Writing about collaboration again in the context of socially constructive arts practice, that is work done by artists which is supposed to have some sort of beneficial impact on a specific social environment.
I’m very suspicious of all collaboration! aren’t you? When we fall in love we do things together and then we don’t and we do but we don’t collaborate. When we get on and are excited we share ideas and emotions but this is not collaboration. When two people academics or not come together and write every word, this is not collaboration – it is just doing that for some other reason and calling it for some reason collaboration.
Collaboration comes from difference and that alone, the only interesting use of the word is the collaborator of WW2 who negotiated violent difference by taking sides. Nothing good in it. It is not nicely coloured but a statement of separation.
So. If you are comfortably writing every word together then you are not collaborating, just having complicated tea.
If you are uncomfortable with each other, you disagree, maybe not even get on, then you are on the right royal road of the true collaborator.