The notion that an artwork has only one creator, where the individual artist with their unique artistic vision and style defines the work, is gradually changing. Techniques are becoming more complex – think of AI – and demand multidisciplinary approaches. There's also a growing focus on a more inclusive approach to subjects, allowing for polyphony and communal creation processes. This results in less emphasis on 'the genius individual'. Long live the collective!

ARK is such a collective: an international and interdisciplinary group of designers, artists, creative technologists, musicians, and researchers, who strive to make technologies more democratic and fairer. ARK consists of Arran Lyon, Louis Braddock Clarke, Roosje Klap, Senka Milutinović, Teoniki Rożynek, Valentin Vogelmann, and Zuzanna Zgierska, living and working in The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Groningen. They employ unorthodox methods to conduct their research, such as co-creation with algorithms, critical fabulation, collective writing, and Potluck: sharing and preparing meals together, where everyone brings something, to foster a sense of collective care.

In this final interview of the first year of the NFF Fellowship, we talk with ARK about their experiences.

What exactly happens when you work with so many different people without anyone taking the lead?

Senka: The special thing about these kinds of collaborations is that you transcend your field and the boundaries between disciplines seem to blur.
Valentin: At the same time, it also slows down processes and seems to hinder you. But ultimately, it takes you to places you couldn't reach alone. It's like in society itself: it's slow, sometimes it's annoying, but we need each other to move forward. Senka: Alone you are faster, but in a group, you get further.

Zuzanna: Engaging in reflection through this fellowship allowed us to challenge the notions of speed and efficiency, which often constitute technological value. The intentional ambiguity of each member's role in the research process moves away from the binary logic of input/output or action/reaction. We plant thoughts in the air, where they meet and funnel into tangible concepts – not assigned to anyone's authorship. This imperfect process, with its gaps, dents, and cuts, is not a sign of deficiency but a space for negotiation and the birth of new ideas.

Louis: As a group, you also dare to tackle more challenging subjects, such as colonialism, how power is embedded in archives, or the climate crisis. We can emotionally support eachother and you can approach complex issues, because we have so many different perspectives. Roosje: For me, it's also about dismantling the ego; I can hide a bit in the collective. This creates a shared new identity. I can do things that lie outside my usual domain. We all work 'outside the box' and therefore seek connections and intersections for meeting. It's like a web outside your own comfort zone, and in that, we support each other.

You explore different aspects of collaboration. What has surprised you?

Teoniki: I notice that working in a flat hierarchy, where no one is in charge, gives a pleasant combination of freedom and responsibility. It keeps you involved; you are part of something bigger, something that has value. Senka: We also feel a responsibility and relationship towards each other; you take each other into account.

Teoniki: The outcomes of what we develop as a group are unpredictable. Compare it to a single processor and a super-processor, one that consists of many processors that can handle many things simultaneously. A lot happens at the same time. Valentin: What I increasingly notice is that it's about taking care of both the project and each other. We especially need time. There are no shortcuts. Only when you do this, does what we call 'emergence' get a chance: the coming forth of things, the becoming visible.

Teoniki: What also strikes me is that we don’t actually make decisions, at least not consciously. We just talk about things, and organically, we come to new steps.

As a collective, you also collaborate with external parties, which take a more scientific approach. How do you see the relationship between scientific and artistic research?

Zuzanna: Throughout our fellowship period, we mainly collaborated within ARK, but we also engaged with a collective of scientists, The Centre for BOLD Cities from Rotterdam. It was an intense, but fruitful collaboration that made us realise the importance of including artistic research in the knowledge-production process. In interdisciplinary teams, visual culture too often becomes limited to aesthetic or technical means of mapping scientific outcomes.

Valentin: You both leave your niche to meet each other; you learn from other ways of knowledge production. Louis: This difference in knowledge production is good. We shouldn’t pretend that boundaries always blur. Artists need scientists and vice versa, because they sometimes do different things and set up different hypotheses.

Roosje: In the field of the arts, we don’t try to save the world, but we look for other ways to view and approach it. Collaborations between art and science are really important. And that’s what makes this fellowship so valuable: we work intensively together on research from the ground up. And for once, it’s not about the end result, an exhibition or production, but the dialogue between art and science is central. This is how new ideas emerge.

Arran: In the sciences, it’s often about reduction, analysing, and getting to the core of something. Artistic research is more about building things together and exploring in a broader context. Scientific research looks inward, while artistic research looks outward.

Roosje just said that it’s nice not to have to work towards a project or exhibition and to have time. And now, at the end, we ask you to make an exhibition anyway.

