2013 — 2016
Oslo National Academy of the Arts / Fine Art
Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
Archived 2017
Staging dislocation:
Notes on finished and unfinished work
It seemed necessary to describe a few personal works and approaches towards a given logic of production, embedded in common formats. The projects Employer and Employee and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday will serve as examples. Often artistic production is initiated based on a response to a call, typically from an authority entitled to ask for a work for a specific context.
Several times, when he was visiting Toruń for research purposes, the responsible secretary at the CoCA Toruń showed him around and at some point after taking a taxi, explained to him a feeling that the whole town knew that she was divorced and a single mother. In the conservative Catholic context of Toruń, she described this as a stigmatised position. To make a long story short, below is a description of how his conceptual response to her story was communicated to the small staff in the office. We can try to imagine the following:
Employer and Employee was still a work in progress when for the first time it is presented to the leadership of the institution by the curator of the show.
The secretary (mentioned above) is in the office of CoCA Toruń and the director is there with her, both standing and busy discussing some details. The curator is there as well, since she has her temporary office desk in the same location. The whole new building complex including the CoCA is to be opened in less than 6 months and they recently moved into these offices. A technician is finalising some network installation in the corner of the room.
It is a small work group – at this point there isnobody apart from this core administration, the curator, and a board of directors. Everyone is working under pressure to get various infrastructures of the building ready and there is an even more intense focus on preparing for the very first opening exhibition, entitled Flowers of Our Lives, the main responsibility of our guest curator.(3) The guest curator walks over to the secretary and director. The director looks up in a welcoming manner, naturally taking the lead and asks:
Meeting a temporary dead end in the office, extensive lobbying succeeded in pushing Employer and Employee through another channel. The intervention into the employment process of the CoCA Toruń was facilitated though members of the board, made possible under strict regulations. Engaging initially in screening processes and durational negotiations after employment interviews, they found ways to interpret and bend the juridical issues to enable the project.
The private consultant company working for the city of Toruń(5) managing employment to the public sector, accepted legal responsibility for an overall employment procedure that resulted in 11 single household divorced mothers getting a job at the CoCA Toruń. A rather high number considering all the applicants being screened initially and then interviewed for, in total, 47 mostly part-time positions.
The artist’s agreement with the board of CoCA Toruń, the managing director and the curator in order to implement the project was to maintain a very low profile in terms of dissemination. Employer and Employee was, further, not to be formally presented for the first 4 following years, as a kind of quarantine of sorts. This to avoid legal misunderstandings, repercussions or other trouble for any of the persons involved on both sides.
New staff members employed under the particular criteria of being a single-mother by the time of employment (in addition to fulfilling the general qualifications for the job) should not be informed about the special circumstances in which they actually got their job. However, they realised early on themselves the large quantity of single-mothers within their small work force and shared interests in discussions during lunch and coffee breaks.
Employer and Employee is in practical terms still rendered by the employees themselves, in simply showing up at work, not knowing that their job constitutes a form of artistic labour, embedded within the structure of general public employment at the CoCA Toruń. The result is a dislocation of artistic production, within a non-artistic workforce. Using Employer and Employee as an example illustrates the importance of how information is distributed and the questions of visibility and transparency in allowing this work to come into existence.
Employer and Employee would not have been possible to carry out if the essence of the project had been announced before, during or immediately after realisation. Another point is the relation between a necessary critical distance to an observed conservative social reality and
the decision to intervene in order to have an impact on this particular situation, rather than diagnosing the obvious through a critical, but merely formal installation. Care, beyond criticality.
Further, what kind of validity would Employer and Employee translate if we choose to interpret this as a model of locating artistic labour within a non-artistic work environment? An invisible employer being exposed while invisible employees (for the viewer) are performing the (invisible) work without knowing it. At the moment of writing, 5 of the 11 initially employed are still working at the CoCA Toruń. What keeps them going? When does the work end?
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
As the title suggests, this negotiated set of five successive working days was first associated with his participation in the Oslo based international residence program, W17.
The project Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday set out to examine current perceptions about the type of work and logic of production associated with artistic practices. The idea was to locate specific working experiences in relation to artistic production per se. The project was elaborated in collaboration with the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), formally serving as supplier of temporary staff.(6)

The Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) day job distribution centre was recently closed down due to few available jobs. The distribution centre was not widely known since state run institutions of this kind were not allowed to compete on the market with recruitment agencies like Jobzone, Addecco, Manpower etc.(7)
A systematic framework was put in place: a person would show up individually from the NAV day job distribution centre to the studio in W17, more or less every day. Not informed in detail on what the job actually would consist of, the meeting normally started by having a coffee or tea. During the first hour he would normally describe the open ended idea and a particular interest in contractual relationships. Then, more concretely about the project and the job itself; to discuss different aspects of work and to perhaps use this series of conversations if something (extra-) ordinary came out of all these meetings.
So, they talked, associated and articulated experience. Just sitting in that room. Apart from written notes, no documentation was done and they followed no schematic approach. Each meeting depended on that unique person and his own mood as well. If people did not like to talk after a few hours, then they wrote some poems, made drawings or just coloured some white sheets of paper. Basically, a group of random people hired to discuss understandings of work articulated in their own words. Overall, this resulted in 42 in-depth conversations with a variety of people over a period of 4 months. After their 4 hours, they each received their payment in cash.(9)
Later, six conversations stood out for him as special after absorbing the 42 meetings. One photographic image was then conceived with a photographer for each of these, as a kind of extension of that particular conversation. The images depicted specific geographic locations functioning as a reference points, as a continuation of the conversations, translated into another modality.(10) The same people were contacted again and asked if they would be interested to continue the work from last time.
To see “their” image, based on the previous conversation. This was almost a year later but the people hired at first all remembered well the previous conversations and accepted the proposal to continue “the job”.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday may cast confusion in terms of locating the artwork. Is it in the image? Or is it rather in the subjective experience of the person traveling, in the report? Or is it perhaps taking place in the reader as the story unfolds?
Notions of delegation, imagination and care may be foregrounded in the descriptions above. Delegation of performance in Employer and Employee takes place without consent and without obvious impact. Delegated authority and responsibility presented in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was given form by reflecting aesthetically without being trained to do so and having to report on it. It is not a question of doing it well, succeeding, failing or performing. Whatever the outcome, to what degree is it rich or limited in articulation? What are their capacities to imagine? Why is that so? How is the travel experience communicated at home, over dinner, in the pub with friends?
Exploring modes of engagement within employment may be described as intermodal decentering.12 Traveling to Paris to observe one single image, as in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, involved a radical departure from the most workers or- dinary life situation. Doing extraordinary work tasks abroad and articulating these. First from conversation to image. Then from image to journey and finally from traveling experience to report on reflection.
Working methodically with material from one modality to another, these transitions constitute a common framework, or pattern illustrated in the centre of this page. As well in the following described case studies, we find a setup for open ended engagement, presented as possible sites for production. Common for these work related case studies or proposals below, are their particular dislocation and limited information, making them difficult to describe.
Partly because they are in the making and not really «cases» to be studied from distance or outside. Partly because full transparency would make these situations vulnerable. Partly because the nature of the research remains uncertain, indicating a displacement from artistic practice to artistic research practice. Under these circumstances, to what degree is it possible to avoid being project formatted, predictable and ultimately delusive?
Often descriptions of methodological approach seems to be misleading in terms of being mis-recognised as topical frameworks.
The main focus is therefor rather to emphasise on common grammar and aesthetic mechanisms, paying attention to inner perspectives and lived experiences. Central are how these situations are intended and influenced by the context and forums in which they eventually will be exposed and experienced.

Ordinary world experience before employment • Giving necessary information • Connecting employment to daily reality • Instructing employment toward art-making.

Extraordinary world experience • Work-oriented decentering techniques • Recognizing the imaginary reality

Extraordinary world experience • Work-oriented decentering techniques • Recognizing the imaginary reality
Notes on unfinished work case study A: Anonymous work group
Developing a capacity to imagine things together as adults, or to take part in forming ideas or concepts is directly employed in this anonymous work group. Members of the group responded incognito to an anonymous ad in the main newspapers in Oslo.
For the last 8 months, this work-group has been meeting on a 4 to 6 weeks frequency, providing a continuous concrete feedback and developing a reflection on an artwork not yet made.
The individual members of the group are offered payment for their effort to engage. The intention is to keep this discussion group ongoing until the last phase of the formal quest in the project Work, work.(13) This group main target is to challenge the typical artistic practice accompanied by a complimentary critical reflection, being constitutive components in the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. Will it prove productive to reverse reflection in which employment constitutes a significant role? If so, what kind authority does this question of co-authored research formally imply if when presented anonymously for assessment?
Notes on unfinished work case study B: Political membership
Mother, Dear Mother is a title of a research exhibition held at House of Artists in Oslo.14 The work presented was based on systematically becoming a member of every major political party in Norway. This involved being engaged in social and political activities in the respective parties, both prior to and after the national election in 2013.
Mother, Dear Mother encapsulated as an attempt to describe emotional experiences of a nation undergoing a political shift with a special focus on transformation of work. Through taking part in activities based on assumptions of a shared political commitment, spread out on the political spectre, a sense of personal dishonesty developed, in not sharing project driven motivations in the nomination of political representation and collective work undertaken in various political organisations. The entire exhibition is currently being modulated into a film.
Notes on unfinished work case study C: Delegated autonomy
Employing two students with non-artistic bachelors to obtain a Master in Fine Art. Who is trained to produce and entitled artistic authorship? Is it possible to pay someone to undertake such an artistic process? If so, at what point do the employed (current MFA students) gain authentic ownership of the work, since interpretational efforts are central in all delegated work tasks?
From a sense of alienation in making someone else’s art as a job, to developing a personal ownership and possible autonomy including forms of negotiated resistance along the way. Currently operational and not published in detail to protect the students as workers and the case study in itself for not being interrupted. The engaged students are reporting on a regular basis both their experience as process and how they actually imagine their work to develop. Expected graduation will be in 2016 and afterwards the complete archive will be made accessible to the public.
Notes on unfinished work case study D: Dismissed competence
Dismissed competence is a series of narrative inquiries in form of interviews. The study includes a group of older people who all studied to become professional artists in a national art academy, but abandoned their profession and never pursued a career as artists. One focus is on how this particular competence may have leaked into other activities.
Another focus is to locate epistemological layers, not chronologically but through practicing an improvised emotional archaeology. This happens through language in addressing the experience of hosting personal and specialised competence never applied. How can competence be identified, articulated and described alternatively to the obvious narration the subjects already settled with? Outcome of these mutually constructed and repeated interviews will be made presentable and in some cases in collaboration with the interviewees themselves.(15)
Notes:
(1) http://www.csw.torun.pl/?set_language=en&cl=en
(2) http://www.radiomaryja.pl
(3) http://www.csw.torun.pl/exhibitions/exhibitions-db/flowers-of-our-lives
(4) Elastic Medium As a Wave
http://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsw.torun.pl%2Fwystawy%2Fbaza-wystaw%2Fkwiaty-naszego-zycia%2Ffiles%2Faudioguide-mapa.pdf&ei=TJsYVNmcHOO7ygOitYH4CQ&usg=AFQjCNEVDJLi7PCrDB7snJY07r28vh2m2g&bvm=bv.75097201,d.bGQ
(5) http://www.klgates.com/pl/
(6) https://www.nav.no/en/Home
(7) http://tv.nrk.no/serie/nasjonalgalleriet/MKTF03002511/28-11-2011#t=16m17s
(8) September 2014
(9) The video work Konkret (links) was as well elaborated from these 42 sessions, commissioned by Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK) Oslo for the exhibition Arbeidstid (2013) curated by Milena Hoegsberg, including the related publication Living Labor.
part 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4VNFWy-1c1eNklndmluY2R6WDQ/edit?usp=sharing
part 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4VNFWy-1c1eblVJSmpjYjVDdDQ/edit?usp=sharing
(10) In collaboration with Eline Mugaas, a series of 6 photographs.
(11) Exhibition NORSK; http://www.galerie-poggi-bertoux.com/en/expositions/presentationarchive/88/norsk-une-scene-artistique-norvegienne-contemporaine
(12) Intermodal decentering was deveoped by Paolo Knill and Herbert Eberhart. It was invented within the frame of education to create a structure where art making could unfold its capacities in a restricted amount of time.
http://www.egs.edu/arts-health-society/about/
(13) http://artistic-research.no/?page_id=2490
(14) http://www.kunstnerneshus.no/kunst/jesper-alvaer-2/
(15) Research exhibition is being prepared in collaboration with Isabela Grosseova and Jiří Ptáček for
Prague Fotograf Gallery, January 2015. http://www.fotografgallery.cz/vystavy/2014/00/?lang=en
Immediate environment
The research environment of Work, work was first situated through a process of preparation. Before any work had begun, a set of questions were posed in a research proposal that, through a particular framing of the relation between artistic and non-artistic labor, was rewarded with employment and resources for realising an open-ended project. The structures on which these resources were contingent are the material basis from which Work, work emerged, while no doubt shaping its conceptual protocols. This process of preparation––where certain information was presented as available while much information was not yet available––operated throughout the realisation of Work, work. What was known produced a mode of proliferation / circulation for what was unknown.
The employment situation provided salary, supervisors, colleagues, an office and a production budget, for a period of three years. This meant temporary economic stability through a privileged contract, with few obligations. A welcomed structural shadow allowed for access to the real estate market, a move from a rent to a mortgage, and degrees of self ownership. This generous exception from the rule of precarity was returned as reciprocity in the form of responsible, loyal framing within the institution, held accountable through project timelines. These constructions were initially open for revisions but with implicit exit strategies and durational promises to keep time in mind. Budget and interim reports were formalised as main institutional tools to discuss, monitor and checklist work in progress.
Even if the program formally started with an application procedure about one year before eventual employment, to address a certain lack of preparation, some time was intuitively invested to understand contexts and levels of structural processes in which the programme is shaped maintained and legitimised in epistemological and economic terms. Becoming a representative for research fellows in the The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme (NARP) gave access to The Association of Doctoral Organisations in Norway (SiN), allowing access as an observer to both the National Council for Artistic Development Work (NRKU) in affiliation with the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions (UHR). This is the council that sustains formal working groups and negotiates between NARP and the Ministry of Education and Research (KD). KD is in charge of third-cycle programmes nationally and defines, designs, finances and implements NARP. Interested by these structural networks, I initially attempted to conceive a project that would seek to have an immediate impact on the work situation; however, existing channels for reporting or advocating meaningful change in these institutions seemed eventually difficult to affect within the timeframe of the research program. This decision was also made in recognition of the ongoing work that is taking place to develop the program further and the length and depth of this engagement. A framework was, then, devised for using these channels of reporting as a means of initiating other layers of activity. This critical reflection is an extension of that framework.
From work situation to case study
This confirmed the central function of and necessary commitment to undisclosed practices as a way of working within institutional structures. Some degree of undisclosed practice can be found in most of the work situations that composed Work, work. Here, undisclosed means that something is going on, but it is not clear what exactly what is taking place. In some cases, this lack of transparency is mixed up with being unfinished, uncertain or just open ended––as we began with the proposal, as the projects continue to play out over timelines that don’t fit within the three years of employment. One secures resources for a project from a position of not knowing but must make claims about it as if one knows, bracketing what one doesn’t know, as the project unfolds around this bracket. A lack of disclosure refers more to not knowing than knowing and not telling.
Each working situation is both vulnerable and site specific to a degree. The mere presence of working openly on site is often contested, consciously or not. A sense of suspicion, infiltration or possible change, even if just temporary, plays an important role. The staging is not so much about making a work and placing it somewhere else or highlighting a particular practice in an ordinary context and presenting it elsewhere as extraordinary. It is more about inserting and sustaining lived processes that maintain a degree of transformative quality to them.
Often, the first challenge is how to gain access. Then, to discover, or recognise a setting in which a possible production and processual developments may take place. Another difficult psychological task is related to embedded operations. Several of the work processes required a complex combination of social functions in overt and covert activities over time. Nuances of this practice can not be prepared or known in detail beforehand, so this necessary durational engagement will be discussed and evaluated more, especially concerning the consequential ethical concerns, transparency, intention and double ontologies, among other observations stated during the last phases of assessment. The transient processes of developing (necessary) fieldwork and then using or outing parts of that experience in a translated form, may sound abstract without concrete examples of translation.
Work, work
Exhibitions
Mother, Dear Mother was presented at Kunstnernes hus in Oslo in February 2014. The exhibition came about through the invitation of the artistic director Mats Stjernstedt. A letter of intention was issued to the Arts Council Norway, who supported the exhibition with 50,000NOK. After the exhibition, I was later reimbursed 40,000NOK by Kunstnernes hus. The combined production budget was 90,000NOK. The exhibition was designed by Isabela Grosseová; the lights and sound were designed by Roman Přikryl. Grosseová was paid 20,000NOK and Přikryl was paid 10,000NOK. The cinematographer Cecilie Semec translated the exhibition into a film and was paid 10,000NOK. As the manager of the project I performed the following tasks: providing several proposals to the institution before landing on an agreed vision of the project with the artistic director; applying for funding from the Ministry of Culture; organising, picking up, and transporting the loans of art works that formed part of the exhibition; developing the exhibition design and ordering the fabrication of the architectural and sculptural elements; sourcing and providing lighting, radio equipment, headphones; instructing technical staff on the installation of the exhibition; assisting in building the exhibition elements; performing administrative labor of emailing, scheduling, and arranging travel; writing and recording text for radio broadcast; and programming the lighting and radio systems. The exhibition consisted of five built elements in plywood or crestwood, which integrate one of the following: a one-to-one replica of a stored version of a refused commissioned work by Vanessa Baird, To Everything There Is a Season; a miniature sculpture of Pioneer by Per Palle Storm; the original cast in plaster of the public artwork Breakthrough by Ørnulf Bast; a projection screen for a recording of the song Mother, Dear Mother; and a series of monitors documenting 3 interventions performed during the exhibition’s public programming. There was a lighting system in the ceiling that choreographed the viewer’s gaze. Before entering, each visitor was given a pair of headphones that played a radio broadcast synched with the lights. The broadcast was looped, lasted 40 minutes and was in Norwegian, with a paper transcript available in English. Prior to, during, and after the exhibition, I joined all of the major political parties in Norway. Though this membership was described in the press release for the exhibition, no further documentation of this case study was made; these decisions will be discussed further in the second part of this text.
Competence was presented at Fotograf Galerie in Prague in February and March 2015. The exhibition came about through the invitation of the artistic director Jiří Ptáček. The budget was 20,000CZK. The exhibition was a collaboration with Isabela Grosseová; it was designed by Grosseová and myself. The texts were developed in collaboration with Jiří Ptáček and Isabela Grosseová and recorded by Roman Přikryl. Four people were employed to have conversations with visitors behind a screen. Using the funding I received through the artistic research programme, the four interlocutors were paid 150CZK per hour, working 6 hours per day for the duration of the show, which was open 6 days a week. As the manager of the project, I collaboratively performed the following tasks with Grosseová: deciding the infrastructure of the temporary walls; researching, interviewing and selecting the interlocutors; developing and recording the exhibition texts; recording sessions between visitors and interlocutors; borrowing, picking up, and transporting equipment for the drawing room; sourcing and purchasing drawing paper; training gallery attendants and interlocutors; accessing and producing microscopic photographic prints of graphite drawings; overseeing technical staff on the installation of the exhibition; translating recorded texts into English transcripts; maintaining day-to-day operations such as staff schedule; and coordinating travel of a focus group to the exhibition. The exhibition consisted of four successive rooms, which the visitor could only enter individually. The architecture would open to lead the visitor through each room; these rooms were opened and closed by two gallery attendants. One was an intern, who was funded through her research and paid a symbolic fee by the museum; the other was a regular gallery staff and a part-time employee paid 120-130CZK per hour by the museum. All rooms asked the visitor to perform different tasks. The first room requested that the viewer make a drawing of their own hand, which was submitted to a gallery attendant. The second room consisted of five images and three short sound pieces played on headphones extending from the images. The third room was a location for a conversation between the visitor and one of the four speakers behind a screen––a child psychologist, a family therapist, an artist working in alternative therapies, and an art therapist. The fourth room displayed a single framed copy of the same drawing that the visitor made in the first room. Prior to the exhibition, Grosseová and I conducted a case study Dismissed Competence, in which we interviewed elders, who had trained as artists but made careers in non-artistic fields and never worked as artists. Later, we interviewed immigrants from Czechoslovakia to Brazil, who immigrated just before the communist regime took power in 1948. Each of the interviews stemmed from an interest in unused social competence and language, using the Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method, a sociological method for producing and analysing interview data. For more information on BNIM, see the “Blind Panels” case study below and Tom Wengraf’s lecture on BNIM in the archive (xbnim lecture part 1 and xbnim lecture part 2).
