Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

So one initiated 32 pages and also responded to 32 pages, on those pages, on which one’s
colleague/collaborator had worked.
The pages were made one or a few at a time so that one was aware of how the whole was
developing and changing. Neither initiated 32 images at one and the same time or anything like it.
When both sides of the page had been made, the page went back to the initiator who could make
changes; and that included changing what had been the other’s contribution. So one could add to
or subtract from one’s work or one’s collaborator’s because it was all the collaborative text now.
One of the things that happened at this third stage was a process of blending the two elements if
that had not happened already as part of the initiation stage and the first response stage.
Here was an engagement in a process I have since called “benign artistic trespass” [2]. The
primary aim here was to get the whole image right in such a way that both were happy with it.
By this point, we had been making images with each other for some time and were beginning to
open each other to our own ways of seeing.
Most pages went through the prescribed two stages, a few went through three and maybe one or
two went through four. I once identified one page which had been through five stages; but, when I
looked again, I could not be sure which one it was!
Collaborations for Peter Finch does not have any pages made by one only of us; and in some cases
the work of one has been changed by the other and not just added to. The writing is there without
attribution of individual efforts.
The length of book we settled on was about the maximum number of pages that could be managed
in Writers Forum’s then preferred publication style (sheets folded to make 4 pages, centrally
stapled). The page size was Cobbing’s favourite; and I think it’s all right. He was doing the actual
production. I just did half the artistic bit. So I agreed, though left to myself perhaps I might have
wanted to try different page shapes.
We wrote up to that limit, pages having been abandoned along the way, usually half way through
their completion by the first artist, sometimes by the other artist. (Typically, we would give each
other a batch of pages half finished or a number of responses to the same page; and give with
them permission or instruction to choose some but not all.)
Near the very end, we had a look through and weeded a couple which we felt—in tranquility—
were weak.
All the pages were laid out on Cobbing’s living room floor and the order discussed. When a link
was agreed, the pages were moved together until we had the entire order worked out.
The writing/ordering process speeded up as the project progressed; and on the last day we
finalised the last few pages and determined the whole order of the book. I think that the order of
pages works; but it was not in any sense predetermined or foreseen.