Evolution is co-created: when one species develops better defences its predator must adapt to counter them or find another source of food.
Cultures are co-created in the continual interactions of people seeking to define their shared and particular beliefs.
Societies are co-created through people’s co-operation and competition in the hope of a better life.
Marriages and friendships are always co-created, even when they are unequal, which is why they cannot be understood from outside.
Knowledge is co-created by philosophers, scientists and artists in dialogue with each other across time and space. It’s why people still read, learn from and argue with Aristotle or Buddhist texts.
Each human being creates a world to make sense of their experience and each of those worlds affects and is affected by other human beings, creatures, nature, climate, the moon and more.
The artist hero whose work is drawn entirely from their own genius does not exist: every artist, however rich their imagination and abilities, is shaped by others, just as they shape others.
Life is co-creation. It is not a thing, but an action. Life should be a verb.
But if everything is co-creation, is the term is meaningless?
No, for at least two reasons. First because recognising that everything is being co-created all the time changes how we see many things, including the ideas of universal value common in the Western art world. Secondly because that same recognition, if we choose, can lead us to change how we interact with others, including how artists who make co-creation a stated practice approach their work.
A Selfless Art 
2 responses to “Life is co-creation”
Absolutely and it is what the Harrisons were learning and is particularly evident in The Lagoon Cycle, Seventh Lagoon, in the dream sequence…
“Let me tell you a dream
I was in a stone space
that was an earth space
that was a wood space
that was the cellar of a castle
I was sitting on a wooden picnic bench
at a round oak table
with an ensemble of others
who had no shape or form
that I could discern
It was a test
an examination of sorts
I grasped that I was in the company
of earth of water of rock and stone
and the issue was whether any communication
at all of any kind
could take place
I awoke knowing that
the business of the universe
is conducted
in an odd kind of dialogue”
Harrison, Helen Mayer, and Newton Harrison. 1985. The Lagoon Cycle. Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University p.91
This is the heart of their realisation of what an ecological practice requires: an understanding that everything is in dialogue, co-creating, but that we struggle to be able to participate, partly because our own noisiness, our own overwhelming self-interest, limits our imaginations.
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Thanks Chris; I didn’t know that (don’t know much about the Harrisons at all to be honest l, beyond your interest). I’m still trying to understand everything that might be enfolded in my idea of a selfless art, but it’s certainly in the spirit of creative silence and letting go of narrow self-interest.
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