Stretching the Imagination was part of the group show Making Use: Life in Post-Artistic Times, presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in a series of workshops from February to May 2016. The exhibition came about through the invitation of the curatorial team Sebastian Cichocki and Kuba Szreder, who collaborated with Stephen Wright. The museum’s volunteer coordinator Hania Sabat collaborated in all stages of organising the workshops and was a full-time salaried employee of the museum, who started work there as a volunteer. The museum paid my expense of four trips from Oslo to Warsaw, including hotel and travel expenses. Using the funding I received through the artistic research program, I paid 150 EURO each to 10 volunteers after completing the workshops. Stretching the Imagination was situated as a case study within the larger exhibition, without a physical installation. The workshops consisted of a progression of exercises using clay, painting, storytelling, and performance, which were related to different uses of the imagination, applying intermodal frameworks and emphasising experiential participation. After working in the group throughout the workshops, each participant was interviewed individually about their experience, using the Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method.
Case studies
Apart from, though related to the exhibitions, I initiated a series of case studies. These working situations extend explorations of the themes of artistic and nonartistic labor, without the production demands of the exhibition format, with a focus on processes––many of which are still unfolding. A series of participatory co-productions emerge but never quite take on the status or framing of an art work.
Anonymous Work Group was initiated as part of the exhibition Mother, Dear Mother in Oslo in February 2014. The group came about through 2 meetings over 2 days, which 24 people attended, based on an anonymous advertisement in 5 different newspapers. The ad described a series of questions related to advanced viewership and offered compensation for attendance. After a few months, the group consolidated into a regular constituency of 6 people. Gradually, the focus shifted from advanced viewership in general to a focus group on the research project Work, work. Compensation was offered, but the group decided that a contractual relationship would obstruct the motivation for meeting by creating certain obligations. In lieu of compensation, the group’s expenses were paid for a trip to Prague to see the exhibition Competence. Using the funding I received through the artistic research programme, I used 24,000NOK on the group’s travel expenses. The members of the group travelled individually throughout the duration of the exhibition. The group initially began writing a collective writing exercise titled Critical Reflections on Empty Objects as an Experience to Come, and the group provided images throughout the following summer, which were then analysed and submitted anonymously to the art journal JAR. By fall 2016, the group disintegrated, as 3 of the members moved from Oslo. Before they left, a final round of interviews was conducted with each of the members, using the Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method.
Delegated Autonomy was initiated in my first year of the artistic research program in 2014. It began by placing an ad at the Student Career Center at Oslo University, soliciting two students, who held Bachelor’s degrees in non-artistic fields to be employed as artistic assistants. In an interview process, the students were informed that the job would be to be employed to pursue a Master’s of Fine Arts degree. After several interviews, two students agreed to take part. We worked together to build a portfolio, substantially based on their own work (though re-contextualised in the language and framing of contemporary art), for the application process. The two students were admitted; throughout the program, we met on a regular basis to discuss the development of their practices. Using the funding I received through the artistic research program, one student was paid 3,000NOK and the other was paid 4,000NOK, per month, alongside funding they received through the Norwegian Grant and Student Loan Administration. Over the course of our collaboration, the students were given increasing levels of ownership over their respective projects, as they were naturalised into the process of making artwork. The students are not aware of each other’s participation, and their participation has not been disclosed to their respective universities. One is participating in the program part-time and expects to finish in June 2017; the other expects to complete the program after a break and making use of an Erasmus exchange, in June 2018.
Contractual Relationships, and After was initiated as a course for university students as part of the artistic research program in spring 2015. It consisted of a series of workshops based on elements from the students’ respective artistic practices and foregrounded the use of intermodalities and imaginary interventions relevant to their practices. One student dropped out after the first meeting; a total of 8 students took part in the complete course. Many of the exercises came from fields outside those of art production and theory but were rewritten and adopted to the specificities of the fine arts curriculum. Normally, these exercises are implemented in “low skill / high sensitivity” contexts, but in the course, they became “high skill / high sensitivity” in concept and practice. The title Contractual Relationships, and After was introduced to a series of conditions that employers and employees / teachers and students inhabit within different institutions. After the course, a few of the students produced a film, in which elements of the course were reintroduced.
Blind Panels extended one element of the Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method, mentioned above. The process of BNIM begins with an interview. Blind panels are used to produce further interpretations of the interview. A group of 4-5 people, who have not previously been exposed to the research, are brought together to interpret the material. Parts of the interview are excerpted and presented in chronological sequence. Three different types of interpretation might be performed by the panel: data analysis, micro-analysis, and teller flow analysis. Blind panels are traditionally used by BNIM practitioners to reveal blind spots in their research and interpretations. After starting to use BNIM to conduct the interviews in Dismissed Competence, blind panels seemed to offer an interesting potential for producing a critical reflection on the project Work, work.
I was interviewed by Tom Wengraf, a professional BNIM practitioner about my own narrative while working on the project. The practitioner then presented my interview to a series of blind panels, under the pseudonym “Jeremy.” These sessions were recorded and transcribed. In the preparation for the blind panels, the practitioner wrote a report analyzing the interview. In it, he describes the design of BNIM as follows:
[…] “BNIM interviewing was designed to elicit narratives embodying and illuminating the subjective side of a life, the more hidden subjective side of a life of publicly-available, observable and even recordable art-professional behaviour and artefacts (staged events and timed practices, and other professional activities).
[…] BNIM interviewing was designed to facilitate the expression of the purposes, emotions, experiencing and retrospective evaluations of the interviewee during the life-period in which the public behaviour was happening. BNIM interpretation is designed to explore that material so as to describe and understand the lived experience of the person (art-professional) and produce a report illuminating the normally hidden ‘subjective side’”
These panels were devised as a means of providing a critical translation and documentation of the projects that compose Work, work.
“Witnesses” were used as an alternative means of documenting the projects developed through the research programme. Rather than presenting documentation and making an exhibition, I invited four witnesses, who had taken part in various projects that developed as part of Work, work, to speak about their experiences in participating. They were, then, asked questions by an assessment committee. These sessions were recorded and transcribed.
Articles
“Staging Dislocation: Notes on Finished and Unfinished Work” was published in the journal Vector – art and culture in context, University of Iasi, in 2014. It came about through the invitation of the editor, who found the research project Work, work relevant to their theme of artistic research and methodology. It describes two earlier projects Employer and Employee (2008) and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (2011). The text uses each of these projects to provide a detailed example of an approach that has been further elaborated in Work, work and provides the reader with an understanding of ongoing but unfinished case studies (which are described above). Both projects strategically navigate relations of non-transparency with their hosting institutions in order to initiate a set of activities that might have transformative potential for those who participate, while considering the need to conceal certain information in order for these transformations to take place.
“You said, ‘irony’” was published in University of Lisbon, Academy of Art’s publication on Irony and artistic research in 2015. It came about through the invitation of one of the members of the artistic research programme to submit an open call, which was accepted through peer review. The article compares the exhibitions Mother, Dear Mother and Competence and adopts aspects of the format of a Biographical Interpretation Method interview. In the end, the article addresses the reader, speculating about the reader’s own interpretations, and performing the limits of its own interpretation. The experience of writing this article from the first submission to peer review to feedback to deadline involved its own process of incorporation or instrumentalisation in the production of a so-called “new field.” Another colleague who was also writing an article for the same journal dropped out after she decided she could not write inside this framework.
Preparation of contents
This paper provides critical reflections on the series of projects Work, work to situate the subjectivities around which they unfolded and the processes of nondisclosure by which the contours of certain social imaginaries might have been accessed. A particular emphasis in this text will be placed on what have been identified as challenges in the framing and realisation of these projects including questions of methodology; the use of recording and the status of documentation in the project––particularly in terms of consent and transparency; the delegation of power in the hierarchy of information and the positioning of the project’s participants; and the resistance to self-inscription in certain art historical narratives and trajectories.
First, the paper will consider the use of “Exhibition as Alibi,” where a public context and institutional structure becomes a means for engaging in other (perhaps (temporarily) transformative) activities. Each of the projects under discussion provided the opportunity for a variety of visible and invisible participation; several groups were formed and operated within and outside the exhibition’s frame. Witting participants played unwitting roles in shifting the protocols of viewership, employment, and display in institutional settings. This part will introduce some of the underlying stakes and strategies of this mode of engagement.
Elaborating on this process, the second part will consider the subject positions of these projects’ participants through the lens of “Double Ontologies.” Beginning with a consideration of the different levels of work and identification that enabled a set of actions underlying the project, Mother, Dear Mother, this section will outline the distribution and economies of information and how double ontologies not only pose ethical challenges but also shift ethical frameworks / standpoints.
The third part will describe the emergence of a “Parallax Ethics” that appears at the limits of each project, as determined by the decentered, delegated, or continually dislocated position of a double ontology. It will describe how certain ethical positions shift through the different phases of a durational experience, participation, or intimacy in these projects.
Each of the projects that composed Work, work involved layers of activity happening outside the frame of an exhibition. However, the three exhibitions––Mother, Dear Mother; Competence; and Stretching the Imagination––all enabled a series of investigations into questions of unsettling self-narratives and examining where subjectivities are situated; desubjectivizing various social roles and how they distribute authority; and concealing certain levels of information in order for an unexpected set of relations or reflections to emerge about the limits of a social imaginary.
As Isabela Grosseová and I described in our proposal to restage Competence at Kunsthal Aarhus, the exhibition sought to “transgress and expand the notion of artistic competence.” The show foregrounded imaginative capacities and put the visitor into the role of not only the reflective viewer but also the creative maker of their experience in the gallery. We proposed “to undermine both spatial (space of exhibiting versus space of practice) and occupational (makers versus viewers) divisions still characteristic for the art world.” However, rather than “reiterating the notion of participation,” which fails to decenter the role of the artist as author and executor of his or her artistic script, the exhibition attempted to “create an opportunity for a visitor to enter into an active dialogue with his/her own competences as a maker and viewer of art.” In certain forms of participatory art, the participant’s engagement becomes visible as the artwork, whereas in this project, the artwork was never on display or visible, except to the participants themselves. The usual currents of the exhibition format––where the artist is responsible for the ideas / production and the audience or critic is responsible for the interpretation––were redirected, as the audience co-produced the content and interpretation of the experience themselves.
Toward this end, the exhibition consisted of four stages.
[See the archive for documentation of these stages.]
In the first stage, the visitor was instructed to make a drawing of their own hand. The drawing was inserted into a slot, behind which a gallery attendant either accepted the drawing or redirected the visitor to try again, requiring them to focus their attention on the drawing and to engage in a sustained effort. If the drawing was accepted, the visitor was admitted to the next room. The visitor was admitted alone and experienced each stage of the exhibition alone.
The aim of this first encounter was to break down the conventional expectations that might accompany a visitor to an exhibition and to prepare the visitor for the following rooms, in which they were called to simultaneously create and contemplate the contents of the exhibition. Possible questions that may have emerged for the visitor at this point include: How might a 3D object (a hand) be translated into a 2D representation on paper? What level of competence does it require to make such a translation?
In the second stage, the visitor encountered a more familiar exhibition environment. 5 framed photographs hung on the walls. The photographs appeared abstract but were microscopic views of graphite drawings on paper. A set of headphones extended from 3 of the images. The visitors might listen to the sound on each set of headphones, which each played three short stories: one about a woman imagining a series of sexual encounters she could hear between her roommate in various men in the room next to hers, one about a man who had trained as an artist and who had no engineering training but became a successful head of an IT company, and one about a person observing in detail the process of drinking a cup of tea while drawing on a classified ad in the newspaper.
The aim of the three recordings in the second encounter was to introduce a different theme around the notion of competence. One of the stories reflected on the capacity to draw, absorbing the experience of the first stage; one described an unused competence in drawing (while at the same time, speculating on how competences in an artistic field might be used in a non-artistic field); one described the capacity to imagine, preparing the viewer for the third stage.
In the third stage, the visitor entered another gallery. There, they encountered an interlocutor, who initiated a conversation. First, the interlocutor asked the visitor questions, reflecting on the drawing they had made. This series of questions eventually led into an open-ended conversation, in which the interlocutor and the visitor collectively produced an imaginary experience. The visitor was not aware that these interlocutors were practitioners of various forms of therapy. These conversations were recorded, and a few were transcribed to provide examples. This material proved too complex to interpret in depth within the span of the research program but might provide the basis for a more sustained research project.
The aim of this stage was to put the visitor into a space of reflection on their experience as a draughtsman in the first room and as a viewer in the second room. The conversations ventured into the realms of the concrete and imaginary while maintaining a level of personal engagement and attention. The transformation of the visitor’s experience into an imaginary encounter possibly induced new articulations or perceptions of their experience. The purpose of the recordings was to initiate research into interpreting imaginative capacities––following from questions raised by Henri Corbin, who presented an inverted primacy of reality over the imagination through his research.
In the fourth stage, the visitor entered a fourth gallery, in which a single mounted frame was hung. Inside the frame was a photograph of the drawing the visitor produced in the first gallery along with the hand and arm of the gallery attendant holding the drawing. The visitor might have then come to understand that, in between the first and fourth stages, the gallery attendant took this photograph, printed it, and installed the image.
The aim of the fourth and final stage was to situate the visitor in a double capacity––as both co-creator of the image as a discrete art object and viewer of the object. This stage reactivated the competencies evoked in each of the previous stages from drawing to viewing to reflective dialogue. The visitor then exited the exhibition alone.
As Grosseová and I elaborated in our proposal, the exhibition emerged from a post-Fordist economy, in which consumption and production are conflated. Through the four stages of the exhibition, we attempted to intervene in the commodification of creativity and how this commodification eradicates imagination, instead hoping to ‘rejuvenate innate human capacities of making and contemplating.’ On the one hand, this commodification applies to the increasing demand to self-market “creative” skills in nonartistic forms of labor. But, on the other hand, it also applies to traditional modes of exhibition-making. This commodification and eradication of the imagination operates not only in terms of producing art for a market but also in the process of proposing and framing exhibitions, which often requires the artist to make certain claims about the ends of a creative process before the process has been initiated, while foreclosing the imaginative space that the work might seek to produce. This same model generally applies to how an institution frames an exhibition or how the audience might enter it, already having a sense of the intended meaning or an interpretation of the work before they’ve experienced it. We sought to decenter traditional protocols of exhibition and viewership by occupying the cracks opened by an aesthetic experience in order to reactivate the visitor’s capacities to imagine, create, and articulate.
Apposite to the exhibition itself, Grosseová and I conducted the case study Dismissed Competence, a series of interviews with Czechs and Norwegians, who had a lived life behind them. Common to the interviewees was the fact that they had all specialised in the study of Fine Arts but then, early in their professional life, decided to change careers and / or pursue a different activity, cut off from art or art making.
When we began these interviews, we approached people with a clear intention of what we would like to talk about. We explained that we wanted to interview people who had studied art but had made a life in another field. We told interviewees that we were interested in the question of “un-lived life:” not doing what you had studied, were trained, or wanted to do, or doing that work for a period and then dropping out of that activity and the world that surrounded it.
In most cases, the interviewees explained their life stories with a certain rationale, and their experiences were narrated with a predetermined sense of what happened and why. It was difficult to move beyond these stories, which they seemed to have inscribed themselves into before telling. These narratives resembled those that are used to propose and then describe the meaning or intention of an artwork or exhibition in a press release.
As Grosseová and I encountered this limit, we decided to tell interviewees less about the object of our research and abstracted the initial inquiry: for instance, describing the object of our research as collecting the life stories of people with higher education from a certain period or those of people living in a certain village. This enabled the interviewee to tell their life story and lived experience without catering to a certain set of expectations, so when they came to talk about their experiences in being trained as an artist or setting out as an artist, we could branch out into a line of questioning in various subsessions, embedded within other stories. These stories naturally made a contrast with and brought that particular lived experience into relief in ways that would not have been possible if that area had been targeted and, then, unconsciously prepared and delivered. This way of telling less of what we were looking for in advance, turned out to provide much better material in terms of detailing what happened in interviewees’ lives––their experiences, who was involved, along with the backdrop and direct context of their transition out of a life making art.
After conducting this first set of interviews, Grosseová and I decided to decenter our line of research using an almost grammatical equivalent description of leaving a place (or world) while young and never returning. We prepared a series of interviews with elders that emigrated from Czechoslovakia before the communist regime gained power in 1948. These interviews took place in Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Brasilia and Salvador, Brazil. Much like the interviews with those who had dropped out of making art, these emigrants left behind language, customs, and other social competencies to start over in another location. We found that most of the interviewees came from industrialist families, understanding that they would lose everything in the process of nationalisation. They left as children, with their families––many to countries like Brazil, Canada, and Argentina, which welcomed new industry and large numbers of immigrants.
Grosseová and I located these emigrants through embassies and existing networks. We set out to conduct a series of interviews with those who still spoke their mother tongue and had memories of the place they had emigrated from. We prepared the interviews in a similar way, not revealing our particular research interest in unused competencies. We told interviewees that we were interested in emigrants and their stories of emigration. Like the artists who no longer made art, the Czech emigrants shared a sense of loss or longing and quite direct narratives of cause and effect between the worlds they had inhabited previously and how leaving those worlds led them to where they are now.
In this set of interviews, we added a new element. We asked if each person would agree to end the interview with an imaginary conversation. This method followed from our interest in Corbin and thinking about the possibilities introduced by decentering “real” narratives with imaginary ones. Most of the interviewees accepted, although with some hesitation. Upon entering an imaginary space, one man cracked open and immediately teared up. He could not avoid going back to his experiences in a concentration camp during the second world war, in which he survived his brother and family, so we ended the interview softly at this point, going no further. Other interviewees were more receptive. Below is an excerpt from an interview with a woman who emigrated from Czechoslovakia, first to Argentina, then to Sao Paulo:
Interviewer: “Can you imagine you walk down the road with your cat…?
Interviewee: Yes, fine, so I am walking down the road next to the house, down the small street…
Interviewer: Can you imagine the cat stop, turn to you and tall you something?
Interviewee: Yes…
Interviewer: What is the cat telling you?
Interviewee: ‘Let’s go back home, I am hungry…’
Interviewer: Fine, so you turn around and walk back home, but on the way home, you see a small black dot on the sky, and when it comes closer, you notice
that it is some kind of object coming closer, floating towards earth with a parachute…what is it?
Interviewee: It is a grand piano.
Interviewer: Ok, so can you imagine that the grand piano is landing in front of you and your cat, what do you do?
Interviewee: I go and sit down and play the piano.
Interviewer: What are you playing?
