The practices, politics and spacings of a collaborative project ‘insites: an artists book’  (2009), developed between myself (a geographer) and artist Annie Lovejoy, form the focus of this paper. Three sets of geographies drive my critique of this work; those of the collaborations between art-work and community; the critical spatialities of the book and, the spacings of the collaboration itself.

1)  ‘Not so much in or about a place as of it’:

‘Insites’ constituted a gathering point for our investigations into the relations between Lovejoy’s ongoing artists-residency project ‘Caravanserai’ and the Cornish (UK) community in which it was based. Exploring ‘Caravanserai’s’ political and ethical interventions finds it to be not so much ‘in’ or ‘about’ place as ‘of’ it, hesitantly enrolled in a small-scale (re)making of worlds.

2) Encounters with the page:

Encoutering the aesthetics of ‘insites’ I explore the book as a mode of critical spatial, examining how it works together materiality, visual and textual form and style to build a particular ontology of space and site, to which art’s own ontogenic potential is central.

3) Spacings of collaboration:

The paper ends with reflections on the spacings and practices of the collaboration itself.  Beginning from what was shared, ‘insites’ became an exploration of disciplinary subjectivities and a exercise in valuing alterity, seeking not to sweep away differences and challenges but rather to try to find the courage to delight in the new relationships and the possibilities of new political spaces that such comings together offer.