What very often gets forgotten in the idealistic phrasing of a collaborative project between two cultures is the fact that in any sort of coming together, we are partitioned and categorised as much as we collude and exchange. Collaboration is not merely about multiplicities, group utopianism and an “anything goes” mentality, but finding the right balances between respect for the other, appreciating difference, compromise and the possibility to create something otherwise impossible by the thought or hand of one person alone. “The discussion of this question has been opened again by Jacques Rancière, in his book Le partage du sensible, which in French has the advantage of having a partition and a sharing occupy the same word. What is sectioned off and exchanged? It is more than an idea.”

It is more than an idea because it is as much a process and passage as it is a question on the nature of a collaboration. This work seeks to pursue these questions on various levels: we relate to one another as much as we do to culture and/or nation. Overseas is a project to support the exchange between Switzerland and China, explored by way of the sharing of ideas and experiences from the perspectives of three creators working with different media and their own individual bodies of knowledge. Historicity and place [WE] contribute and reflect back upon a larger exploration of temporality and the physical body [I].