Interviewee: I am playing Dvořák…”
This example shows how a limited distribution of information played a central and constructive role in working with the theme of unlived life experiences and how a different level of access might be enabled by decentering the issues at hand. In each set of interviews, we began with one line of questions that was then redirected into a seemingly unrelated set of questions. The tension between the two produces the possibility of reflecting on the first set of questions in a new way––these reflections likely happen outside the span of the interview.
These interviews provided material and a thematic groundwork for the exhibition, and one of these interviews formed the basis for one of the audio recordings in the second phase of the exhibition, though they served primarily as a means of initiating research. Only one narrative was used to produce the recording in the exhibition and was mediated through Grosseová’s and my interpretations of the interviews. The narrative was read by Grosseová. In that recording, the interviewee “Mr. J.” is quoted, describing how he approaches his work as the head of an IT company:
“I don’t think about the thing itself but about the background. Each problem lies on something or stands before something and is explained by something. So I don’t sort it out by devoting time to it (the problem) directly. I give all my attention to the surroundings – the light and the background.” When Mr. J. speaks about his approach to work, he uses words that he learned as a student at AVU (the Czech Academy of Fine Arts).”
The interview testifies to the use of artistic or imaginative capacities in nonartistic labor, but this interview also brought up how these capacities are put to work. Mr. J described how his interest and investment in computers began with the fact that “it was not yet possible to imagine just what all they would be capable of doing.” Here, it becomes clear how imagination can either be used as a form of speculative world-making or as a tool for speculative entrepreneurialism.
Grosseová’s account of Mr. J’s narrative was one of three recordings that prepared the visitor to enter into the third stage, where they encountered an interlocutor, speaking from behind a curtain, who initiated speculative conversations with the visitor parallel to the ones we conducted with the Czech emigrants.
The focus on unlived life and latent competencies in the interviews outside the exhibition was decentered in the exhibition through putting the visitor into a position of considering their own competencies and a space of imaginary narration. Within the interviews themselves, the roles of authorship and viewership (including of self-narratives) broke down in revealing how social, political, and economic relations structure and limit the imagination; a reader or listener of the interview might become aware of how the interviewee’s subjectivity is situated and inscribed based on these limits. But at the same time, these interviews sought to reactivate the interviewee’s imaginative capacity, which is hierarchically distributed and restrained through notions of competence in the traditional distinction between makers and viewers or is put to work in forms of “creative” labor.
In a sense, the exhibition was an alibi for the production not only of these interviews but also of the set of imaginative capacities activated by the interviews and experienced by interviewees, the interlocutors, and both Grosseová and myself. Quite literally, the majority of the content produced in and around the exhibition was not exhibited––from the encounters between visitors and interlocutors to the drawings produced. Rather, the exhibition was an occasion to produce these interviews and the set of experiences of the visitors in an imagined encounter, alongside those of the interlocutors who coproduced them. Instead of a general public, one might say that the exhibition was for each of its participants, constituted differently each time. The exhibition served as an alibi for generating a good deal of empirical material, which might either be an end in itself or useful in generating further research on imaginative capacities. At the same time, it was equally an alibi for shifting the visitor’s experience of the exhibition, by bringing in elements of the workshop or a sense of shared authorship and reception. This process drew on and sought to transform the visitor’s desire for a new experience. Likewise, it could be claimed that the interlocutors were equally affected by their participation, and producing interviews with them about their experience in the exhibition was also an integral part of the process of working on the project.
In order to establish this alibi, the exhibition sought to create a space, in which the visitor became aware of a set of protocols they imagined to hold true in each encounter with an artwork––not unlike the stories that the interviewees might have told about themselves when they were directly asked about the research interest at hand. Each stage of the exhibition sought to disrupt the visitor’s expectations and decenter their experience. In order for this decentering to occur, a parallel set of information had to be concealed (literally hidden behind moving walls) as in the interviews, where the concealment of the theme of unused competence or unlived life led to a new or unexpected set of reflections on these topics. Rather than directly asking the question of imagination or speculating on what an unlived life looks like, both the interviews and the exhibition used other alibis to activate the participant’s imaginative capacities. Beginning with a seemingly objective fact or story (a drawing of one’s hand, one’s life story), each set of participants moved toward the production of an imaginary situation, preparing the participant for personalized, unexpected shifts in how they might imagine their lives, their social roles, and their competencies to create, reflect, and imagine. Less seeking to collect a certain set of information from a set of participants around the theme of competence, the exhibition provided an alibi for shifting the visitor’s, interviewer’s or interviewee’s perception of how they are situated and what defines the limits of their situation.
Further, moving from the interviews between Grosseová, myself, and those who trained as artists but developed other careers to the repositioning of the exhibition visitor as both maker and viewer of the artwork, the skills and subjectivities written into forms of artistic and nonartistic work were dislocated in the experience of the exhibition. In this process of dislocation, the repurposing of creative capacities into alienated forms of labor is evoked through both the hidden work of the gallery attendants and the visitor’s own participation in producing the art work. But, by the fourth phase of the exhibition, the viewer sees not only that they have coproduced the image in the frame––that the exhibition would not exist without them, that they have performed an artistic labor; they see themselves directly in the product and become engaged in a simultaneously uncanny and embodied experience of it.
Performing both the mechanical and emotional labor that sustained the exhibition, the gallery attendants also were blurred in the coproduction of the artwork: instructing the visitor on making a drawing, critiquing the visitor’s work, and accepting or rejecting it; taking a photograph of the visitor’s drawing, framing, and hanging it; managing the flow of visitors; opening / closing the various rooms of the exhibition; and showing the drawings to the interlocutor in order for them to assess the personality of the visitor. In each of these stages, they variably took on traditionally privileged roles of production and interpretation associated with artists and critics. At the same time, they remained semi-invisible and interpellated by the duties of their position at the gallery.
The interlocutors equally were dislocated from their professional training in various forms of therapy toward their collaboration in facilitating and creating an imagined world with each visitor. The interlocutors came from various therapeutic backgrounds and brought these to bear in devising means of creating an imaginative space for the visitor to narrate an imaginary story. Three were men, and two were women. They were each tasked with a large responsibility in balancing the vulnerability and intimacy of the encounter while guarding it from psychological, confessional, or therapeutic tendencies. Their therapeutic backgrounds were put to work to create a space of play or discovery, and they created routines to do so. Their nonartistic forms of labor met with the visitor’s aesthetic expectations, leading them toward a sense of the possibility of sharing in the production of the artwork or exhibition.
The conversations between interlocutors and visitors were each recorded. And, in fact, the entire exhibition could be conceived as an occasion for producing and collecting these imagined conversations; to consider what is revealed by them including spatial analysis, subject-object relations, questions of movement, and comparisons of actions taking place. The conversations also likely impacted the ways in which the interlocutors perform their nonartistic labor outside the exhibition.
The fact of recording, at the same time, of course produced its own transformations of the dynamics between interlocutors and visitors. The interlocutors, no doubt, changed the ways that they performed their work because of the knowledge of being recorded, while the visitors were not aware that they were being recorded. Speaking both with the practitioners and drawing on our experience of conducting similar interviews in the Dismissed Competence case study, we felt that the visitor would change their form of participation if they were aware of being recorded.
The question of recording was discussed with the interlocutors beforehand, particularly the ethics of being recorded without consent, and we raised concerns that the visitors might feel that their privacy had been violated. But the consensus among the interlocutors was that, as long as the materials were used for research rather than distributed publicly that wouldn’t constitute a violation. They were instructed to avoid lines of questioning that might reveal personal details about visitor’s lives. The interlocutors produced the recordings themselves.
In retrospect, in light of criticism of this decision, one option could have been to record the encounter without the visitor’s knowledge but then to ask the visitor to sign a release form or give them the option to delete the recording at the end of the exhibition. Another option would have been to declare at the beginning of the exhibition that some of these encounters might be recorded, not unlike disclaimers that say “this conversation may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”
At the same time, ethical questions emerge not only around the fact of recording the conversations but also that the interlocutors’ therapeutic training produced a particular set of power relations that the visitor was not directly made aware of––particularly that the interlocutors possessed tools to make connections between the visitor’s answers and certain psychological patterns and to unconsciously induce them into a suggestible state.
Parallel questions emerged for Grosseová and I around the effects that being perpetually engaged in these encounters had on the interlocutors’ own lives and psychologies. We met with them immediately after the exhibition was finished and, again, six months later to ask about them about how their experience might have affected them over time. One mentioned that he developed a certain routine, in which he felt powerful and took certain liberties that he might not have in a therapeutic context.
The ethical concerns that emerge from this project will, no doubt, need further study and evaluation in thinking about how the material generated by the exhibition might be used. But, perhaps, the most recursive challenge in the attempt to produce a set of ethical judgements about these projects is that they circle around the notion that transparency produces an ethical situation. Through conducting interviews, we found that transparency also circumscribed limits and produced certain forms of overdetermination. In both the transparent and opaque situation, a power dynamic is present, where the interviewee attempts (or resists) to give the interviewer what they think they want to hear. Though BNIM requires a level of opacity in concealing the research questions within the interview process, it seeks to arrive at a level of greater transparency or, at least, accuracy by providing a larger context for interpretation (that does not simply reproduce either the interviewee’s own defence of their subjectivity or the researcher’s biases). This is where the blind panel comes in, as the researcher submits the interviewee’s own words to the panel to verify their findings and to reveal possible biases or blind spots in their interpretations. By not knowing the research questions in advance, the interviewee might approach the parts of their narrative that apply to the researcher’s questions without a predetermined set of conclusions and connections. And it’s possible that by being situated within the larger context of their “life story,” they might make unexpected connections between parts of their lives they might not have connected before. In the process, they draw on their awareness of how their subjectivities are situated and layered within their stories. A similar process was at work in the imaginary conversations and the workshops in Stretching the Imagination and Contractual Relationships, and After, the participant might locate themselves within certain dynamics and, at the same time, as these dynamics shifted and involved multiple modes of participation, they might dislocate and recombine the roles that they play within them. What eventually became most useful in BNIM and the practice of concealing certain information was the possibility of dislocating forms of overdetermination and subject positions that defend and reentrench themselves; this is, perhaps, where imagination becomes operative in these projects.
Through the process of conducting interviews for Competence, we discovered the usefulness of approaching the format of the interview in a more conscious way, which involved examining how the participants’ expectations reproduced certain limits. The Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method became a useful tool for not only how to conduct interviews but also how to produce interpretation from this material. It should be said that the use of BNIM within the parameters of Work, work turned a scientific method into an artistic tool. BNIM involves the concealment of the interviewer’s research questions, instead opening the space to the interviewee to narrate their life story more generally. The interviewer, then, uses the interviewee’s own words to ask questions that move toward their area of interest. This material is then optionally submitted to blind panels to further analyse and, in one method, speculate on the interviewee’s narrative. The strengths or the weaknesses of a BNIM interview or panel in many ways are revealed quite transparently in terms of its constitution; the identities of the interviewer, the panel, and the research questions, of course, overdetermine many aspects of the method’s outcomes. If the panel only consists of white men, or if the interviews are conducted by someone who does not share the identity of the interviewees, it will, of course, change the type and accuracy of data that can be collected. This is, in many ways, why the blind panel is an attractive structure because, if composed of diverse participants, the disparities between the interviews and the interviewer’s capacity to interpret and understand them can be better detected. But, of course, if the panels are all located within the same habitus or if none of them overlap with the experiences and identities of the interviewees, the quality of their interpretations will, of course, be limited by these variables. This became apparent in the blind panels that were conducted as part of Work, work. The method I had been using, where participation was the only qualification, became problematic in producing diversely constituted panels. Several of the panelists were artists and were not far enough from the material to enter into a speculative mind-frame, while others were not predisposed to interpretive or speculative working methods, even if they claimed to have those capacities or experience prior to participating. This overall working principle of decentering my own judgements around who might be qualified to participate or who would best compose the panel came up directly against the principles of selection in BNIM practices, which generally require a calculated control of expertise and diversity. This is one important way, in which my use of BNIM differed from its scientific applications while at the same time operating as a case study within Work, work.
These descriptions confirm an overall attention to how expectations and findings do not correspond, even as the process of framing exhibitions and artistic practices are largely predicated on the assertion of this correspondence. The use of apparently “transparent” protocols often reproduces the expectations of the protocol or its participants rather than producing new findings. These projects, rather, open for a practical engagement, in which nuances and concealed aspects reveal themselves in a mutual sense, where the element of control intends to open up rather than foreclose possibilities.
As exemplified above, bringing this mix of the overt and covert into various institutional contexts is necessary to produce the resonance of certain activities while assessing ideas and possible directions in a particular work situation. This strategy was used in the undisclosed political membership that formed the pretext for Mother, Dear Mother or holding a common space for a receptive group of volunteers by holding back information of what might come next in Stretching the Imagination. The project Collective Reflections on Empty Objects as an Experience to Come deliberately prepared the members of the Anonymous Work Group in reflecting on both themselves and the projects that composed Work, work. Similarly, there was the necessity of working under cover in Delegated Autonomy and the reframing of workshop language that appears in other fields to the language of art production and theory in the seminar Contractual Relationships, and After.
The next part will consider how these relations of concealment produce double ontologies.
“— Did you still think of yourself as an artist?
— It’s hard to say. I just kind of walked away from it, or from the object stuff anyway. I was thinking about things a lot. I mean, the other thing is, I started looking at this Rosendale thing more and more as a piece of art. It was a strange thing to do, like living a dual life. On the one hand, I was doing this thing, but I couldn’t tell people I was doing it because they would think I was using them or kind of manipulating the whole thing.
— But was it always intentional for you that running for mayor would be an artwork?
— I think it evolved. I was intrigued by the possibility…”
[Raivo Puusemp in conversation with Krist Gruijthuijsen, quoted in An Art Without Qualities: Raivo Puusemp's "Beyond Art -- Dissolution of Rosendale, N.Y."]
Prior to the exhibition, Mother, Dear Mother, I became a member of all of the major political parties in Norway. Rather than enacting a political agenda through an art work, I was interested in moving art into an already existing political system and curious about how one might dislocate art into other contexts. The decision came out of a newfound interest in political parties, as I recognised a disparity between what I perceived as political and what was represented in the voting system.
Work, work initially came out the desire to consider economic structures that increasingly depend on precarious labor and that situate most forms of new employment in precarity (while drawing on laborers’ creative and subjective capacities). Perhaps, part of the question of joining all the political parties was where precarious work is located in their various agendas. After living outside of Norway for 15 years, the wide cross-section of the available forms of political representation also provided a peculiar and immediate form of access to various Norwegian identities and ideologies I had been out of contact with. The project also provided a way of examining what could already then be felt as an emergent populism.
Through this process, I accepted some concrete politically nominated tasks, such as observing the actual voting booths from a technical side and counting votes after three days of monitoring the election process. I worked in one of the local schools in Oslo, where people came to vote, as a representative from one of the major conservative parties. The elections were supervised and monitored by a group of people constituted from representatives from all the political parties, as a precautionary rule, to avoid suspicion and maintain transparency across the political spectrum when counting votes.
During those three days, spending time with one representative from each party was perhaps the starting point in which a dual consciousness made itself present as a demanding experience. Though it is legal to be a member of all the parties, on an interpersonal level, it involved a breach of the presumed social contract that we were working for the same end. The duality was not only in not being able to tell others that I was actually a member of all the political parties but also that I was present as a hidden participant observer––as an artist––and that my participation was also a project. My work was double: performing the labor asked by the party and that of my own artistic research. Stephen Wright describes a similarly duality in a particular mode of conceptual art, which he calls “double ontology:” a thing or activity that’s both what it is and an “artistic proposition of that same thing.”
This part will discuss the tensions of my status as a dual participant in most of the projects that composed Work, work and how various registers of consciousness played out in some of the other participants in the project, who performed a variety of artistic and nonartistic labors. It will consider the double bind posed by nondisclosure that Puusemp refers to in the quote above, the problematics that emerge around the potential for / or potential perception of manipulation, and the simultaneous reliance on an institutional frame and disappearance from it.
Familiar relations were established over the three days of working the voting booths and required the same forms of socialisation from the representative of each party. We discussed all kinds of things in the group, including chitchatting about the weather, or questions such as “Where is the woman from SV” (Socialist Left), or “Did you see that man, Nils, from KR. F. (Christian Peoples party) today?” and even “Would you like some more coffee?” Not only in this particular situation, but as an overall sensation, a sense of a double ontology emerged during my interactions. Political colours were continuously in the foreground, defining social contexts. Rather than directly enacting or pretending to hold the views of each party, I participated through a kind of cultivated silence; my agreement was assumed by a lack of evidence to the contrary. The experience of a self-imposed limited opacity, living a kind of self-censorship and developing cover stories, became part of the everyday practice over extended periods of time. Developing an understanding of double ontologies became necessary to deal with my own reaction to the working situation. At a certain point, I realised that I had reached a point of no return, beyond which disclosure of my various roles became impossible. This point, no doubt, not only had to do with the nature of my ontological status within a given activity but also with the nature of the work itself.
Enticements to join membership activities came by phone, post and email, and involved, for the most part, invitations to meetings and the expectation that all work would be done voluntarily, stemming from a sense of self-motivation. One’s work was proof of one’s membership. This work included participating in a working group on giving new language to existing party terminology (i.e., in the Leftist party, revising terms such as “proletariat” and “revolution” in order to bridge generational concepts of social transformation); handing out flyers about political issues; and canvassing door-to-door. Alongside the labor, there were numerous incentives to reward and socialise the work at demonstrations, parties and concerts, cake celebrations at Parliament, National Day breakfasts, Christmas tables, educational programs, and panel discussions. A set of intentions were read about my political commitments and reasons for joining from my participation in this set of activities. For each group, my intention and ontology were conflated; however, internally, my intentions and ontological status as a member were doubled and differentiated. Memberships provided access to people in offices, social events, screenings, program meetings and discussion groups on political programming, principles and language, along with access to archives. These activities provided a continuous flow of input to be absorbed and managed in terms of content, its own kind of labor.
I should say that, unlike Puusemp’s project, in which he knowingly approached the process of becoming the mayor of Rosendale, NY with the intention of dissolving the township, my membership in the political parties did not begin with a particular aim in mind or a desired outcome. The goal of this work did begin with the idea of finding an internal agenda to further within one of the parties to work on, both as a member of the party and as an artist. However, the demands of this work exceeded my capacity as an artist and student working on multiple, other projects.
Importantly, this work was not that of a double agent, though it required several levels of discretion. Perhaps, it became increasingly about a recognition of certain limits, where an exceedingly open field of joining all the political parties began to dictate my behaviour within the work of membership. As I gained access to the new habitus of the political parties, I was dislocated into their protocols, even as I maintained a status they did not detect and even as I worked to manage its continued nondetection.
Parallel to Wright’s concept of double ontology is his definition of the “coefficient of art,” a term he takes from Marcel Duchamp’s description of the discrepancy between the intention of an artistic proposition and its realisation. Already, this term proposes a kind of nonidentity between the work of the artist and that which gets framed as art, “a sort of ‘arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed.’” But rather than reinscribing this duality in a double ontology, Wright suggests that the coefficient is “a radically deontological conception of art – as socialised competence, rather than performed works,” and the work of art “find[s] itself in a permanent state of extraterritorial reciprocity, having no territory of its own”.
