Aidan Myers

No, I primarily make paintings and work independently – I may complete 1 commissioned work per year on average, which has a partial element of collaboration involved in terms of the purpose to the work produced.

Ruchika Wason Singh

No. This is my first collaborative work. I am open to new modes of art practice. As a new creative approach, I find collaboration challenging and exciting.

Aidan Myers

Mostly it is commissioned works for specific spaces or for a particular purpose, the process of collaboration here would be about the intentions for the work and scale if it’s a site-specific work. The process of creation is usually very independent without too much involvement of the commissioning collaborator.

“First, we’re opening ourselves up to new forms and sources and then after that, reopening to each other’s work”

Aidan Myers

Trying to think about India time zone (IST) being 4hr30 ahead of UK (GMT) feels quite normal to me as I spent 3 months working in India whilst communicating often with UK family and friends. It’s actually quite hard to imagine the difference in time without seeing the outside during the Zoom meetings or having experienced the daylight hours in India. I try and ensure that our meetings are at reasonable and consistent times of day too as to allow us the working hours around the meeting. And so that one is not up super early or very late at night.

Ruchika Wason Singh

Yes, there is a difference of 4.5 hrs. India is ahead of U.K. I have had very good experience working with Aidan and we have amicably adjusted our schedules for meetings. We began with afternoon sessions on Wednesdays, but as per our other commitments we have managed to work around it.

Whilst waiting for the call, what typically happens? Do you get nervous and is there a set routine?

Aidan Myers

Although the outcome is a digital format, my working methods are very much orientated around the physical. Drawing and painting are still fundamental to this project as they are in my practice.   

Realising the parameters of collaboration with distance working has been a challenge. Trying to describe physical works or organise physical creation to bring together into a digital format takes care and planning 

Ruchika Wason Singh

Partially yes, but not fully. Our discussions began with exchange of possible ideas and Aidan and I began sharing information on India / UK with each other, that which resonated with our works. Since week one I have been doing pencil drawings stemming from this exchange. But we realised that we have to look at many aspects to make it in a digital format and as a collaboration.

Aidan Myers

With each zoom meeting and connecting via email/Instagram, I feel increasingly more comfortable as you begin to learn more about your partner’s life, their routines and other things that are of mutual interest. It’s an adjustment to me as I never work online, or in collaboration with someone else. It’s a huge learning curve.

Ruchika Wason Singh

I was curious and anxious, especially because there are strong contrasts between Asian and Western cultures. But it has worked out perfectly. Aidan has been to India -Goa for a three-month residency and has some idea about Indian :-) He loves Indian food and his kitchen is loaded with Indian spices. He also celebrated his birthday recently at an Indian restaurant. This is enough to create a zone of comfort.

Aidan Myers 

Being respectful towards my partner and being as open as possible to any of their suggestions whether this is a time of meeting or about the possible directions we may chose to take.

Ensuring consistency of being available to make zoom meetings and to continue working behind the scenes after the meetings to share any work/progress being made.  

Have email/Instagram connection also helps to keep the collaboration safe as we can message each other a few times a week 

Ruchika Wason Singh

I don't know how the word safe can be interpreted here? But if it stands for a sense of respect and privacy about the project (till it is realized) then I think it has been successful.

Aidan Myers

It feels like a natural extension to the paintings that I made following my residency in Goa. That work was very self-directed so to work in a completely new way has already broadened my thinking and unravelled some thoughts of that experience that I hadn’t fully considered. 

I am also quite a slow worker, given the amount of hours I work each day, as I always have to allow ideas to naturally unravel and concepts to naturally form. So to think about ideas and try to communicate them consistently and concisely is quite a challenge.

Ruchika Wason Singh

Yes, certainly the project has been very true to my capabilities and choices. I think that the fact that Aidan and I decided to create the digital films ourselves, learning from scratch, was our sense of commitment to accepting our complete lack of knowledge about it. We stumbled, we lost our way, but finally it has been a satisfying step ahead.

Aidan Myers

There have been many conversations had so far about technical approaches and narratives to tie our ways of working together. As technical thinking isn’t in any way my medium – this is quite difficult to navigate and consider what is the best possible outcome/solution to a digital format. Though I feel that the ideas being shared are very open to allow many forms of work to happen. I think that the key is reducing all the possibilities to more simple potentials.

