Wednesday afternoon, I attended the lecture of visiting artists David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey, collectively known as Dexter Sinister, at USC’s Roski Graduate School of Fine Arts. I felt compelled to go, not just because of the extra credit that I was offered from my design professor (though I must admit, it was nice incentive) but more because I was curious to hear the duo speak about their work as a collaborative team.

For the past several months, I’ve been working on my first collaborative project, tentatively called Fantasy IRL, with a fellow Roski student, which investigates fantasy and science fiction fan culture and their members’ methods of finding or enacting their fantasies in-real-life (IRL). I’ve found that people often underestimate the added pressures and responsibilities of working as a collaborative team as opposed to by one’s self and I was interested in observing the ways in which Reinfurt and Bailey interact and work with each other, and in this case, particularly in the public sphere.
They spoke they way their work looks: direct, plain and and well-researched. Their way of speaking was regimented and at times seemed planned, but not in a stiff or unnatural way. When there was a pause in the conversation, one would fluidly pick up where the other left off with plenty of things of his own to say, almost like they had their talk rehearsed down to an art in itself, which I’ve found that many artists do. Though I regret not asking them any questions during the Q&A about their practice as a collaborative team versus their individual practices, I later spoke with Shannon Ebner, artist, professor and head of Roski’s Photography Department, who, having collaborated with Dexter Sinister on a number of occasions herself, was able to further illuminate some of what I was further interested in knowing. From what she said, while working as Dexter Sinister, Reinfurt is more hands on with the actual designing of works and has a small design company of his own. Bailey, though still a designer, is more of the front-of-the-house kind of guy, talking and dealing with galleries, museums and whoever else they need to keep in contact with while making their work. This sort of pragmatic division of labor is something I find most helpful in my own collaborative dealings and processes and one that I hope we can further implicate in mine and my partner’s practices as we continue on with our project.