These elements of a socialised competence, in which art proposes itself through a set of activities that might never appear as art within an institutional frame or by its participants, was related to a process of decentering and dislocation. Equally, this is related to these projects’ resistance to inscription within certain art historical trajectories, particularly those of institutional critique. On the one hand, this avoidance of capture is related to a recognition of the multiple levels of competence and engagement of these projects’ participants in their coproduction of the work––a fact that is generally covered over by institutional narratives of artworks through their authors, even when this work is explicitly “participatory.” On the other hand, the projects’ opacity or economies of information are less constructions than effects of how the work involved in these projects is perpetually without territory; it moves less toward the situation of an artwork or fixing its place in an institution but rather continually multiplies other forms and places of work. Further, these projects did not intend to change institutional structures from within so much as change forms of experience for those in the institution. In order to arrive at these changes, certain analyses of institutional structures were part of both my own and the participants’ processes of working toward these changes, but the purpose of these reflections was not toward repairing aspects of the institution’s functions but rather imagining other ways of inhabiting it. Of course, this desire to imagine and reactivate the imagination came out of a recognition of the ways that the imagination gets put to work in nonartistic labor and reified in artistic contexts but also out of a longing to transform these moments of work into something more speculative and open-ended, maybe even outside art.
Though a number of things were done and the material produced doesn’t directly translate what was done (and, in fact, there is too much material produced to interpret at once), it might be useful to consider Puusemp’s unmade work or “not performing art” alongside the work in Work, work.
He’s quoted saying, in Wright’s essay, “I’ve always thought about art, I just haven’t done it. I would see something, and think someone should do that. But I would never do it myself.” Puusemp’s claim is perhaps useful to consider alongside the form of participation that Work, work sought to engage. In Work, work, it possibly refers more to the conditions in which it’s not possible to do certain things without an alibi. These exhibitions and case studies became a way of using institutional resources to make spaces to activate certain forms of imagination based on things participants hadn’t done, lives that haven’t been lived, or resources and capacities that go latent or unused. These are things that I couldn’t do “myself,” which is to say without the institution’s resources, without these participants, or without vocational entitlement and legitimation. But also importantly, some part of these activities stays unmediated or remains in the process of mediation among its participants. Rather than reaching a point of being “done” or enacting the expectations proposed by the project, which can then be circulated to produce further expectations and circulation of the work, these projects stay unfinished or might continue to operate in the lives of its participants without capturable effects or predictable results. As Wright reads about Puusemp’s approach:
“Countless things don’t get done, but the imperformative implies that something actually eludes performative capture — that it is done quietly, and not necessarily materially (who knows?) in the shadows. And the shadow of the deed is the idea.”
This notion of the imperformative relates to these projects’ resistance to mediation or inscription within the practice of institutional critique. This work quite literally never performs that critique, at least directly. But also it uses the appearance of institutional critique to initiate various forms of coproduction among participants that shift their usual role within the institution. The difficulty of articulating how these specific roles might transform seems related to the idea that these effects can’t necessarily be captured or predicted or are never quite “performed.” But this difficulty also leaves the projects open to inscription within institutional critique––perhaps even a narrative of its failure to repair or transform the institution––while seeking to do something more related to what hasn’t yet been done and to continue imagining what might happen as a result of participating.
In the project Stretching the Imagination, volunteers and temporary workers at the museum were asked to participate in a series of workshops that used intermodal methods to move through various activities. After the workshops, each of the participants was interviewed about their lives. The participants were never asked to talk about their experiences in the workshops; many of them did, expecting that this was the reason for the interview, while others never spoke about the workshops and focused on their life narratives.
The participants were called to participate in the workshops voluntarily while performing free labor for the institution. One of the participants reflected on how this dual status played into their forms of participation in the workshops. This excerpt is taken from a transcript of the recorded conversations. (Numbers indicate seconds of silence, and words in parentheses denote affects or nonverbal modes of expression).
Participant 1: “And if Kuba Szreder is right perhaps the only reason, well not the only reason but one of the reasons to participate in the workshop, was the will to be seen by others within the context of the institution, which somehow shows how other people, well desperate is not the work but that they do want to somehow, well they do think about their future, that they want to secure their place perhaps within this museum in the future, and survive […] or survive the student networking, meet certain people in order to, to advance in their career. I don’t know it’s interesting. (4). And as for myself I’m trying to figure out my motivation. Well my motivation was, that I missed a deadline for my university, so I didn’t start my course last year, so I had a year off. And I didn’t know what to do with myself so I decided to, to learn more about the art world so to speak before I start my studies. And I decided to volunteer here at the museum and, and I did. And I believe that participating, participating in your workshop was not necessarily the will to stretch my imagination but perhaps to, to, to gain some more insight into how these things work, and when I joined, decided to join your workshop, I did not work at the museum here at the time. Well I did, as an educator, but the educators are not really the employees of the museums. They are like topic outside workers, so to say.
So I guess I wanted to have some more insight, if you want me to be totally, completely honest, believe that money was also a factor for many people, because it was some sort of misunderstanding, but Hania, when she was looking for people to participate in the project, she mentioned that we would get paid some sort of money, I don’t remember what it was. And I do believe that also kind of affected, not all people, and it wasn’t, I think that with all honesty I think I can say it didn’t make any difference to me. But it might have affected other people and they made up their minds to participate in the workshop due to the extra money that they would get paid.”
There are, of course, several levels of participation even in this volunteer’s account. There’s simultaneously his recognition of the ways in which the material needs of the volunteers motivated their participation. He suggests that hierarchies of power within the institution situated them into multiple subjective positions in the workshops, in relation to their material needs and the institution’s distribution of power and resources. The interview itself also appears to extend the imperatives to perform a certain subjectivity, as the volunteer simultaneously acknowledges and hesitates the role that money played as a motivating factor for participation. Also, throughout the interview, the volunteer refers to the exhibition curator’s language. The volunteer’s interpretations seem related to their hopes of working in the field of art theory. In fact, the volunteer later became an employee of the museum, interfacing between the workshop and the curators.
At the same time, many of the other workshop participants identified the various ways in which the project itself constructed their means of participation. Their interviews describe the play between their perception that I had an intention or end in mind for the workshops and their sense of not knowing what that end might be.
As I wrote in my introduction to the museum’s volunteer coordinator, my intention in the workshop was to “look into relationships between lived experience and capacities to imagine. Imagine what? Examples may include bonds between volunteer/artist, artist/work, work/exhibition, exhibition/research, research/institution, institution/policy, policy/language, language/form, form/employment, etc. We apply a so called “low skill, high sensibility” approach, which means that we constantly alternate between doing and reflection.”
In order to reimagine these bonds, I led a series of “hands-on exercises, we can call modalities. They are composed within a given framework, often in sequences.” One example given in the introduction was:
“Everybody gets a white A4 sheet of paper. Each of us explore that piece of paper individually for 5 minutes alone. Folding it, smelling it, talking to it, going for a walk with it, whatever. Then we get new information. We will individually represent that A4 paper in an imaginary “mini-assembly” of A4 papers. The assembly will be starting in 10 minutes and behind a tape on the floor is our speakers corner, imaginary council seats etc. Everyone is given a 1 minute slot to formally represent their paper in the assembly. The stage is set: Each A4 paper gets their voice heard through their representatives. This example is just a fictive one to give a sense of “activity grammar.” First modality is to explore the paper. Second modality is preparing the paper. Third modality is representing that paper in the mini-assembly. Fourth module (not mentioned) could be to translate the “concern” of that A4 paper into a movement in the space, moving from speech to choreography (=performance). A limited distribution of information is central for facilitating transitions, since participants need to “not to know what comes next” to be operational in moving effectively from one modality to another. Not unlike Ad Reinhardt who would ask his students to make self- portraits in pencil and charcoal on fine paper and then, when the drawing was finished, he would direct them to erase it and start over, a process continued on the same piece of paper throughout the term. Thus we may talk about intermodalities. Part 1 forms a larger modality at large, then part 2, 3 and 4. Overall, an exploration enabled through imaginary capacities to articulate aspects of a given situation beyond the logic of a rehearsed speech, reflection and language.”
[The terms intermodality and decentering were practical and pedagogical concepts that were introduced to me during my participation in the European Graduate School from 2013 to 2015 by Paolo Knill, Margo Fuchs and Stephen Levine.]
As suggested by the bonds proposed by the project’s introduction, a parallel intermodal strategy was at play, in which the volunteer took on capacities of the artist, through the work of participating in the exercises, which made up part of the exhibition, which acted as research on the institution, which was composed of the participants’ own experiences in the institution, which were determined by and might shift the perspective of the institution’s policies, which are shaped by and might be used to transform the language of the institution, which is based on certain forms of exchange and relation, which make up and might be used to shift the employment situation, which might shift other situations yet to be determined.
Importantly, the intention was not to expose the institution’s reliance on volunteer labor or to use the volunteers’ participation as a means of making an artwork or critique but rather to offer the volunteers a means of imagining their work differently, especially as the work imposes certain demands on their own subjectivities through tours, educational programs, and other public-facing interactions.
At the same time, it was a means of participating in a group exhibition, Making Use: Life in Post-Artistic Times, constituted of reports from artistic strategies that shed similar lights on areas where artistic competence might be / are made use of in nonartistic fields or an expanded field of production.
In order to facilitate these workshops, as mentioned in my introduction, I was responsible for the distribution of information along the way, in order to allow the participants to move effectively “from one modality to the next.” This produced another double ontology, where I was both a member of the group and the leader of the exercises––behind this work, of course, was also that of managing the project with the institution, the head of the education department, and the exhibition’s curators.
These multiple ontological positions were read by the volunteers primarily through their perception of my position as an artist in the exhibition. This reflects an already existing asymmetry in the hierarchy of the institution. But in and around this hierarchical structure, I participated in all aspects of the workshops and in the space for imagining we created together. What became apparent from conducting interviews with the participants afterward is that they saw my role differently from how I saw it. This difference was between my intention of concealing certain information so as not to be able to predict the outcome of the workshops and their feelings about participating while not being able to predict the outcome, even as they felt that I could predict it. One of the witnesses, who described her experience as a participant to the committee as a way of producing a critical reflection on Work, work, described her feelings this way:
S: “So at the first meeting, Jesper explained a little bit, and then he asked us, and that was the strangest thing – I didn’t like it, he asked us to write a description, sort of what we were expecting from this workshop, so it was like kind of a science-fiction work, like looking into the future, and then, during our meetings, we were, well he was like, during the two or three first meetings, for me he was like a kind of a (?? 4:55).
S2: A what?
S: (?? 4:57), a god. (?? 4:59), I think … it’s what you say, that’s how I felt, because we were there. He’s quite, well, he’s quite enigmatic, I would say, about Jesper, so he was telling us things, and we were just trying to do whatever he said, without understanding what he wanted us to do, but of course ….”
Here, the practical application of my process of concealing certain information was read as a kind of omnipotence. The “science-fiction” work she describes was used as a means of evaluating the project. Before we started any of the exercises, I asked the group to imagine that it was the last day of the workshops and to reflect on what the process had been. These reflections were then optionally read by the participants at the end of the workshops, alongside my own (including my insecurities about the project), to compare their expectations with what had unfolded.
This sense of skepticism or some participants’ feeling of being controlled were imperceptible to me, as I was engaged in the process of facilitation and staying in a close dialogue with Hania Sabat, the head of the education department. These feelings were ostensibly imperceptible to her, as well, or left uncommunicated to me. This perhaps reveals some of the existing levels of hierarchy between the volunteers, Hania, and myself. But these exercises had different, highly personalised effects on the participants, as their experience and any shifts in their perspective remained mostly internal throughout the process. In that regard, the workshops did not attempt to have an invasive or interpretive function.
Part of my participation came out of a longing to be in that shared space, to share the creation of the work with the volunteers, and to subject the already existing hierarchies to our capacities to reimagine them. This required a level of dependency on the volunteer’s participation and a commitment to being unable to predict the outcome of their participation. Similarly, in not selecting the volunteers but rather offering anyone who was a volunteer to be a participant, participation became the qualification that constituted the group. Two of the volunteers at the museum decided after the first workshop that they would prefer not to participate; the group then consisted of 10 volunteers. Parallel to my multiple ontological statuses, we can imagine how the volunteers’ mode of participating in the interview was structured by a split consciousness between their own experience of the workshop and how they thought they should represent this experience to me, as the perceived manager of the project. Here are some extracts from the various interviews that might speak to their various levels of consciousness.
Participant 1: “Normally I would just ask you what was going on, and we would have a conversation about it but just because of the fact that I knew somehow consciously and unconsciously perhaps that it was a project and it was a well-researched and well-thought through structure, that I just let it go and went along with it. And it did affect the way I interacted with you, I interacted with other participants of the workshop and (9) and just because of the fact that it was a project, I feel that it might have felt somehow weird at some points, that this kind of, you know (thinking) I mean, you were very human, you were very nice, but somehow this kind of human touch gets lost when you work within the structures of the project, I guess. (5) But then of course we all knew from the very beginning that we would participate in a project, so I’m not complaining but since you wanted to perhaps observe how the educators or volunteers behave in certain situations, you of course, have to take into consideration that their responses have been dramatically changed due to the fact that we were all the parts of the ongoing project and we somehow experienced and felt it. Maybe a bit unconsciously I guess. So, the relations between people were somehow altered due to it”
This volunteer seems to focus on the notion that my intention was to “observe how the educators or volunteers behave in certain situations,” which likely shaped his own means of behaving in the interview. He seems to expect that his behaviour is under observation. Regardless of what the particular intention might be of the observation or the “project,” the fact that the workshops were part of a project impacted how he approached his participation. His emphasis on this part of the experience is likely related to his earlier alignment of his analysis of the project with that of the curator and the languages of art theory. He qualifies his criticism of the loss of the “human touch” in this process of becoming part of a project with the statement that I was “very human” and “very nice.” He simultaneously performs his polite and willing participation and his reservations as an outside observer or critic.
Participant 3: “so I like the idea that I could try to do something that would have some kind of meaning, you know (4). I think that the workshops were like, kind of an escape from the everyday life, yes, doing things like completely unexpected, yes. Well for you they had a meaning but for us, they were just you know like an adventure. We were just doing, we didn’t know where we were going, what we were doing, what’s the result and that was fun. (8) I don’t know what more to say. Maybe you could ask me questions or something. (21)”
This participant seems more focused on her experience and the possibilities opened up by not knowing what would happen next. Still, she speculates I had a particular “meaning” assigned to the exercises. She goes back to recalling her and the other volunteer’s experiences without an ascribed meaning or end but then says that she doesn’t know what more to say. She proposes that I ask her questions, perhaps, suggesting that I lead her toward the meaning that I’ve ascribed to the workshops.
Participant 4: “I mean, generally, during your workshops, I had this … the need to rebel against you, but I never did, and I was so frustrated that I did not do it, and I talk about it, and I think M also had these kind of thoughts, that she wanted to rebel, but she could not, because on the one hand, she always knew, we all knew that it has, like it’s really loose, and it has no rules in general, and it will maybe even make it more interesting to … for someone to break down, and say, we’ll do it, but neither of us ever did. We all did what she told us to do, so I’m really amazed actually, because your really gentle approach, I don’t know how it happened, but it did. I’m really impressed. No-one had second thoughts. Maybe they had second thoughts, but they never vocalised them, so it’s really odd.”
This participant describes a desire to refuse participation or to shift the hierarchy of the workshops by not following the instructions for the exercises. This desire seems to have both stemmed from the sense that “it ha[d] no rules in general” but also that there were protocols and instructions shaping the behaviour of the group. Interestingly, she turns from her frustration at this sense of duality to her sense of my “gentle approach” and that “no-one had second thoughts.” Parallel to the first participant, who both looks to stand outside and to participate in the interview, she suggests both that everyone participated without misgivings while vocalising her misgivings about participating.
Participant 6: “I think it was very difficult for me you know because I was, I was quite lonely. I mean maybe that’s the experience of everybody that you just feel lonely. But I was just extremely lonely. I think I saw things a little bit differently and I just couldn’t conform. I couldn’t conform to the rules like, all, at the same time I all the time conformed to the rules. So, I knew what was expected of me, so I did it. And then it was very difficult to me because I just don’t understand anything you know.”
This participant is similar to Participant 5 in being reticent to “conform to the rules,” while saying that she also “conformed to the rules.” She says “I knew what was expected of me, so I did it.” The expectation that there was an expectation seems to be a recurring theme throughout the interviews, though that particular expectation is never stated. This seems to reflect as much on the workshops themselves as the institutional structure that the volunteers saw themselves in. Their participation was impacted by their understandings of what it might mean to be part of an exhibition and also the potential of paid employment at the museum.
Participant 9: “I like the idea that we didn’t know what will happen next. I remember that someone said that, I think, it doesn’t matter who she was (she aughs), but she said that she wanted to rebel against you, because she didn’t wonder (? 0:52) what happened next, and what are you doing with us, but I actually liked it (firmly). I mean, I signed for it. I wanted to participate in something like that, really, and I was curious, and even if we would, I don’t know … I would protest, if we should cut ourselves, or something like this! (she laughs) But unless … er, unless it’s a super-heavy performance, yeah, I accept it.”
This participant re-emphasizes some of the things that Participants 4 and 6 seemed to react against––the idea of participating without controlling the nature of that participation. She briefly gives a sense of her boundaries (“if we should cut ourselves”) while reestablishing her openness. What was, perhaps, most interesting to me over the course of our workshops together were the ways, in which the group formed an alliance, as they used their own experiences volunteering in the imaginary activities. While doing so, they articulated certain issues in their role within institution and gave me a great deal of insight into how the institution worked. Conducting the interviews, first of all shifted my understanding of why the participants had become volunteers in the first place. Rather than all seek an immediate form of employment, many volunteers got involved with the museum in order to ease their transition back into the workforce and to decide the pace of that transition.
All 10 volunteers made a point of participating in the interview, a 3-hour commitment that seems to have been simultaneously tied to their expectations about the requirements of getting credit and compensation of participating and their loyalty or dedication to participating. It was the first time I met with any of them one-on-one, and several of them discussed how the workshops might be represented in my overall research project. Being alone with them, I became more aware of the sense of authority that I had in these relationships, and I spent a good deal of time in the interview attempting to make them feel comfortable in the exchange. The interviews also decentered our experience together, in which we had always worked within the context of the institution, by asking them to reflect on their lives more generally. Parallel to but necessarily different than the participation of the volunteers was that of the gallery’s education department manager, who both coordinated their participation and also participated in the group. In interviewing her, she described her experience of getting to let go of her role of institutional leadership:
Participant 10: “I felt more like, just part of the group, and I knew that when it finishes, I knew that someone for sure will ask me, well, if I need help with anything, and usually one or two people said to help me with everything, so I became like really relaxed with that, so I became more like, from the, the shift from the organiser to just part of the group, like a normal, typical person, it was really really cool. I like that very much. It was like, I was afraid that it would involve a lot of stress or something, but it involved less and less stress, so I was feeling that, yeah, we are a group, like together, even with you, that we are just like, working, doing something together, so I don’t have to be stressed, because if there’s a problem, if the place is booked, after a few meetings I knew that the responsibility was not only on me, that I could just say like, what do you think we should do? – and that everyone would take some kind of responsibility, and maybe we could come with ideas, and that was very relaxing, because this is not something I have the possibility to have very often at the museum, because usually I have to look if everything is correct, and no-one is shouting and so on, so that was a nice experience.”
In light of the other interviews, which discuss certain advantages to participating alongside their potential employer, her role as manager was not exactly transformed while nevertheless doubled. It’s also worth noting that the same logic that enabled a positive experience in the manager being “just part of the group” is also easily put to work in the managerial model of team-building, where similarly open-ended exercises might be used to facilitate a sense of camaraderie and levelled hierarchies that is instrumental to the durability of hierarchies in the workplace and their successful functioning.
