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A look at the curious topic of collaborative art, "Type A" focuses on a two-man team of artists who've spent more than a decade working with each other. As youth fades into maturity, their work has evolved from one based on competition to something much more about community.
If the name of Type A and its founders, Andrew Bordwin and Adam Ames, seem familiar to Indianapolis audiences, it's not just a phantasm of the mind. They were part of the 100 Acres outdoor art project that opened in 2009 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and indeed, this 30-minute documentary directed by Daniel Beyer is an IMA production.
It was amusing for me to watch footage of the founding ceremonies for 100 Acres, since I was there covering it for the Indianapolis Star and remember the two strange fellows leading several hundred people in a team-building exercise involving a circle of rope. I even fancied catching a glimpse of myself in the background of a shot.
The first half of "Type A" looks at the history of Bordwin and Ames, first as competitors and then as collaborators. Their early work often revolved around films or photographs of themselves staging games in various urban settings against each other — in one memorable bit literally having a pissing contest.
Type A has an engaging and fresh outlook, one that's young and male and combines a whimsical attitude with a serious approach to making art in whatever medium they find it — performance, installations, film, photographic stills, etc.
The second half of the movie more or less concentrates on Type A's evolving contribution to the IMA outdoor art project. At first they wanted to suspend a massive climbing tower — the kind you might see at an amusement park — 12 feet over the ground so no one could actually clamber upon it. It would have been a colossal joke on visitors to the nature park but probably wouldn't have contributed to the an inviting atmosphere.
But after a series of team-building exercises with IMA staff and volunteers, Ames and Bordwin decide to do something much different and more aligned with the shared experience that they come to embrace. It's no small thing for an artist to scrap such a major project midway through the creative process, and "Type A" stands as an illuminating look at our shifting definition of what it means to be a creator of art.
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