[INENT Research Seminar] ‘Beyond Creative Production: Organizing Constitutive Creative Togetherness in a European Screenwriting Programme’
January 21st, 2025
12am – 1pm in Paris building L712 & on Zoom
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Speakers:
Bernhard RESCH – VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT, AMSTERDAM
ABSTRACT
This empirical study explores the intricate social dynamics and collective phenomena underlying the organization of creative collaboration. While research works have shed light on the cognitive, material, and affective dimensions of creative collaboration, the bulk of studies emphasize the realization of creative outputs, overlooking the nuances of how lived social experiences and communal feelings unfold in these settings. Our paper draws on an ethnographic study of Eureka Series, an intensive programmefor emergent European screenwriters, which focuses on the development of collaborative screenwriting skills, placing them in a ‘writers’ room’ environment. We elaborate a phenomenological-relational framework, integrating insights from Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of co-presence, which we complement by building on Stewart’s and Butler’s theories of affects and vulnerability. Our analysis reveals how co-creators engage in a process of constitutive creative togetherness —highlighting the emergent, embodied, and affective nature of becoming together while creating—, which is shaped by three interrelated dynamics. By focusing on the sociality and relationality at play in creative processes, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on the material and affective dimensions of creative collaboration, while also offering an empirical exploration of how organizationalityunfolds in hybrid creative contexts that blend physical and virtual workspaces.