To return to the double ontological status of the work itself, it’s interesting to reflect both that the group operated for itself and that the members of the group carry the artwork with them (if there is an artwork). The hope was that the group would become temporarily autonomous and the members of the group would write their own roles and forms of participation within the existing institutional structure. But less seeking to have concrete effects on their positions at the museum or to put their imaginative capacities to work for the museum, the workshops sought to produce a individualised, personal, and perhaps uncommunicated set of meanings for the participant by seeding the work within their own experience of the workshops. The interpretation of the artwork resides with them as much as the coproduction of it. It was motivated by my feelings of being strongly impacted by working in intermodal exercises within the framework of EGS from 2013-2015, the effects of which are phenomenological in nature.
Before he made the Rosedale, NY project, Puusemp proposed a form of seeding artworks in his “idea plants,” “planting ideas for art works in unsuspecting would-be artists’ minds, then waiting for the artworld to reap what he had clandestinely sown.” Puusemp’s intention was to critique how ideas for art works are predictably inscribed into a system of cultural legitimacy and inevitably commodified, creating art works that literally could not be prevented from enacting his predictions once the idea was ‘planted.’ However, exactly the opposite of Puusemp’s intention, the seeding in the workshops stemmed from the inability to predict their effects and the fact that the seed may never take root in a perceptible way.
In the process of conducting the set of interviews with the workshop participants, I realised that I would not be able to give them the necessary level of engagement to fully interpret or draw conclusions about the nature of volunteer work in Warsaw within the scope of Work, work and that it would demand its own research project. At the same time, the interviews could not have emerged without the process of working together in the workshops, as they were contingent on the (at least) double ontological status of both myself and the volunteers.
In thinking more generally about the question of double ontology as it related to the projects that made up Work, work, we might look at the attempt to use an interview about my life to move toward a series of critical reflections on the projects that made up Work, work, by using BNIM. In Tom Wengraf’s report on the interview, he describes his frustration with his inability to access the “subjective material” of the interview. He quotes a portion of our conversation, where he attempts to access “the private Jesper” beneath the “public Jesper.” In his estimation, the “public Jesper” tends to desubjectivise his own accounts:
Tom: “Anything else you’d like to add?
Jesper:“ I think it’s difficult to..(5 sec pause)..because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on, and reflect on..(7 sec)..but it can also be interesting, I feel like, so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context. There’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it, so I can also add that..(4sec)..of course the private Jesper, it’s all the time on the, why do we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there, or…so it’s kind of (12 sec), or why didn’t you continue there if it’s…I mean there’s lots of ..(11sec)..ambiguity in all this, even if I feel I’ve been talking here, and then this, and then that. It becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing (11 secs) and I mean, I think it could also be in a story about, like an emotional human being, what’s the.. (4 secs)..attraction to all this, for example? What’s the longing for sharing that process, or why this? – I don’t know to add, but in general I think that’s..(5 secs)..maybe..(7 secs)..what’s interesting to work, even in an institution, you work very close and very hierarchical, so it’s also, it’s healthier to have a focus on the art, and to, this is also..(5 secs)..it could be, I think, fulfilling in many cases to ..(4 sec)..when there’s more, well, all in all, I think it’s a very hard and competitive environment, which..(4 secs)..takes a lot of, well, makes you vulnerable maybe, so this, I think, has..(7 secs)..which I’m missing, that’s maybe what I wanted to say, I’m missing that..(4 secs).
Tom: Sorry, what are you missing?
Jesper: Erm, well, when explaining or presenting, that there is..(7 secs)..in my own presentation but in general in the environment, there is..(3 secs)..there’s not so much room for..(6 secs)..why are you doing it like that? – or what’s the… I’m not saying that it should be, what’s the psychology of this, or what’s your, but ..(8 secs)..I’m not sure if I can say it better (Transcript 1: p.25)
I take him as saying that the interview had unrolled for him, he had improvised his initial response, the main narration, in such a way that the “emotional human being”, the “private Jesper”, was made absent from the telling. His coda-outburst shows how frustrating it was for the part of himself he called “the private Jesper” that the public Jesper had pretty completely dominated the telling to me of their joint told story.
The result of “leaving out / suppressing the emotions” meant of course leaving out the subjectivity with its emotional motivations, its emotional experiencing, and the emotional reviewing of the whole set of staged events and timed practices as they occurred.
Basically, in my technical jargon, Jesper found that he had ‘de-subjectivised’ the telling of the told story, the device that was to have provided precisely that ‘soft subjective data’ which gave meaning.
After the coda, after this moment of expressed emotional frustration and real insight, subsession 1 was concluded, and we had a break for lunch and agreed to resume in an hour’s time for the subsession 2.
I was I think at the lunch break optimistic. I had been very frustrated by the non-arrival of the thoughts and feelings and motivations, the purposes and the evaluations of success and failure, the ‘findings’ of the ‘experiments’, behind the actions of the public Jesper. And now, it had transpired, that he was at least as frustrated as I was and had expressed to me that frustration fully and with great insight into what he had not been doing.”
There are, perhaps, several parallels between the dialectical ontology construed by Wengraf in his account of a “public Jesper” and the “private Jesper” and the double ontologies in the projects that compose Work, work and, specifically, the workshops in Stretching the Imagination. Less an attempt to locate the “private” person beneath their public or situated subjectivity, these projects used intermodal strategies to continuously dislocate the group from the sense that they needed to possess particular capacities to engage a certain activity, actually becoming progressively desubjectivised from the activity (not a sculptor sculpting or a painter painting) but rather part of a group and / or process.
In the interview that Wengraf refers to, this process of desubjectification is perhaps less a conscious choice than evidence of a fundamentally unlocatable (or always dislocated) subject position: “private Jesper.” This Jesper is, of course, deeply entangled with “public Jesper,” which isn’t just a feature of being an artist but is situated particularly in being an artist and the pressures of publicness that attend it. “Private Jesper” can only perhaps be located in my feeling that “I’m missing that”––it’s missing, perhaps, because it can’t be separated from “public Jesper” nor “the longing for sharing that process.” The “private” self blurs with the shared ground from which it’s produced. There’s no moment at which I fully ‘possess’ the subjective properties that might belong to “private Jesper,’ as they are shared with the work and the working contexts that coproduce me, my feelings, and perspectives.
This process of desubjectification was, then, submitted to a further level of interpretation and coproduction through the blind panels, which took my personal narrative as an artist under the fictional name “Jeremy” as the subject of speculation and analysis. While playing with processes of subjectification and locating “Jeremy” as a particular subject, the panels sought to move away from my ‘private’ or personal experiences, understandings, or interpretations of the work.
Though Wengraf’s frustration with the ‘nonarrival’ of my private self is perhaps understandable, it seems entangled with the double ontological status of the work (and the work as I attempt to articulate it)––both what motivates it and threatens its disappearance or nonexistence.
Even in his definition of this state, in Toward a Lexicon of Practical Use, Stephen Wright describes its potential pitfalls, including in defining conceptual projects as such,
“Whatever its descriptive power, however, the notion of a double ontology has two downsides. Firstly, it is not entirely sure that two ontologies are better than one, even if a double-take of this kind allows for considerable usological and escapological play. In fact, in some ways, it may be twice as cumbersome, and an enormous concession to institutional theory, reinforcing as it does the idea that art has an ontology at all. Secondly, to describe practices in these terms is to make them inherently reliant on performative capture to repatriate them into the art frame – otherwise, their secondary (artistic) ontology remains inert, and not so much disappears as fails to appear in the first place. From the perspective of institutional theory, this is intolerable: what is not performed as art, is not art, and so is lost to posterity. But in another way, that may be precisely the point. To disappear from that ontological landscape altogether in order to gain traction somewhere else” (22).
One approach to beginning to address the ethical questions raised by the project Work, work might be look to the report generated by the BNIM practitioner Tom Wengraf from his analysis of the interview conducted about my personal narrative. He says:
“The Transcripts and this report express my major discontent with what from my point of view as a social scientist – but he isn’t one, so that’s not a criticism of him — has been a characteristic of his art-practice (namely a lack of commitment researching the impact or effects of his staged events and timed practices).
This lack of scientific concern for the ‘worked on emotions and cognitions’ of the witting but especially the unwitting participants correlates roughly with a lack of systematised preventive and reparative ethical care for those involved. Put very brutally, parodying an imaginary ‘double ontology’ researcher, “I don’t want to know how it was for you because, if I do, my sense of myself as an ethical person ignoring the emotional impact of my art-professional practice on you…..will be difficult to sustain”.
Comparative knowledge of art-professional milieux would be needed to say how universal or typical, how frequent or how rare, this characteristic is…..or its opposite. My sense is that Jesper may have been fairly typical in this respect, but that his recent ‘current period’ professional career shows him moving out of it.
Contrariwise, I have been very pleased to discover that his artwork projects as a Research Fellow in the last three years have led to his thinking about evaluating subjective impact of artwork, especially of post-studio relational art involving people as participants father than transient voyeuristic passive spectators (whatever their level of connoisseurship).
It seems to me that the Research Fellowship has pushed or enabled – or a mixture of the two – Jesper to reflect his practice more than was evident before.This seems true whether or not ‘Jesper’s BNIM process’ was a carefully designed covert operation under Work, work, in which I had to be kept ignorant that this was one of its functions, or whether it has just happened to function this way, and Jesper’s “secret project” was something else entirely”
To begin with Wengraf’s concern about “a lack of commitment researching the impact or effect of his staged events and timed practices,” it’s perhaps important to consider this commitment to researching impacts or effects might not be necessary in an artistic context but becomes necessary in a nonartistic one. Since the projects in Work, work tend to blur artistic labors with nonartistic ones, the ethics of the methods used in the project are similarly blurred. Its effects are precisely not based around a hypothesis or the intention to observe precise outcomes from isolated variables but rather to open to unpredictability. Some of these variables and effects are visible, but the exact causal relation between them can’t be located as in a scientific method; causes and effects have been periodically defined by participants anecdotally but not universally. The practices used throughout are intended to produce research, but the protocols of the research are part of what is being researched, and their impacts are still being assessed. The ethical commitments of the project can’t be located through their effects but rather through the forms and processes by which they emerged.
Each of the work situations in Work, work looked a certain way when they began and changed as they played out over time. Staging dislocations between artistic and nonartistic processes required generating certain real life relationships and situations. Often, these processes sought to observe the limits of these processes. At the same time, reaching these limits provided a means of reflecting on these processes, asking how might these situations have been structured differently.
Of course, in making these speculations, many ethical concerns emerge around the projects, as they were structured and did play out. At the limits of certain social processes are also the limits of knowledge. Much of the performance of ethics is related to various prejudgements, a belief in an ability to know before one has done––not unlike the work of the proposal, in which one says what one is doing before one does it. Ethics are also often attributed to a project retroactively to justify the positions taken and the decisions made. Rather than describing a general set of ethical rules, I want to, instead, articulate how various ethical judgments came about in each project.
This part will consider ethics from a parallax view, in which ethics are lived and situated, changing as a project changes. Of course, in as much as the practice of opacity was used strategically to enable certain operations within various institutional structures and to prepare participants for certain effects, concealment or the lack of disclosure might be perceived throughout as an ethical problem. It’s interesting that, related to Wengraf’s own question about the extent to which my intention in the project was or had to be concealed, he suggests that I also might have concealed the impacts of the projects on the participants from myself. Part of the intention behind including excerpts from the various interviews, conversations, and reports generated throughout the projects is to consider these effects.
In joining all of the political parties in Norway, I collected a variety of information about the inner workings of the various parties, archived in my notes, emails with party members, and other private communications. Though this material might have been attractive for the exhibition, I decided not to include it. Making this material public seemed to be a violation of the implicit social contract we’d entered through their impression that I was a member of their group. While the notion of the “leak” serves powerful journalistic purposes and is a means of transmitting otherwise concealed information that the public should know for their benefit, this case study was not conceived as a form of journalism. Rather, it was a way of observing various motivations for entering organised political work and comparing the cultures of each of the different parties. These motivations and comparisons were not reported in the exhibition but shaped my perspective in less perceptible ways that, nevertheless, informed the work and were left open to speculation.
It’s interesting to think about instances where a general rule for participation shifted based on the participant’s own input. In all of the projects, except for the exhibitions, where an audience attended, the participants were offered financial compensation. When the topic of money came up in the Anonymous Work Group, however, they decided (as mentioned in the introduction) that they would prefer not to be paid. They felt that being paid a fee would put a different kind of pressure on their participation and might prescribe their motivations and that they would lose autonomy over deciding how to participate. Making this decision, then, allowed for an alternative form of compensation in extending the initial framework and providing resources to travel to Prague to visit the exhibition Competence.
An example that brings together both the ethical questions raised by non-transparency and the effects of participation is that one of the participants in the Delegated Autonomy case study, who initially decided not to participate in the project because of her concerns about being ‘found out’ by the university.
In her first email, she began by describing her interest and the idea that she was drawn to a certain open-endedness.
In my response, I started from a position of urgency, in order to meet the deadline for the application to the project and after not hearing from her for a few days. Responding to her concern in an earlier email, I offered to sign a document taking legal responsibility for any repercussions that may result from enrolling in the MFA program as part of the project.
In her next email, she turned to anxieties about the outcome of participation and the possibility of being deemed a ‘fraud.’ Perhaps, significantly, she placed the ethical judgment onto herself rather than the project or my proposal. She seemed to realise that the process of desubjectification (becoming someone she does not as identify as) could have on the subjectivity that she had thus far cultivated––and what might happen if the faculty in her area of study found out. She asked for more time––though only an hour––in order to evaluate the risk. She approached her own ethical judgment as something that she had to confess, saying “sorry” because she did not previously disclose it and that her ethical doubts were around the novelty of the situation. Already, an ethical determination was made about nondisclosure in her self-judgment.
In my response, I tried to reassure her concerns about bearing the risk of the project by offering to take responsibility in sharing this risk. I established what might be at stake for me, while also implicitly explaining that the risk was not a dissuading factor and that I was not worried about being fired or losing my research position. My email did not address these risks as ethical concerns but more as legal technicalities. Upon further reflection, I was more engaged in the process of thinking about the project logistically in terms of time and resources than considering the long-term ethical effects.
In her third email, she made a decision to not participate, while again apologising. She further elaborated her idea of what it meant to be a ‘fraud’ from the first email, equating it with “cheating,” and explained that what didn’t feel good about it was not only being ethically implicated but also having to take on the risk. She explained that if her participation in the project was disclosed to the university that it would alleviate her ethical concern. But it ended with a further ethical claim that, if accepted, she might take a more deserving student’s place.
I explained that the university and the national artistic research program did know about the various case studies, but that they did not know where and when they took place. I explained that if they did, the experiment wouldn’t be possible.
In many ways, this exchange reiterates the set of questions that come up around the necessity of concealing certain information (creating an alibi) or inhabiting a double ontology. Because the student took on the risks of nondisclosure as ethical questions for herself, they must be taken seriously.
We might say more about the intention behind this case study here. On the one hand, the project began with the oxymoronic nature of “producing autonomy.” It sought to produce a structure inside of a structure that is already meant to produce autonomy: the MFA program. Of course, these structures (not unlike my own position in the artistic research programme) revolve around a play between resources and dependency while creating a space for artistic ‘freedom,’ experimentation, or autonomy. The case study, while still unfolding, was structured to end at the point that autonomy might be asserted––the point at which the students develop an autonomous artistic practice. This might mean simply that their process of making art work becomes no longer motivated by their participation in the case study and that they develop their own interest and stakes in making art.
In order for the students to be accepted to their programs, I drew on my background working at an MFA programme, where I sat on several admissions committees. I helped them to develop portfolios to be admitted, using the students’ areas of concentration as the groundwork for a set of artistic practices. I then coached them for interviews and was present for meetings, as they began the programs, to listen to their experiences and to help them think through the development of their projects. At the same time, I kept a conscious distance from the content of and personal relations in their courses. More important to me than whether the students’ forms of participation could be deemed ‘fraudulent’ was making considerations for how to provide forms of care or support, in relation to the specific demands of the program. For instance, the self-doubt that might emerge around various forms of evaluation or the pressures to perform.
Initially, the idea was to build toward the shift of ownership and to imagine the point at which the students might break the contractual relationship and make their own work. But the project has become increasingly about how to mutually work our way through and out of the situation. The success of the project for me has become less hinged on the transfer of ownership than on making sure that I do not demand too much of their emotional and subjective capacities in the process. The conceptual framework became embodied and concerned largely with supporting the students’ well-being.
The project will shift further, as the source of the material support for the project is no longer the artistic research programme. I will have to either find new sources of support or will no longer be able to offer financial compensation, even if they have access to certain support through their status as students.
The likely perceived outcome of their participation is that they will go back to the field that they had originally studied in while potentially using the skills and competencies derived from the program. Both students have continued other forms of work in their respective fields alongside their participation in the MFA program. Now, we meet less regularly and one of the students has taken a temporary break from the program.
Throughout their participation, we have discussed quite openly the concerns that emerge around the risks and responsibilities that they bear, and there has been an understanding that they can decide to drop out at any time. Part of my responsibility toward them is to conceal their identities as participants in the project and to not present any documentation of it unless they decide to take part in presenting this material.
In this case study, it’s interesting to think about the ethical stakes of reversing the logic of the invisible labour of the artist’s assistant. Instead, it’s largely my labor that’s invisible, while their work is visible within the context of the program and is intended for the student’s own benefit rather than as part of my artistic product. At the same time, the labour of participating in the case study remains invisible, both for the students’ protection and for the continued status of the project. In thinking about how to represent the project once it’s concluded, it will be necessary to collaborate with the students in thinking about how to make these labours visible. At the same time, it might be that the students never want to make their participation in the project visible, particularly if they choose to continue their work with art, beyond the MFA programme. Whatever the outcome, I have made it clear with the students that it’s not necessary to ever make their participation in the case study public and, in fact, that the project may eventually disappear.
Far from Wengraf’s interpretation of the “double ontology researcher,” it’s less a matter of not wanting to confront the emotional impact of these projects on those involved and more that each project involves forms of participation where the full impact can’t be known while it’s still in process. Similar limits and permutations come up in many of the interviews, even as participants reveal certain dimensions of how they feel about their participation.
A question that came up in many of the projects is whether asking participants to take part in a situation, in which they don’t necessarily know the purpose of their participation or where it might lead, is a form of manipulation.
The most direct address of this problem was in a future blind panel that took my personal narrative as a case study to apply BNIM; my interview was presented under the pseudonym “Jeremy.”One of these panels uses “Teller Flow Analysis” to speculate on aspects of a research subject’s statements and to produce a matrix of possible interpretations. Wengraf describes the issues that emerged in one of the panels in his report:
“The example of the BNIM TFA (Teller Flow Analysis) panel in Oslo in November 2015
• I had agreed with Jesper that I would bring some Teller Flow Analysis material to Oslo, and that he would provide the panel members, and that members of “the Jury” might come in and observe, or participate, or otherwise. […]
• At least two were convinced they were the ‘exploited subject’ of an experiment by Jesper and they were not happy to be so used. The unexpected presence of an audio-visual apparatus made some very suspicious. They asked me to guarantee that video-records of them would not be used by Jesper without their permission. I did not have authority to assure them of that, but tried to reassure them without giving a personal guarantee which I had no authority to give. One left in a state of anger, after registering his protest. I was angry at having been put in a false situation.
• The flowing in and out of the panel venue by different people (probably most or all were ‘Jury’ members but maybe not all) who felt more like observers or casual passers-by meant that I felt that we the panel and facilitator were (for the passers by) people engaged in a ‘strange practice’. […]This episode shows perhaps the less-obvious effects on the lived experiencing of social relations of non-transparent research and other practices, and the importance of distinguishing the two dimensions of research/non-research and transparency/covert subterfuge.”
Taking Wengraf’s criticism about the avoidance of confronting the emotional impact of the projects on its participants seriously, it seems important to consider the impacts that he draws attention to, in terms of the two panelists who “were convinced they were the ‘exploited subject’ of an experiment;” the other panelists, who participated without announced ethical reservations; and Wengraf himself, who felt “angry at having been put in a false situation.”
