At the peak of our excitement over the project, shortly after we had finished the work, we were made aware of a new fad that was sweeping the globe (particularly in America and Australia) called planking. Both The Guardian and the once popular but now defunct online news hub Gawker Media had posted stories that outlined the craze, in which young people were documenting themselves rigidly laying down in absurd places and posting pictures of these interventions on social media.2 Largely understood as a public prank, the activity was criticised for being dangerous. The stunts were popular enough to have been cited in a rap song and have their own Wikipedia page.3 Lisa and I were completely oblivious, and while we were both intrigued that we’d inadvertently tapped into the collective consciousness, we were also crestfallen. Through email exchanges we tried to figure out where and how this work should exist beyond our trip, but it never came of much beyond fodder for our respective websites.

Shortly after this trip, Lisa was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died within two years. Mourning Lisa’s death is an ongoing process; I often reflect fondly upon our friendship. Within that reflection I’ve thought about different ways in which I can keep her memory honoured and alive, and one of these ways has been in thinking about what to do with our collaborative work. But I find myself asking, how do I move forward with the work we both invested energy and aspirations into? What am I to do with Getting Laid in America? As someone who is profoundly affected and invested in the ethics of relationships, it feels uncertain whether I even have the right to finish this work and put it into the world without Lisa by my side. This writing is my attempt to work through these questions, to bear witness to this collaboration that has been on pause since 2011, and tease out the ethics at stake. I want to think through what a collaborative project with someone who is deceased means. It’s me asking a simple question: how does one move forward? To help guide me through this process, I located a few other artists who have contributed to the conversation around navigating collaboration with the inaccessible.

Canadian artist AA Bronson is the sole survivor of the General Idea art collective. His collaborators, Jorge Zontel and Felix Pratz, met AIDS-related deaths in 1994 and since then Bronson has been the steward over the General Idea collection. One of the last works that possibly falls under the General Idea collaboration is the final portrait photograph of Pratz on his deathbed, mere moments after his demise. While the work Felix Pratz, June 5, 1994 (1994) is artistically credited to Bronson, this work forces us as the audience to reckon with the trust of their collaborative practice and intimate relation. It is possible that this work also serves a second purpose for Bronson; I think that, by citing himself as the sole creator of the work, he is clearly and thematically marking the end of General Idea. It seems fair to assume that any decision Bronson now makes regarding the work of General Idea lives outside the initial collaboration. But still, how to understand these decisions in relation to the corpus of General Idea? How do we mark the difference between a decision made during collaboration and the impacts of that decision after a member’s death? What are the ethics of a last living member presenting collective collaborative works? And more so, how do we consult and decide with the dead? This is something I feel I need to negotiate in my collaborative work with Lisa.

Looking at the final image of Felix, we understand that this photograph was taken moments after death. As such, he becomes inaccessible. He is incapable of offering a voice, and no longer able to advocate or consent to this collaboration. But I think we trust Bronson. We trust based on their past association. We accept that an agreement was reached, one that was accompanied by like-mindedness, negotiation and consent. And with that, we can accept Bronson’s agency in steering how that collaboration came to be, to how it will continue to exist: between photographer and subject; between artists; and with the public. Should we categorise the work as memorialisation, portraiture, collaboration — or perhaps a meld of the three?

Canadian artist Jordan Bennett’s recent work in Wije’wi (Come With Me) (2017) brings Mi’kmaq and Beothuk historic visual culture from Ktaqamkuk into contemporary design.4 His recent work draws from historical materials and imagery that was cultivated by people decades ago — imagery that he folds into modern design motifs. I wonder, when we draw upon the dead in a memorialisation, when we engage with past aesthetics, past words, past ideas — are we not collaborating with them? I don’t mean to dismiss a lineage of continuous cultural production, or ignore that community elders are alive and accessible bearers. Instead I’d like to further consider that Bennett is directly collaborating with ancestors or members of his heritage from generations past. By drawing on their aesthetics, such as the drawings of Shanawdithit, Bennett is engaging with those who are inaccessible. I would argue that Bennett’s work, along with many other present-day artists with Indigenous backgrounds who engage with ancestral aesthetics, is a form of collaboration. As an artist also with Mi’kmaq ancestry I relate to Bennett, and like many contemporary artists who identify as having Indigenous ancestry, I find urgency in the need to combat omnipresent colonialism — without connecting this backwards-referencing artistic gaze to current practice, I feel we risk colonial erasure. The reason for reflecting on indigenous ancestral collaboration here, while different in many ways from my relationship with Lisa, is that there are echoes in the possible desires to continue aesthetic work and honour cultural memories of the dead. Moreover, I feel this example also importantly helps restructure how we might understand individual consent of collaboration as different from cultural responsibility and reciprocity.

I think it’s important to link consent to collaboration, especially with the recent activism and advocacy such as the #metoo movement that has amplified the necessity of consent for any form of ethical engagement, both at the public and interpersonal level. It only seems logical that consent need play a necessary role in collaboration — but how artists navigate questions of consent with the inaccessible, specifically the dead, is never straightforward. Ultimately, there’s no resolve for the loss of a voice from within a collaboration. I do wonder what Lisa would have wanted, what she would have advocated strongly for and against in the creative and strategic advancement of our work together? And how this would have affected our work together?