Louis: It’s frustrating, but at the same time beautiful. I see it as a platform to share knowledge, rather than an exhibition: Change the expectations of what it is. We have to figure out and define how we can share our acquired knowledge, and it’s interesting to think about these formats. Zuzanna: By presenting ideas in progress instead of finished projects, we invite the audience to participate in knowledge exchange. We give the viewer the freedom to influence aspects of our research.

One of the tools you are developing in the context of this Fellowship is Marginalia. What is Marginalia?

Senka & Arran: Marginalia is a kind of a real-time hypertext editor that makes it possible to leave notes, comments, sketches, or illustrations – without the intervention of Big Tech – in 'the margin' of the main text. These digital annotations also make it possible to link to other media, creating a web of information and knowledge. We want to use this tool to share and publish the findings of our research for a broader audience, in ways that are more experimental and work better for collectives like ours.

Zuzanna: For centuries, annotations in the margins were a literary criticism tool. With social media platforms designed to polarise discourse, we need tools that activate dialogue.

In your research, you focus on "the Archive with a capital A." Could you explain what you mean by that?

Valentin: We look at the Archive as an overarching concept: an Archive is not just a collection of books or objects with accompanying metadata (such as details about the content, quality, condition, and other characteristics), but it also reflects history and has a relationship with other archives and the choices that have been made. Likewise, it relates to the 'archival turn’ theory. This theory originates from postcolonial thinking and makes us look at the archive in a new way: not just as a repository of documents and information, but also as an institution that influences how we understand and interpret our history and culture. What is important and what is not? Whose story are we telling, and who calls the shots?

Roosje: In general, looking at an image often plays the leading role in archives. We explore the role of the body by literally walking through an archive as if it were a city. This allows us to challenge the choices made in the collection: how can we create new connections with paths that are often forgotten? This way, we look at how our approach can enable different narrative forms and new stories.

Do you also see the city as an Archive?

Roosje: Yes, with different stories that are sometimes invisible or contain other stories in the form of people, houses, books, or other objects. Different histories are waiting to be heard or shown and connected to other histories: What does it mean to be human? The city is also a place that escapes the hierarchical systems of the Archive, where new stories get space and are determined by everyone who lives there.

Zuzanna: We have tried to define new “building blocks” for a hypothetical user interface of the Archive. We were inspired by the serendipity of navigating through physical space. Whereas priority is often given to sight, we wanted to activate other senses in our research. How can we use bodies and the landscape/cityscape to interface with the Archive? While navigating the environment, we collect physical data, such as light, movement, and distance, and import these as search parameters when browsing the Archive. This way, the sensory inputs are added to the Archive, allowing for data exchange rather than extraction. This is a collaborative approach, inviting all users to contribute to and benefit from the Archive.

You approach your research on the Archive from a societal perspective. Do you see this as the role of art?

Roosje: Art plays a crucial role in society as both a lens and a mirror, reflecting and scrutinizing the world around us. In today's context, art helps to address critical issues and fosters understanding by developing new perspectives. Our research into non-hierarchical collaboration within our collective and exploring the Archive as a societal construct emphasizes inclusivity and democratization of knowledge. Art becomes a tool for questioning existing structures and proposing more inclusive ways of understanding our histories and cultures. This dual focus exemplifies how art can promote democratic and equitable approaches in both creative processes and knowledge preservation.

So, in fact, you've conducted two studies: on ​​flat hierarchy collaboration of a collective and on the Archive. What is the connection between these two studies?

Roosje: The connection lies in the shared principles of inclusivity, democratization, and the re-examination of dominant narratives. We prioritize collaborative methods that transcend individual expertise and disciplinary boundaries. This approach fosters a shared identity and supports diverse perspectives, allowing us to tackle complex subjects and create richer, more nuanced work.

Just as we as a collective need to make space for each other and seek added value in togetherness, we also seek this added value in the Archive. How can we bring non-dominant stories to the forefront? How can we give space to other stories? Our exploration of the Archive challenges the conventional, hierarchical structures that often dictate which stories are preserved and highlighted. We seek to uncover and give voice to marginalized and overlooked narratives by treating the Archive as a dynamic, living entity.

Our method of engaging with the Archive as if it were a city – walking through it and creating new connections – mirrors our collaborative practice. Both approaches emphasize the importance of inclusivity and the value of multiple perspectives in creating a more comprehensive understanding of history and culture. Both concepts are about making space for diverse voices and stories, whether within a creative collective or as the vast repository of an archive. They underscore the potential for collective and inclusive practices to enrich our understanding and to challenge and transform existing systems.