As Wengraf suggests, the semi-public status of the presentation and the presence of people coming in and out of the panel led to the sense that it was, in fact, a performance and situated some of the participants into a feeling of being caught in a performance or a “strange practice.” It should also be mentioned that Wengraf’s interpretation was no doubt shaped by the fact that I sent him the assessment committee’s notes on the project and the package of materials received by the committee.
For the two participants, who felt manipulated, it seems that the ethical concern was primarily about the inability to know how the recording would be used. Though it doesn’t explain their feelings, it’s perhaps interesting to note that they came to the panel late, after Wengraf had already described the procedure. In their perception that they were part of an “experiment,” they seemed to read the limited distribution of information as a sign that they were being manipulated as test subjects. Without Wengraf’s ability to assure them as to how the footage would be used, they perhaps saw his lack of certainty as proof that there was another entity making decisions that would ultimately be outside their control, and, thus consent. It should be said that I did sign a form accepting the participant’s wishes to not use the documentation of their participation.
In considering Wengraf’s position, it is understandable that he felt upset by not being able to say with certainty how the recorded material would be used, though we discussed the ethics of recording on the basis of how it is used traditionally in BNIM (which is only for the purposes of the researcher). This was complicated by the ambiguously public status of the panel, which ordinarily is not public. The last panel differed from the two previous panels in that more artists came to both participate and watch, likely approaching it with a sense that it was a performative event. Due to the requirements of the presentation, there was an open door policy, and the committee was also present.
Similar tensions emerged throughout the projects that were sited at galleries and museums, as the pressure to make work public came up against the desire to treat the visitor as a coproducer of the work and to not necessarily put this work on view, except to the visitor or participants themselves. This is, perhaps, in many ways where the need for certain strategies of exhibition as alibi emerged. The presence of a public gave the work a sense of theatricality and created an artificial separation of audience and performers (either witnesses or panelists); it was exactly this separation that most of the projects in Work, work attempted to dissolve.
During the panels and the witnesses’ testimonies, I was not allowed to be in the room, both because of the requirements of the presentation and also because the interview was presented under the pseudonym “Jeremy.” Wengraf was, thus, put into an awkward position of not being able to mention to the panelists who were upset with the recording that I was available to discuss how it would be used, even though I was outside the room, where the panels took place. Neither Wengraf nor I were prepared to have immediate answers about how the protocols would be used, including the recorded material, which led to both his inability to answer the panelists’ questions and his feelings of anger in that situation.
After the couple left the panel, the other participants stayed and reflected afterward that they enjoyed their participation. It should also be said that similar issues did not emerge in the other panels. They were configured under the same protocols and were also recorded; however, they did not take place in the same semi-public fashion.
A possible counterpoint to consider to the binary between transparency and nontransparency that Wengraf discusses at the end of his ethical criticism of the panels is one of the witness statements that describes their motivation for participating in the Anonymous Working Group.
The witness said:
Witness 4: “There was some kind of information about (?? 0:52) focus group, and then you should send an email if you were interested, and there was not very much information, but I wondered what it was, and I sent this email, and then I get information about when and where I should meet, and all this lack of information from the beginning has, in some way, been some kind of motivating factor, because we have always wondered what the results will be, and what will happen next time we meet. We are not really sure what will happen, but that also has been some kind of … and I was very curious, so it hadn’t been, it had not been negative – it had been more a motivating thing.”
Here, his description of his experience relates to some of the volunteers in Stretching the Imagination, where the lack of knowing where things would go led to a certain kind of curiosity that animated further participation. Though it can’t by any means stand in for every participant or even all aspects of his own participation, his account here serves as some confirmation that the use of non-transparency enabled a set of actions and forms of participation that would not have been possible otherwise and that have been meaningful to at least some of its participants.
Ultimately, the ethical judgements made about the use of non-transparency throughout these projects revolve around the fact that it might simultaneously be conceived as a form of “covert subterfuge” and as a means of activating imaginary capacities and producing new experiences for participants.
In a telling moment of Wengraf’s interpretation, he comes to an impasse in attempting to pin down his ethical interpretation of my interest in both engaging participants and making conceptual art. He says, in describing a passage of the interview:
“Re-looking at it, I am more puzzled not less. The feeling I get and got then was of an obscure conflict between (i) the joy of the art-therapy-type occasions of Saas Fee [European Graduate School] and earlier fostering of spontaneity through unpredicted exercises (like the clay on tummy one) as a ‘progressive emancipatory pedagogue’ using ‘low art-skill, high emancipatory-expressivity’ occasions (my terms not his) and (ii) some quite different sort of practice (‘being a conceptual artist ‘ linked perhaps to ‘enabling for them a certain reality and they don’t know about it’).
This latter, ‘conceptual art at least sometimes with double ontology’ seems at the moment to me to be something very different and even opposed, especially with double ontology’s contrived and deliberate veiling and frustration of self-situational understanding ….but this may turn out to be my optical illusion.”
Of course, Wengraf’s characterization of my working method as a puzzle to be solved is connected to his attempts to resolve the doubleness of the ontology, in order to arrive at one or another “private Jesper” or “public Jesper” or a set of motivations between them. Wengraf’s conclusion that he was unable to arrive at my subjectivity came after he had already conducted a set of panels that were premised on the idea of making certain claims about my anonymized subjectivity. It’s also interesting to observe the different phases of Wengraf’s interpretation, which are available in the archive. The first was his attempt to take a form of ‘artistic license’ in the method of interpretation; this quote comes from his attempt at doing a more traditional form of BNIM.
At this point in the interpretation, he seeks to understand whether the lack of subjective qualities in my narrative was the result of a series of “deliberate veiling and frustration of self-situational understanding” or something more to do with the status of public subjectivity in the field of art-making and professional practice. For me, “double ontology” is not a deliberate form of obfuscation but rather a means of framing how the need to inhabit multiple roles asserts itself. As mentioned in the previous part, the double ontology between the “public” and “private Jesper” shows how they are coproduced, and those that operate in the exhibitions or case studies largely revolved around how the work is coproduced. It’s interesting that in Wengraf’s recognition that he is part of making the work, he feels frustrated with the fact that he, himself, may be a part of a case study. It’s perhaps exactly this isolated moment of feeling one’s subjectivity absorbed into a project that the notion of a double ontology both works with and dislocates, as it refers to a condition where one’s ontology is at the same time another thing.
Nevertheless, in the fact that several of the people in the last panel knew that I was the fictional artist “Jeremy” and in Wengraf’s attempt to conduct an interpretation of my narrative while also being influenced by the process of scrutinizing and evaluating my work, my position as the artist became re-centered. These various participants sensed that I was the subject of the work. The purpose of using my own narrative as the material for the panels was, in fact, to desubjectivise my own account and to open the various projects described to other forms of interpretation and critical reflection. But these circumstances seemed to get blurred with various participants’ already existing notions of my subject position in relation to the projects. The panels, like the projects my narrative described, sought to open to unpredictable effects, but what is known frequently overdetermines what is unknown or yet to be determined.
This document, while intended to be self-contained, might best be read on top of the archive. Given the variety of materials generated throughout this project and the number of materials that are not described in this text, it might be recomposed based on how the archive is accessed. The archive itself might be read as a set of critical reflections, which changes its focus, depending on the material accessed.
Lecture 1 part 1 (file 001)
Moderator:
Good morning. Thank you very much for coming and giving up your time to do this – I really appreciate that. I’m a biographical researcher from London, and a sociologist, and I teach a particular method of doing interviews, and interpreting interviews, called “BNIM” – the Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method – chunk, chunk, chunk, and what this is all about is, what is this about? What this is is a kick start panel. Do sit wherever is most convenient for you. If you’d like to sit here – oh, I see, thanks very much; and my pen, fantastic – communication lives.
So, BNIM is a method, you’re part of this method of interpretation. I’ve done an interview with somebody, who we’ll call ‘Nadja’, and this interview has been done, and what we’re now doing is starting the interpretation of it, and I shall be interpreting it for two or three months after this. The way that the method of interpretation works is by what we call kick start panels, a panel to kick start the process of interpretation, so the idea is that any researcher (like myself, particularly myself) has insights and oversights. There are things I see quite quickly, and there are things I wouldn’t see on my own at all.
If you’re interested in psychoanalysis, you can call it the “defended researcher”, that we all, because of our personality and our history, are very good at picking some things up, and bad at picking other things up, so, for example, men and women have different perceptions of the same situation, because of their socialisation, and cultures are different, so that an English person may pick up something different from a Norwegian person, and people of different ages, and so on, so we all have insights and oversights, depending on our history, our situation and everything else, so if you’re going to interpret somebody’s material, or anybody, the thing is to have a panel of different people who bring in the hypotheses that you yourself, or I myself (being the researcher in this case), I myself wouldn’t think of, and so that’s what a kick start panel does.
There are things that I see pretty automatically, when I look at interview material, and there are things I pretty automatically don’t see at all, and only somebody else can tell me, and the same would be true for anybody doing any research. So that’s why we have a heterogeneous panel of people who are as different as possible from each other, in order to bring in as many research perspectives, or ways of understanding things, as possible, and at the end of this panel, I shall go away with a much richer understanding of what might be going on with this particular individual than I would if I just started on my own, and started interpreting on my own, so that’s what this is for. It’s for initial hypotheses.
At the end of the research process, in three months’ time, none of these original hypotheses may stand – that’s fine. They’ve started off a process of creative thinking, and thinking for me, outside my own limitations. For this particular case, it’s particularly important, because I’m not a Norwegian, and we’re talking about a Norwegian, somebody who became a professional, so I have no idea, this is my first trip to Norway. I have never studied Norway, I didn’t speak Norwegian, so in terms of understanding what it’s like to becoming a Norwegian art professional, I have no idea, so consequently, having some Norwegian people on the panel is absolutely vital.
The second thing is that at least one of you may be involved, I hope they are, in the Norwegian arts scene. Some of you may, and some of you may not – it doesn’t matter, but again, so there’s, I’m not involved even in the British art scene, let alone the Norwegian art scene, so there’s a double ignorance on my part (probably treble, multiple ignorance on my part). So a panel of Norwegians, some of whom may be involved in the Norwegian art scene, is very important when I get round, by the end of three months, to interpreting the interview material of this Norwegian art professional. So what you’re here to do is to help me, so thank you very much for giving up your time to help in putting forward hypotheses that may be useful in understanding the case of Nadja, so that’s by way of an introduction.
Just two other points: we’re going to break at eleven to twelve-thirty. We’re going to break at twelve-thirty for lunch, and if people want, perhaps at a quarter-to-twelve, we might have a five-minute break anyway, depending on what it feels like, and I’m just going to, one last thing about the method of interpretation, we’re starting with the objective life – that is to say, things that happened in the life of this person. We’re not starting with what they think about it or feel about it, or whatever, which we will start doing in another panel, because what they think or feel about it now, I interviewed Nadja last week, or last month actually, and what she now thinks about what happened when she was twenty years old is what she now thinks.
We’re trying to find out what she might have thought at the time, and what, for example, supposing you’ve had a very unhappy, your first love affair was very unhappy, so it started off wonderfully, your first kiss. Imagine your first kiss, it started off wonderfully, and then it all went wrong, so now, when you look back, you look back with bitterness or cynicism, it doesn’t matter, and therefore in the interview, you would say, from your now perspective, well I now think we were very young, very stupid, and I made a very stupid move, but that’s not what you were feeling and experiencing at the time, so we’re trying to go beyond the now perspective, which is carried into the interview, back to the original fact of your first kiss, or the first kiss, whatever it is, how might it have been experienced at the time, irrespective of what the person now say.
Later on, we’ll come to what the person now says, not in this panel, but in another panel, but here we are trying to reconstruct, so to speak, with all the current perspective, the current subjectivity, stripped away to see what might it have been like at the time, so that’s what we’re doing here. We’re just having some rather bare facts about the person’s life presented, how might it have been experienced at that time. It doesn’t matter what the person says about it, because we’re not going to look at that.
Does that make sense, as sort of two things? – because when we get onto story, when the research gets onto story, then stories are very seductive, that’s to say, it was a minor thing, it had no importance – I can hardly remember what it was like. You think, oh well, a very minor thing, she didn’t remember what it was like. Actually, at the time, it may have shattered somebody’s world, or made it absolutely totally brilliant, and you won’t get that from the present perspective, you’ll only get, be able to imagine that if the present perspective, the subjectivity of now, the perspective of now, is taken away, and we look at, well, what might it be like to fall in love and have one’s first kiss at the age of sixteen, or whatever? – so that’s why we’re just doing the brute facts, irrespective of story.
I think that’s all. I’ll just press this button, which will tell me everything … so all these are very provisional hypotheses about Nadja’s lived experiencing, and lived experiencing is a key magic phrase that we use, and it’s thoughts and feelings. It’s not, depending on your view, it’s what a person might have thought at the time, or what they might have felt at the time, and feelings might be emotion, it might be a body sensation, it might be anything, but thoughts and feelings, and that’s what an experience is, so we try and think, what was the person’s thoughts and feelings at the time we’re talking about?
The thing to do is to note, sorry, I’ll finish in a minute, this is a bit long, but is to note what you find surprising. I’ll be putting up, chunk by chunk, different events from the person’s life. I’ll be asking you, what do you think that Nadja might have been experiencing at that time, and you’ll say whatever you say. I’ll write it up, and then we’ll go onto the next one. We’re putting forward first provisional hypotheses.
The next chunk may be surprising, may be not what you thought about at all. Note your sense of surprise. What’s really important is, note in yourself, because I’ll be asking you to write a little bit at the end, noting what you weren’t surprised by, and what you were surprised by – this is not what I quite, what I would have expected to happen, because your sense of surprise says something about, well, it may be surprising that the person did it. Your sense of being surprised, or deeply bored, of course, Nadja would go on to do that – it’s obvious, then that’s also very useful, so both your own sense of surprise and predictability are valuable resources for understanding the case. I could spend hours talking about this, and I’m in great danger, I’m always very good at spending hours talking, so I won’t talk any more about that.
Anything else? – the other thing is, in a way, to notice what doesn’t happen. This is quite tricky. There’ll be a series of things, and you may start to say, well it’s funny, this didn’t happen, or this happened later than I would have thought it had done, or earlier, or something, but what doesn’t happen in a person’s life, which you think they might, might happen, that’s also very important, even if there are different ways of theorising that, but it’s also important, so note what happened, which we’ll put up, but note into your mind, well, it’s a bit strange, that didn’t happen, or whatever, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
I think that’s all. The other thing, confidentiality of discussions – please, we’re dealing with a real person, and therefore can you bear in mind that she may not want to be talked about at great extent outside this room, so this is a confidential discussion. The issues, issues in people’s lives are not that unique usually, but the details of anybody’s life might be, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about this, you kept it confidential to this room, particularly when you’re putting forward completely wild hypotheses, or somebody else is – oh, maybe they killed their grandmother, and that’s why – well, we don’t know whether they killed their grandmother or not, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t want to talk about it at great length – grandmothers are sacred.
Okay, any questions that anybody has? I have a grandmother, well actually I don’t any more, but anyway, any questions that anybody would like to ask about what we’re about to do? It’ll become easier when we actually start, but there has to be some orientation.
So, the first part, we’ll be going quite quickly through, and afterwards we’ll be going more slowly, but this is in the way of background. This is where my nails struggle without success with a large piece of Sellotape. I knew I shouldn’t have cut my nails two days ago – they were long and pointed! That’s lovely. If you could do a couple and just let them drop there, that would be great. I’m sorry, it may be that you have to bring your chairs in somehow, in order to see properly. I’ll put this up, but if you can’t see it, and you do need to be able to read it fairly easily. I need another piece of Sellotape, because this has stuck itself brilliantly on itself. I’ll read it out, but you do need to be able to think about it for longer than I’d read it out, so I’ll read it out.
Nadja was born in 1973. She had a Norwegian father and a Swedish mother, who met in Tunis in Tunisia, and she was born in Constantinople – sorry, she was born in Copenhagen. In 1976, when she was three, the family moved to Oslo. They moved as a family, and then after the parents got divorced, then she went backwards and forwards between the parents. In Christmas, and the summer holidays, she moved between her grandparents, some in Sweden, and the others in Norway, and during that period of early family life, they had various au pairs from England, from China and from Norway. Then, in 1987 to ’92, when she was between the ages of fourteen to nineteen, she had a variety of clerical jobs. She then enrolled in Oslo University, in the history of ideas, and travelled about in China and to south-east Asia, so that’s the early history.
So what we do is, we say, okay, and this is a very broad question, because we’re talking about almost 20 years now, but very broadly, how might she have experienced that period of her life? So these are called “experiencing hypotheses”, if you remember, thoughts and feelings. So what might be, let us say, and these are only hypotheses, you can’t guess right, you can only have interesting hypotheses, so we call them experiencing hypotheses, how might that period of her life be experienced?
New speaker (female):
Moving here and there as a child is stressful.
Moderator:
Stressful, okay. So this is the first one – stressful, and I should say I write very badly, but it’s the only way I write, so I just write very badly. So it’s stressful – what might she have thought, or what might be your thoughts about being stressed in that way?
New speaker (female):
Uncertainty about the future?
Moderator:
Okay, stressful, uncertain about the future. Now, what we do, this is the standard procedure, whatever anybody says first – thank you for being the first person to be brave enough to say anything at all – we go and look for a counter-hypothesis. Supposing that’s not true, and the opposite is true? – there’s no real thing as an opposite, but let’s pretend there is. If the opposite were true, what is another counter-hypothesis? This is the first initial hypothesis. She would have experienced it as stressful, and she would be thinking, that he’d be uncertain about the future. What would be a counter-hypothesis to that? – using the same data, but thinking of a quite different way of experiencing the same period?
New speaker (male):
I think, if the parents, if they’re divorced, like she was (?? 17:33), I guess it shouldn’t be that stressful for her, because I know, as my parents divorced also when I was six years old, something like that, and I don’t even remember much from these parts, so I was like quite confused, what is happening, but I would say it is stressful with all of that. It was like just, let’s say, weird, that they are getting apart.
Moderator:
Okay, so the other one would be, confused, but not stressful.
New speaker (female):
Maybe she got very spoilt.
Moderator:
He got spoilt, okay. So, as the parents competed to …
New speaker (female):
And the grandparents as well.
Moderator:
So spoilt, so she might have experienced it as being rather privileged. Any other ideas as to how she might have experienced it differently? There are three concepts that we use in the panel like this, the facilitator uses. One is, okay, what’s the initial experiencing hypothesis, then what’s a counter-hypothesis, which you brought forward, and the other one is, what’s a completely different hypothesis, nothing to do with the first two? The idea is that this represents one dimension, from stressful to non-stressful, from stressful to not being stressed, and that’s one dimension of experiencing, but there might be something completely different, not about stress, but about something completely different. It’s called “escaping the binary”, and we tend to think in terms of this, or that, and it’s very good to get out of any one set of thiss or thats, and think something completely different, nothing to do with stress or not stress, but some completely different way in which this might have been experienced.
New speaker (male):
Sorry, just also the fact that she was dragging from different places, and with different people and with different au pairs, I guess it built some kind of curiosity in her, to meet new people, to see new places. Maybe it’s still even accurate, I guess it’s still …
Moderator:
So curiosity – I’m going to slightly add some words. This is what the facilitator does. She does, somebody speaks for two minutes, and I produce a very condensed version, because I can’t write everything down on the board, and I say, “Curiosity about difference.” Okay, well, that will do to be going on with. This are some ideas of quite different ways of experiencing the same period, and that’s what we’re trying to do, and since this green pen is giving up the ghost, I shall move to a different colour.