Ruchika Wason Singh

Personally, I see it as a meaningful extension of my practice. Drawing is central to my work and I consider the use of motion and sound as valuable insertions creating mood and conceptual depth to the visual forms. At the same time, in the global context, the digital media surfaces as a means to shrink the distance between the artist and the viewer.

Aidan Myers

We each only communicate via email, zoom and Instagram messenger rather than making phone calls or using WhatsApp.  

None of our conversations are shared beyond the shared folder or with others beyond the organisers of the project, which is important. I have also not posted any visuals that we have yet to agree on via social media platforms as to ensure that the project and information of the artists is kept under wraps until and agreed time is finalised to publish the work. 

Ruchika Wason Singh

This depends on how we define 'privacy' and its parameters. Both Aidan and I shared enough information about our ongoing studio practice, our experiences in the art world and life in general. Agreeing to do a collaboration itself meant accepting that the creative space is not just claimed by my own self. I was prepared to let this information-share happen. In the absence of this, the collaborators cannot give each other the space to co-exist and I find it important to create the ground for art making.

Aidan Myers

It is a very different process to how I approach other work. Challenging in terms of understanding how to create things digitally whilst maintaining a sense of it being truthful and connected to one’s practice. Whilst working alongside another project (separate from Openbooks) this has brought me far closer to thinking about narratives and concepts before making work, whereas I usually work in a very intuitive way, thinking about the object/physical approach to painting first before the concepts.

Ruchika Wason Singh

Ha ha ha! That's very relevant to my situation considering I have a small studio. The digital process of book making has been an escape from the stress of planning storage space. This is my first digital book, but I do not think this is going to be the last one I am creating. It is also an escape from being stationed at one place and making art. So, like during the project I travelled to Goa for a much needed holiday, my first since covid started. I kept working on the digital book on my laptop and Aidan and I also had zoom meetings. So this digital process of book making let me make an escape and allowed artistic mobility into the practice.

Aidan Myers

It is a very different process to how I approach other work. Challenging in terms of understanding how to create things digitally whilst maintaining a sense of it being truthful and connected to one’s practice. Whilst working alongside another project (separate from Openbooks) this has brought me far closer to thinking about narratives and concepts before making work, whereas I usually work in a very intuitive way, thinking about the object/physical approach to painting first before the concepts.

Ruchika Wason Singh

From the beginning of the project Aidan and I had decided that the digital process of book making would be futile if we did not engage with the elements which this media offered us. Both of us are painters and we were curious to look into the dimensions of movement and sound in the two-dimensional visual spaces.

During the project the search for suitable sounds to develop the mood and the appropriate movements to build the momentum and pace were two important factors around which I developed the work. This process of selection made me go through several options and look at my forms from different perspectives. These varied experiences of looking at the forms have expanded my imagination of visual communication.

“The last video is going to be very important, in the sense, because that’s where it leaves the viewer”

“Of course, a kind of hopeful, positive ending..”

Aidan Myers

I tried to maintain an open mind towards possible outcomes. Initially I envisaged animated work of some kind, perhaps in a more computer-based format. In some respects, we have kept to this, but created in a format that feels much more honest and truthful to my physical practice and to our shared viewpoints conversations. I never pre-empted a stop-motion drawing animation in this way. I think there is some success in being able to converse, exchange and develop mutual interests that allows each partner to understand something from another perspective. However the downside may be technical ability and experience with tech to limit the possibilities for digital outcomes.

Ruchika Wason Singh

I did not have any defined expectations from the collaboration, except that I will have new experiences in a domain where I had to open myself to change. Perhaps the only expectation was that the book would be in the format of a folding book in the digital space.

As a lot of time was spent on introducing ourselves to the nuances of digital practice, it dawned upon Aidan and myself that considering the time, the format of the book would be difficult to create. It was complex and needed more time and planning. So we decided to work around the scroll format. In this sense I was not able to create/achieve my initially planned work, but at the same time it took me to learn a new way of creating. Finally, when working with a new medium, I always let the medium guide me. The concept takes a secondary stage as it can be communicated well only through the medium.