From Both Sides Now is a video documentary concerning the Medeaelectronique 2009 Koumeria residency. It focuses on the interpersonal and artistic challenges faced by a group of improvisers, working across numerous art-forms, largely unknown to each other, who had ten days to create a collaborative trans-art performance piece. We see how often social issues presented themselves as artistic issues, and visa versa. The documentary traces the participant’s community building efforts, and the success of the residency, in spite of major obstacles concerning lack of a common first language, diverse experiences as improvisers, divergent art-discourses and varied expectations. Improvisation emerges as a method for simultaneously asserting the self, while integrating it into a larger community. The artistic success of the residency can be seen as a product of its social success, and the willingness of the participants to respond to contingencies in perhaps unexpected ways.