The second thing we do is to think of following hypotheses, and a following hypothesis is something that may happen later in the life, if one of these things is true. So let’s say it’s a stress ball, so EH1, stress. If that’s true, what might follow in the life? What other data, hard data, not might happen if this idea about her experiencing is correct? So the idea was, it’s stressful, she might be uncertain about the future. Let’s assume that’s true. We don’t know that it’s true yet or not, and we’re going to look at later data, so what later data might confirm, if that comes up, could say, well, I think I was right then?
New speaker (female):
She settled down in Oslo.
Moderator:
Right, okay, so settles in Oslo, doesn’t move again – stays there. Okay, that’s a nice one. Any other following hypothesis from number one?
New speaker (male):
Lack of self-awareness?
Moderator:
Lack of self-awareness, okay. So this is one one, one two, lack of self … okay, and the third one from anybody?
New speaker (female):
It might be difficult for her to build close relationships with someone.
Moderator:
Okay, one three – no close, or difficult … I put down the very extreme version, so we’ll remember it later, so close relationships, difficult or impossible. So, if we go to non-stressful, in a sense it would be the opposite of that, so we don’t need to spell that one out, if it’s the opposite of that. We could, but I don’t want to spend too much time on this, so let’s suppose, the sense of being spoilt and privileged. She experiences nineteen years of being spoilt and privileged, so that’s EH3, privileged. So what might follow, anybody else who hasn’t contributed so far, like to suggest what might happen if somebody feels privileged as a result of that experience.
What might follow later in the life, if they felt privileged? It’s not a guessing game of guessing right, it’s imagining yourself being in that position, and what might happen, or somebody you know being in that position, and what might they do later as a result of that? – so it’s like writing a fairy story. Just to remind you, Norwegian father, Swedish mother, born in Copenhagen, moved to Oslo when she was three, moved backwards and forwards between parents and grandparents, takes a variety of manual and clerical jobs, starts the history of ideas at Oslo University, and then travels in China and south-east Asia. So if this is a story of privilege, what might happen next? – or through being privileged at that time, or feeling privileged at that time?
New speaker (male):
She might vote for the EU, because she has a broader perspective, of an international perspective?
Moderator:
So she would be an internationalist!
New speaker (male):
If I can throw in politics!
Moderator:
No, no, I think something like that is very important, so she would be an EU, or an EU plus internationalist?
New speaker (male):
She might be.
Moderator:
She might be. All these are mights. The whole point … I’ll just explain why we do it like this.
New speaker (female):
Open-minded?
New speaker (male):
Yeah, open-minded.
Moderator:
Internationalist, open-minded, but if she’s open-minded, what happens to prove it? So we’re now looking at what would follow in this objective data. We’re not predicting, we’re trying to say what would happen which would, in the objective life, that would suggest that this is true?
New speaker (female):
She’s taken higher education?
Moderator:
She’s taking higher … well, she’s started that in a way. she’s started the history of ideas, so that’s true, so she does do that. In that sense, higher education. The internationalist, I think, sort of follows. Any other things, if she’s very privileged?
New speaker (female):
Self-confident.
Moderator:
And if she’s self-confident, what will she do that will come up in this data? This is the point, I don’t know if anybody knows Karl Popper? – she was a scientific philosopher in England and she said, a hypothesis is only of interest if it can be disproved by some data, and if you can’t think of any data that would disprove it or prove it, it’s not interesting, because it’s compatible with everything, so she thought Marxism and psychoanalysis were examples of unscientific things, because anything could be explained by it.
There’s nothing that could happen in a life, that either Marx or Freud couldn’t explain in terms of their hypotheses, and therefore their hypotheses weren’t interesting. A hypothesis, to be interesting, has to be falsifiable, so we’re looking at later data like this, which would confirm or disconfirm predicting a sort of data which would confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis.
New speaker (female):
I think that she might be pretty self-confident and brave, to travel to Asia, for instance.
Moderator:
Okay, so if that’s true, what would happen later on in her life? What further data would you … more travels?
New speaker (female):
More travels.
Moderator:
Okay, I mean, there’s nothing very complicated ….
New speaker (female):
She could go to a totally different culture, and still feel pretty self-confident.
Moderator:
More exotic travels, ie, not to very similar places, but to very different places, because she feels privileged, and she has already, etcetera. Okay, let’s leave that for the moment.
Now, let’s take four, which in a way starts to overlap with what we’ve just said, curiosity about difference, but what, how might that show itself later on in the life, let’s say we’ve done travels, she might travel enormously. Supposing she didn’t travel at all, what would her curiosity about difference, what might show up in the data which would suggest that she was curious about differences?
New speaker (female):
She chose the history of ideas as her major, so this shows that she’s pretty open-minded, and she accepts ideas, and she’s able to stay aside, and not to be too subjective. I mean, she’s open-minded.
Moderator:
Right, open-minded, and what would happen later on in her life, if she were? What would prove your thesis?
New speaker (female):
She chose (?? 28:08)
Moderator:
Yes, what we want is later on, after this chunk. This is already there, so what would happen in the future? What might happen after she’s nineteen or twenty, which would prove your thing about her open-mindedness and everything else?
New speaker (male):
Her curiosity.
New speaker (male):
More self-confident.
Moderator:
Right, and if she was more self-confident, what would she do as a self-confident person, in her life?
New speaker (male):
His curiosity can drive her to become a journalist, or something like that?
Moderator:
A journalist, okay.
New speaker (male):
To get to know more different people, and their opinions?
Moderator:
Okay, journalists – any other profession?
New speaker (female):
Artist, or anything dealing with creativity?
Moderator:
Okay. It’s cheating a bit, because I’ve already said this person becomes an art professional, but yes, okay.
New speaker (male):
She could become an author.
Moderator:
She could become an author. What sort of author do you think she might be?
New speaker (male):
It’s difficult to say, but based on this history of ideas, she could be something within that area?
Moderator:
Okay, so one would be the history of ideas, so she might become a historian of idea or something, and the other, I suppose she might become a travel writer. One way is to travel in time, and the other way is to travel across, so we’ll call her a historian, or traveller. So what we’ve done is, we’ve thought about how she might experience quite a big period actually, and what might happen later on in the data set, if one of these was right.
Isabella:
But maybe, because of her curiosity, she met a person or different persons, also changed her life? – because (?? 30:17) she was a child.
Moderator:
Can you hold onto that side, Isabella, just for a second? – so, because of that, if so …
Isabella:
She might be open-minded, getting to know people, and somebody.
Moderator:
Yeah, in sociology, we call this “a significant other.” So do you think you could take that? We take it up, and put it, let’s say, on that speaker, so that it’s available. We don’t need this at all – no, we do. Sorry, I just have to … no, I don’t.
So now we’re going to put up the next … sorry, could I have another bit of Sellotape? – that’s lovely. So basically, we’re now going on to the next chunk of her life, roughly between the ages of 20 and 30, and I’ll read it out again, but do look at it. Between the ages of 20 and 22, she goes to Paris on her own, and she’s involved in a community theatre for six months, making dolls for figure theatre, but also doing acting training.
She then goes to work with them in a small village in central France, a community theatre. Then, from there, 22 to 23, she goes on a foundation course at the arts school in Montpellier, which is a town in the south of France, doing an arts foundation course, and then, at the age of 24, she enrols in the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, and she starts travelling to Vienna and Berlin and other places, maintaining her international contacts whilst studying. She works in the graphics department. She supports herself financially by working as an assistant in communes, doing nursing, looking after disabled older people. This is during the summer holidays, student jobs.
Then, from Prague, 27 or 28, she has an exchange with the, in New York, the Cooper Union School of Fine Art, of Art, sorry. She meets famous professors such as Hans Haacke and Kiki Smith, and she works as assistant first to artist Joshua Neustein, and then to Jeff Koons, and then, in 2002, at the age of 29/30, she travels to China, and then does an exchange for a year in Japan, with the Centre of Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, in Japan.
So what we do is, we go to our original hypotheses, I’m looking for a nice, red one, which I don’t have – ah well, you can’t have them all, and so, what seems to have followed in the life, I think the thing which … ah, that’s lovely, thanks Isabella; what is certainly true is that she does more exotic travels. So what we do is, we look through the following hypotheses with the new chunk. We look at the following hypotheses, and say, which seem to be confirmed, which seem to be disconfirmed, so tick, by one, what else? Well, certainly the creative artist, maybe it can be the uncreative artist, but at least she’s moving towards art.
That’s the number of the chunk that we’re dealing with, and that’s what we’ve got, so the settling in Oslo, that seems to be rather disconfirmed. Oh yes, somebody said higher education, so that’s certainly confirmed again. It’s a higher education in fine art, but it’s confirmed again. So some things start to look less likely, just less likely – they aren’t dead forever. She didn’t settle in Oslo, so maybe it wasn’t so stressful, the idea that she would say in one place and never move again, because it’s all been so stressful, she never wants to move again – that does seem to be disconfirmed. It’s perfectly possible it didn’t happen. She does start doing more exotic travel, and is moving towards being a creative artist.
So, okay, that’s a few little, in English, we say “straws in the wind”. You throw them up, and you see where the wind is going, so all these things are like straws in the wind. So we then go on to the next one. So this period, goes to Paris, makes goals, acting training, works in France, starts an art course in Montpellier, enrols in Prague, starts travelling and maintaining contacts, maintains herself by working as an assistant during the summer, then goes to New York for a year, and then goes to Japan for a year. Any thoughts about how she might have experienced this period?
New speaker (male):
This is practical life, now?
Moderator:
This is her practical life, so what would you say about how she experiences – is she happy in her practical life? Is this a terrible fate she’s struggling to get away with? How is she experiencing it?
New speaker (male):
She’s experiencing different, than we discussed before, so not like, a stress thing.
Moderator:
Right, okay, so he, how would you sum that up in a word?
New speaker (male):
She’s concentrating on the career.
Moderator:
Okay, so career concentration – she’s found a career, and she’s concentrating on it. How does she feel about the career? – she feels good or bad?
New speaker (male):
This age, she’s energetic, so … yep.
Moderator:
How is she feeling about it?
New speaker (male):
Feelings are good.
Moderator:
Feelings are good, okay. We always need to have thoughts and feelings in the description of a lived experience, because the same experience of rushing about energetically might become out of total desperation. I must get away from my mother, for the sake of argument, or whatever it happened to be, so it’s no good just saying what the person does – you have to imagine what interior experiencing might be leading to that, and there could be lot of different experiencing leading to the same behaviour. So okay, her career concentrating, she feels good. Let’s go, this is two points – we want two point two. Again, counter-hypothesis.
New speaker (female):
She’s very restless?
Moderator:
Very restless, so can you say anything about the experience of restlessness?
New speaker (female):
Trying to find a place to, maybe not settle down, but searching for something?
Moderator:
Good. Restless, searching for something, and one might be a place that she’s searching for. Any alternatives, for what else she might be searching for?
New speaker (male):
The love of her life?
Moderator:
Right, oh – the significant other, that’s right. We’ll put it down as, the love of her life. Anything else she might be searching for?
New speaker (female):
herself.
Moderator:
Herself, ah yes, now well … we can tell her, there’s no point, but what the hell, okay – herself.
New speaker (female):
She’s searching for her way of expressing her art.
Moderator:
Right, so she’s searching for a way of expressing her art?
New speaker (female):
Yeah, because she’s been through very different types of art, or like, both theatre, fine arts, graphics assistant, sculpture.
Moderator:
So, what we’ve got, not a medium, because it could be any medium … her own life, how would you say that again, sorry?
New speaker (female):
Her way of expressing.
Moderator:
Her way of expressing.
New speaker (female):
But in art.
Moderator:
Her way of expressing, in art. That’s lovely.
New speaker (male):
It may be not the way of expressing the different things, but maybe it’s all about experience, and the more different experiences from different art.
Moderator:
Right, so more experiencing, and that would be a resource for her art, maybe, or something? – okay. Tangential, what we call a tangential hypothesis, something not about either of those things, some quite different thing, that this bit of her life might be, that is going on in her life at the moment?
New speaker (female):
Maybe she, about her feelings, maybe she wasn’t just feeling straight good, or straight bad. Maybe it was the way she was used to live, because she was moving a lot in her previous period of life, so it was not the normal for her.
Moderator:
So it’s not a restless movement, but it’s ordinary movement, okay. I will call it, “ordinary itchy feet.” Itchy feet is an expression, it means you can’t stay in one place – you just always have to be moving about, so your feet itch. And if it’s ordinary itchy feet, I think that’s enough probably. If it’s ordinary itchy feet, then she will go on throughout her life travelling and travelling, so that will be the following hypothesis.
Okay, any other thoughts about that, or shall we move onto the next chunk? Let’s move on to the next chunk. We’ll be spending more time on later chunks. So can I ask you to put up this … thanks very much. Right, in 2004 to 2006, the age of 31 to 34, she’s a research assistant in Prague on an EU programme. She sets up a Vietnamese exhibition or event in Prague. There’s a sort of Vietnamese quarter in Prague, and anyway, she sets up an exhibition around the Vietnamese. She takes, every week she takes some of the Prague Biennale audience members for screening and lunch. She then does a car travel round the outer rim of Europe, starting off roughly in Morocco, and then going round, I think she ends up in the Ukraine or somewhere like that. She does a really big circle round the outer rim of the EU, the EU rim countries, and then what she does is to mount an exhibition with North African artefacts, like shoes and things, from public and state art collections, and then in 2007, she arranges for five North Africans to be brought for four weeks as guests of the city of Brno (? 43:59), so that’s what happens.
What do you think is going on, how is she experiencing this? And in a sense, why, are these the things she does, rather than anything else she might do?
New speaker (female):
I can see this thread from her experiencing with different kinds of art, and I can guess that, in the end, she ends up being an art curator, not an artist.
Moderator:
Wow, that’s a big jump! – yes, okay, excellent.
New speaker (female):
But I mean, it’s there.
Moderator:
Okay, so let’s try this, this is three, and she’s basically, the drive is towards, let’s call it exotic art, or exotic art curating, let’s condense it. Well, that’s the following hypothesis, isn’t it? So, what we’re saying is, that that might what she ends up doing in her life. How would you describe the experiencing of all of this?
New speaker (male):
Enjoying it, with her work?
Moderator:
she’s enjoying her work, absolutely, and the sort of work it is, if you look at each of these things, it certainly has to do with non-Oslo, non-Norwegian. What isn’t there, and what there is is a travelling around, either inside, well in Prague, to look at Vietnamese, not Czechs, in the Czech Republic, but Vietnamese in Prague, and then the outer rim of Europe, not in Europe, but outside Europe, the outer rim of Europe, and then North African artefacts, and bringing North Africans to stay for four weeks in a Czech town. So it’s exotic art, so she’s certainly, well, EH, enjoying, but she seems to be developing, in terms of, if you’re looking at the development of a professional, which is our main focus here, she is developing more exotic knowledge, if you like, knowledge of more places, Vietnamese in Europe and other places out of Europe, and so it’s, she’s experiencing this as developing her knowledge.
New speaker (male):
It still confirms a great restlessness?
Moderator:
No, I mean yeah, that’s not incompatible, that you always have itchy feet, and now you can make it work for you in terms of developing your profession.
New speaker (male):
A really exciting life, but …
Moderator:
But why so restless? Why are these feet itching so much? Okay, well let’s give a little tick to restlessness and itchy feet, searching for something. Two, well these things, more experiences, she might be searching, any of these might be true. It sounds likely, because why else would you be rushing around all over the world? It’s not really quite ordinary itchy feet, I don’t think, because actually she’s doing something. she’s not just travelling forever around the world on a bicycle, or wherever she happened to be. she’s actually doing things as she travels, so that would be sort of confirmed too, broadly speaking, it’s that type of direction.
Okay, so developing her knowledge. Any other thoughts about the detail, I mean, what to me seems a bit new is the arranging of five North Africans to come to the city, I mean, collecting artefacts, fine, of North African stuff, that would fit, but what’s happening with these people being brought here? What’s her experience, such that she wants to do that? Why would anybody to do that, to show to a Czech town, or bring into a Czech town, some people from North Africa, along with the exhibition? It’s not that there’s anything very peculiar about it, but it’s worth thinking about that. It’s not what a normal art collector would do. The normal art collector, for me it’s surprising – for me, the normal art collector would collect the objects, yes, but why would they bring people for four weeks, and then whatever?
New speaker (female):
It could be, two reasons for it – maybe for the artist to work in Czech, while they’re here? Or, because at the Biennale, she took people out for lunch and talked about the Biennale, so maybe she wants the artist to talk about their art themselves?
New speaker (female):
And talking, networking, like connecting?
Moderator:
Networking, okay, but you don’t …
New speaker (male):
But what brings my attention is that, she was in the States, she was in Japan and China, and south-east Asia, and she’s doing nothing with artists from these places, and where she’s never been in Africa, as I understand. That’s why she brought these people to the Czech Republic, because she was living in the Czech Republic at that moment, and she just couldn’t afford to get to Africa!
Moderator:
(he laughs)
Male speaker (continued):
So she made the execution of the arts, and then ….
Moderator:
Brought the people.
Male speaker (continued):
… to know, or know them for herself, and I guess for the whole vision.
Moderator:
Right. It might be more expensive to bring four people to your town, than to go one person to be there?
Male speaker (continued):
No, she couldn’t afford that, maybe not, because of the money. Maybe it’s because of work, or something.
Moderator:
Yeah, but the question is, what would be the work, what would be the point? If you think of her as a professional, or becoming a professional, why would somebody bring these four people, and I should say, they weren’t artists – they were four North Africans at random. I think one of them actually took photographs, and otherwise they weren’t artists at all, so it isn’t bringing artists to Brno (? 50:15), it’s bringing people.
New speaker (female):
Did they live in her house?
Moderator:
No, I think they lived in hotels.
New speaker (female):
I can join?
Moderator:
Yes, please do. The strain of being outside is too much. Do you want to make a contribution?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, I mean, maybe she is observing how different cultures connect to certain art pieces?
Moderator:
Okay, so that would be her … again, it’s a sort of, let’s call it an anthropological interest, in cross-cultural contact. I’m giving long words for this, to sum it up. How do the North Africans react to being in the Czech Republic? How do people in the Czech Republic react to suddenly having some North Africans, and an exhibition of North African culture?
New speaker (female):
It might be the outcome of her a rich, inter-cultural experience of her childhood, and her young years, because she had au pairs from all over the world, and her family was living everywhere, not everywhere, but in different ….
Moderator:
In lots of places, yeah. Okay, so this would explain why this is either ordinary, or natural, at least, and in a way you might say, well, probably most people don’t live their lives like this. This is not an ordinary … so what’s usual, and what’s unusual? Such an amount of travel is not very usual, I imagine, for Norwegians, but maybe it is, I don’t know, I’m not Norwegian.
New speaker (male):
She studied in Prague, and was familiar with that area, and then, well, she had also been in the Far East and these exotic places, and then she had travelled around Europe, in the rims of Europe, maybe North Africa, and got to know the African part, so maybe she saw just a niche for something to bring into Prague.
Moderator:
That’s interesting, so it might be a professional niche, in a way? I mean, one of the things that young professionals have to do is to try and find a niche for themselves, something which they are more expert in than anybody else is. I mean, they don’t always succeed, but it’s one of the things you do – how can I be distinctive? So, if you like, in terms of this, what was she searching for, we had, the love of her life, searching for herself, her way of expressing herself, and I can’t read the other one?
Male speaker (continued):
Searching for something?
Moderator:
Searching for something, but anyway, so let’s say this is, something about, niche for herself, and future work.
New speaker (female):
But you said she ended up in Morocco? – after her far travel?
