Z(e)ro Spaces: Poïesis and the Art of Collaborative Creativity

An ambitious theoretical experiment whose aim is to produce a general approach to the notion of collaboration through a vast series of historical examples taken from different artistic practices. Through the core concept of Fictive World Formulae, inspired by Giambattista Vico and Markus Gabriel, the notion of "fiction" is used as a generator of possibility. A fictive world, in other words, is what Deleuze calls the "virtual" not a parallel world or a constructed representation, but a poiein as creation of possibility within the real. The theme of possibility is in this sense underlying and sustaining the whole project: the purpose of an intellectual and pedagogical collaboration, suggests Collet, is to create possibility; collaboration consists in generating possibility. This is maybe the ultimate meaning of what Collet calls "Zero spaces". Alongside with Alain Badiou's ontological notion of ensemble vide, the zero space is an empty space not in a nihilistic sense, but as a void that contains all the possibilities that can be generated in collaborative contexts. The Zero space is the space in which the fictive world formulae are created. It is a literal, in-the-world model of creation. As the author doesn't fail to underline, the "zero" is not only a set but also a circle, i.e. a context of collaboration in which the poiein as creation of possibility can take place. - Alessandro De Francesco