about fragmented answers that might piece back together the broken mirror of knowledge.