Moderator:
No, her travel started in Morocco, and then went through North Africa, and Egypt certainly.
Female speaker (continued):
But then she’d been there, maybe she knows?
Moderator:
Yes, but the question is, I’ve done lots of travelling, and I’ve never brought people, as it were, random people from the countries I’ve visited, to an exhibition in my own country, so that’s where she may have met people, but that isn’t necessarily …
New speaker (female):
It sounds like, it’s an experiment?
Moderator:
It sounds like an experiment?
New speaker (male):
A proxemical (? 53:46) experiment, how people act in totally different …
Moderator:
So this one, the cross-cultural contact experiment?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes.
Moderator:
Okay. Any other quite … anyway, let’s leave that there. It doesn’t matter if it tears a bit. Sorry, for anybody who’s thinking of exotic travels, there’s another one in 2007 – she takes a car journey to Kazakhstan, and the Silk Road back to Turkey, you’ll be glad to know, but I shan’t put that up, because it’s not a big enough chunk, so I’ll go straight on to the next big one. So certainly, she seems to be experiencing her travels as rewarding and worth repeating.
There’s one thing which I’ve forgotten to tell you, which seems very apposite, is that her parents run a travel agency, so she gets very cheap travel, so maybe that’s one of the reasons why it’s different. Not only does she want to travel, but actually she can travel cheaply in a way that anybody else would be totally bankrupted by, by wanting to do all those travels. I don’t think that’s true for a car journey, but it would be true for air flights.
Okay, so where are we now? – one, two, three, four. I’m going to change colour, because my green pen doesn’t look so good. So this is the year, around 2008, of the Prague International Triennale, and what she does, she does an interview tour of 28 museum directors round the Czech Republic, and she interviews the 28 on their mission and vision, and what they want for their museums and whatever, and what she does, she replaces the content of all the transcripts. She has transcripts of the interviews that she does, and she replaces them all with translated progressive modern manifesto from western artists and other innovates in the 1960s, so you have the name of the National, the Prague National Gallery museum director, and under it is a long script from somebody in the 1960s, and not the man’s own thing, so she just takes, she gets rid of what they actually said, and she replaces it with some interesting stuff that people said in the 1960s, which she decides needs to go, and this is what the exhibition is, and the exhibition does have a black wall for anybody to object to, and one of the directors, or somebody, writes, “It’s all lies”, which is quite true – it is all lies, they never said any of the things that were attributed to them.
Then, two years later, she publishes an erratum version, which gives them access to the original interview transcripts, the real interview transcripts, and she admits, for example, in the publication in, call it 2008, she says, “Supported by the European Union, the German Bank” – all sorts of very prestigious organisations, which is also all completely untrue, so not only does she invent, or she invents a lot of foundation support and so on, which she doesn’t have, and puts it in the catalogue, but she also, as I’ve said, puts in lots of artistic manifestoes from the 1960s, in place of what the original, what the museum directors did actually say.
So how do you think she experienced that?
New speaker (male):
Well.
Moderator:
Well! – okay, can you spell that out?
Male speaker (continued):
I really think I need a second.
Moderator:
Okay, right. Any other thoughts? I mean, the thing is, it’s partly, why did she do that? – like, what’s the experiencing of doing that? How did that come to happen, and how did she experience what she did?
New speaker (female):
Aggression?
Moderator:
Aggression, okay, so she’s feeling aggressive. What’s she feeling aggressive about?
Female speaker (continued):
She’s experienced so much, and so many cultures, so maybe she’s got like an aggression of, or maybe she knows something, like the scene behind the art scene?
Moderator:
Okay, so she’s aggressive towards, let’s say, the Prague arts scene, or the Czech?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, and this is just one way of expressing her aggression, but she does it ironically.
Moderator:
Right, aggressive, and in a sense, ironic aggression, right. So let’s say with the aggression – what else might she be being aggressive about? If I was aggressive, okay, I’m aggressive about the Czech Republic arts scene, why am I aggressive towards it? Why do I put in these manifestos, these 1960s’ stuff, instead of the actual recorded interviews? What is it that I don’t like, if it’s aggression?
New speaker (female):
My guess would be, I’m not Norwegian, and I come from Belarus, and I can guess that maybe, in the Czech Republic, they still have the same problems that we have in Belarus as well. Sometimes galleries and museums are pretty conservative, and for instance, we had this project, was bringing four German artists to Minsk, and having the common exhibition with four other Belarusian artists, and we had huge problems with galleries, because they are, for instance, the walls are covered, are not like this. You cannot put something that is not a traditional painting, something a bit more progressive, something more, like one of the German artists, she brought her works, printed on metallic plates, and actually, we couldn’t put them on the wall, because the walls were, how do you call it, like?
Moderator:
Rippling, or sort of wavy?
Female speaker (continued):
Curvy, or something, like, old-fashioned style, and they didn’t allow us to do anything with the walls, because they were like, we’re not doing it here. You can put it wherever you want, and we put them on the tables, but it was awful. I can understand it might be progressive, a little bit, it’s aggressive maybe.
Moderator:
So maybe aggressive versus conservatism, if you’re a progressive artist, and you’re faced with a very conservative ex-Soviet artistic regime, and you are stuck with it somehow or other, so conservatism, ex-Soviet? – okay, so that might ….
Female speaker (continued):
I think she was very brave to do that, and I think it was because she had all this living experience before, because when you grew if, if you grew up in the Czech Republic, or (?? 1:01:58), whatever, sometimes it’s a bit more difficult to outside these frameworks, and this box.
Moderator:
So it’s sort of freed by foreign experience. These are just hypotheses, but it gives a flavour of trying to understand what she wants to break, she wants to break something. She wants to put up some metal on a wall, and the curator says, no, you can’t do that, or something. Any other thoughts about why she did what she did? Let’s go back to what she did, which is, she replaces the content of all the transcripts by progressive modern manifestos from the west in the 1960s.
Female speaker (continued):
It’s interesting that later, she publishes everything with the real interviews. It’s like, well guys, if you didn’t understand what I was talking about … ?
Moderator:
Okay, so the erratum version underlines her message, by saying, okay, now you know … and if you want to know what they really said, which is very conservative and boring, you can read it all, underlines her creative removal.
Female speaker (continued):
And it’s like, you could be brave, and say these things in the manifestations. Instead, you chose to be conservative, and closed mind.
Moderator:
So in a sense, it’s adding to the reproach?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah.
Moderator:
Okay. Any quite different thoughts about why she might have done it, or how she might have experienced the doing of it? One is, why did she do it, which we’ve been talking about; the other is, how might she have experienced the having done it at the time? If you did this, imagine that you’re doing some research which has been commissioned by the National Museum of Prague, and this is what you do, and even the director’s own words, an interview with her, is replaced by something from the 1960s, and she’s the person who’s commissioned you, and is paying you to do this work, what other thoughts might you have about having done it?
New speaker (female):
Maybe she is trying to change, she’s maybe trying to create an artificial, and the wrong impression on people, who are going to this exhibition, and they will see these manifestations.
Moderator:
Right. When you say it’s a wrong impression, what would be the point of the wrongness? I mean, she’s obviously trying to, she’s changing reality.
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, people who are coming and seeing these works, but are not said by these people, actually, so maybe she is …
Moderator:
What does she want to have happen?
Female speaker (continued):
She wants people to think that, okay, these people are really, maybe, because they believe in these works, or they will think that these manifestations are really belonging to these people, so by creating the wrong image of these people, maybe she’s trying to break people’s resistance to change also, because maybe these people are kind of [over-talking] …
Moderator:
Okay, so if these people are all apparently saying these very progressive and interesting non-conservative things, then the people who come into the exhibition and read that, and read the catalogue, “Oh well, I perhaps should be staying and doing more interesting artworks, or looking at different things”, so this could be a way of trying to change the audience culture for art thinking in Prague, or in the Czech Republic – is that what you’re saying?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, because maybe, probably these people are also known?
Moderator:
Yeah, they are the directors of each of the regional museums. They are notables.
Female speaker (continued):
So, she can change what people, who have seen …
Moderator:
The apparently progressive notables, so all at once, in all the art schools, everybody starts doing progressive modern art, because all the museum directors have said, we’re only collecting progressive modern art! (I’m exaggerating slightly).
Any final thoughts on how she might have experienced … we’re talking about her intentions, what she intended, but how might have she experienced – somebody said it was a bold move, so when you do a bold move, how do you experience your boldness, when it actually happens, and when you actually do it? Have you ever done anything bold, and what did it feel like?
New speaker (female):
People could, if they’ve not liked it, people could be aggressive in their response.
Moderator:
Absolutely, right.
Female speaker (continued):
And she regrets it?
Moderator:
She may really regret it, okay, so one is, two, two, afterwards, regrets. Sorry, what did you say?
New speaker (female):
Maybe that’s why, maybe she regrets it, and then she publishes the real interviews.
Moderator:
Right, so the erratum, okay. So there are different sorts of regret. What is the nature of regret? One would be a counter-aggression, that she actually gets a lot of bad responses from 27 of the 28 museum directors, all write to her protesting, so one is a counter-aggression, and so, in order to placate them, she does the erratum, which says, okay, now you didn’t say it – I apologise, I’m terribly sorry. This is what you actually said, and I’ve sent it, so that’s one thing. Could there be another sort of regret?
New speaker (male):
I don’t think she’s regretting it.
Moderator:
Well, let’s take that for a moment. Let’s pretend at the moment that we’re exploring the regret hypothesis, and that’s what we’re doing. We don’t know, we’ve no way of knowing so far, what, so let’s suppose she’s regretting it, but not because of counter-aggression – what might she regret?
New speaker (female):
Maybe she thought that she was too straight, like the public was unprepared for this? It was too much, for her culture.
Moderator:
Right, and what was the result of too much-ness? It led to much more conservatism among the museum directors, and they all said, right – well, we’re going to show even more boring paintings than ever before! So it might have been intensified conservatism.
New speaker (female):
And she starts to travel again.
Moderator:
And she starts to travel again (he laughs).
Female speaker (continued):
Then she settles back in Oslo!
Moderator:
Then never moves out of Oslo again, okay. Where are we, time-wise? We’ve got another 15 minutes.
New speaker (male):
(?? 1:08:53) has something to do with it, economic interest, that they would be losing grants, or whatever?
Moderator:
Okay, so that might be a serious source of regret, loss of professional acceptability. I did an interview with a museum director (speaking personally), and then I changed what they said from a conservative statement to a very progressive one, and I would not expect that man to employ me again as an interviewer, because I falsified the interview, and I make him look silly, or make him look strange at any rate, by saying something that everybody knows he would never say, and then publishing, etcetera. She might think that that it actually had damaged her own … it was a good joke, or it was a good something or other, but actually it’s not professionally very, it professionally destroys her reputation, I mean that’s the exaggerated version, so there might be a thought about that.
New speaker (female):
Maybe it destroys her, as a curator, maybe it does the opposite of destroying her …
Moderator:
Reputation?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, as an artist.
Moderator:
Right, I’m not sure if I quite understand you. What is, could you say that again?
New speaker (female):
I think I understand what you’re talking about, like artists are …
Moderator:
I think I understand what she’s talking about, I just wanted her to say it again, but anyway, what’s your version?
Female speaker (continued):
Sorry! Like, when you’re an artist, you are somehow allowed to be bold, to be straight and everything, but when you’re a curator, you have to be, like the negotiator, especially if you are in the Czech Republic. You cannot be that straight. If you want to be like the intermediary, in between the artists and the public, and all those conservative museums and galleries and so on, in this case you have to be like, a bit, double …
Moderator:
Diplomat?
Female speaker (continued):
Diplomatic, yeah.
Moderator:
Okay, so she regrets not having been diplomatic enough, so her career as an artist will leap up, as a bold artist, and her career as a respectable curator will drop down, something like that. Is that what you’re getting at? – okay, so is something going on about curator, to be perhaps, versus artist?
New speaker (male):
Versus the people?
Moderator:
Versus the people, and all of them versus the people who don’t go to museums anyway – sorry, I put that in. Okay, we’ve got time, I think, just for one more before we break for lunch. We’ve gone on … and bear in mind these, although the data are hard, all our speculations are just speculations about experience, which we can’t get very far with. We did get quite far with, does her unstable childhood lead to her never leaving Oslo – no, it could have done, but it didn’t. It leads to the itchy professional feet, and other ones, we just don’t know, and won’t know until we look at how she tells her own story, which is not what we’re doing in this panel.
But I think that question of, what sort of, I’ve carefully said, “an art professional”, to not say artist, to not say curator, to not say anything like that yet, to leave it open as to what an art professional is, partly because I’ve no idea what an art professional is, and partly, there may be, we don’t know what she calls herself. We know she does these things, and what she calls herself when she does these things is open, is not known.
So, in 2009, when she’s one year older than she was, about 30, I think, but I haven’t put it in, so this is information block five, she gets a one-year professorship in Brunnos (? 1:13:31), which might be or might not be with a colleague, and she organises the creating of short films, with the collective authorship of drafts, so there are students who come together to write out the scenarios or the play sheets for short films, but they all share the draft, and everybody can change anybody’s draft, so these are collective products, not individual products, and she films in Banja Luka in Bosnia, and the filming and material are installed in Prague, with the help of a therapist to distribute the individual and collective works within the exhibition, and it shows in the transit art space in Prague.
Now, what that means is, that, and I may be remembering this wrong, but I think what it is, that there was an arrangement of objects, and each of the people who had made films, and I could be quite wrong about this, arranged the objects in their way in the room. They went into a blank room, there was all the objects that had been made. They put them there, and the person arranged them as they liked it. Then they took a photograph, and another person came in, and arranged their choice, a new choice arranged in a completely new way, and this is something that is used by child therapists, to do with children, which is, if anybody knows about it, you bring lots of objects for children, and children arrange them, so the mummy is here, and the daddy is here, and where do you feel closest to, and they run away, and they place the baby miles away, or whatever it happens to be, so this is a sort of, I think this is what this was, an application of that. The therapist isn’t doing therapy, it’s just somebody who was used to helping people arrange objects, in a way that felt alright for them, the collective authorship of drafts, and this sort of, each person arranging the objects in their own way, so any thoughts about that, what’s happening to her professional career, how is she experiencing that, what might follow, etcetera?
New speaker (male):
How was this project received by the public?
Moderator:
I don’t have any information on that.
New speaker (male):
And do we have the information about what was the film about?
Moderator:
The only thing I know is, one about, now, what is it? – I think one is about somebody changing their shoes. It’s a little microstudy of changing the shoes, and while this film was made, the person who was acting the changing of the shoes burst into tears. Sorry, I don’t have much information, but they were short films. They were not sort of, Hollywood blockbusters, and as far as I know, they were very simple little films, but no, I don’t have information on that. One of the things one can do is to say, okay, that’s a good question. When you go to do, when I go to do more research, actually it’ll be useful to know what those films were. Just to say short films doesn’t tell you very much. They might be of a volcano exploding, they might be somebody snoozing in bed.
New speaker (male):
Some funny films?
Moderator:
Funny films, they may be funny … I don’t know, so we’ll put a little note, content of films would be important to know. One might be a film of a Prague curator getting very cross – I’ve no idea what the short films were. Okay, so any thought about how she might be experiencing this, what she’s doing as she does this? What’s her experience of this? What’s she trying to do? And bear in mind, we’re trying to explore her professional life. This isn’t her private life really. I mean, you can make a distinction, so we’re looking just at the professional life, and this is the next professional thing that she does.
New speaker (male):
she’s just proceeding further.
Moderator:
she’s just proceeding, but where’s she … if you looked at where she’s proceeding further, where would you say she’s proceeding further to? What’s the direction of this professional, in terms of the choices she makes and the things she does? Have you any thoughts about that?
New speaker (female):
He continues experimenting?
Moderator:
He continues experimenting, okay. Right, well let’s push that further. What’s the direction of change, or focus of her experiments? If we look back, and this is where it’s important to look at the early things, what does she do? That’s where she travels. In here, she’s going to artists, who are traditional artists actually, well Jeff Koons certainly is, paintings of certain sorts and so on and so forth, so they are fine art experiments. Then later, she goes to Prague, and she’s starting, she’s shifting from doing her own fine art, which probably stops …
New speaker (male):
But what was her basic education? Was that graphic design?
Moderator:
The basic education was graphic design, yes. Here, she’s setting up exhibitions, so she’s no longer focusing on producing her own paintings or whatever, or sculptures or objects to hang on a wall. You could say, she leaves the studio, round about this period, and so she’s now a bit like a travelling opportunist curator. she’s setting up exhibitions, so that’s what her art professionalism is moving towards, and it starts with these, collecting the artefacts, but also bringing the North Africans. Then here, she’s interviewing the museum directors, but actually changing what they say to something they never said, and here, what’s she doing now? she’s getting students to do short films and engage in collective reworking of each other, collective authorship, so what’s happening? One of the things … yeah?
New speaker (female):
I guess she’s switching more and more to psychology? – not then to art itself, and art becomes like the instrument.
Moderator:
Art to psychology, art from an end in itself … to instrument, and what’s it an instrument of? Artist, to a sort of curatorship, or exhibition organiser, or student teacher, or something like that?
New speaker (female):
Maybe this curation experience gave her this incentive to become a psychologist more, to see how art can change somebody’s mind maybe, or how interaction … I really like it, that I noticed, she uses the help of therapists here. It’s something new.
New speaker (male):
But since, from the beginning of her life, she was always with people, with different people, and I guess the fact that she was working with different people made her more social, and in every piece of her exhibition that we discussed before, she used other people’s to make something, or just to say something, so I guess she used people as an instrument to make her art. It’s like, (?? 1:21:35) but she is acting stupid, to, we are bringing some knowledge from different people, so I guess she’s using people as an instrument to make her art.
Moderator:
Right, but what is her art at this point? We know what her art was, let’s say, in the year 2000, where she was, let’s say, doing painting. I don’t really have much information.
New speaker (female):
She’s filming.
Moderator:
She’s filming, or she’s getting other people … one of the things, she’s getting other people to do films, and she’s doing the exhibition involving their filming and their movement, re-constellation of the objects in the room.
New speaker (female):
Maybe she’s the director of the film?
Moderator:
I don’t think so, no – I might be wrong about that. I don’t think there’s a unified film. I think there are several films, that some of them made after this collective authorship, and I think there is then this process of the exhibition, where the therapist has got people to re-constellate, and there are some still photographs of that, but there’s no film of that, so it’s not certain that it’s product-centred, ie, a final something, so perhaps we’ve started to answer the question, well, given some answers to the questions of, what is her own practice? And I think you said, it’s moving from art to psychology, or art as end, to art as instrument, for something psychological. We had earlier the concept of being anthropologically-interested, the Vietnamese who come to Prague, and what happens when you put some Vietnamese and some Czechs together in a city, which is sort of a cross-cultural psychology, and on the other hand, if you put ten film study students together to make short films, it’s something else again. It’s not particularly cross-cultural, it’s cross something.
New speaker (female):
But using exhibitions as an experiment, even the artwork is not made by the artist, it’s still art actually.
Moderator:
Okay, so what is it? So let’s say, her art is the exhibition?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, she is experimenting, of course, and she is doing it in the concept of psychology, obviously.
Moderator:
Yeah, nothing is ever obvious, but yes, okay, let’s say.
Female speaker (continued):
That’s how it seems at this point, but it’s still, even, she is not the one who is doing the films, but she is the one who is telling others to make the films, and maybe she’s like, telling them what to do, and giving them tasks, and bringing them together? – so it’s still, it’s a collaboration.
Moderator:
It’s still her creation, and the real question is, could it be called, could that exhibition be called an art, an exhibition, is the artist of the exhibition her, or is it her and the others who’ve done the films, or what is … to whom, is it still an art exhibition by Nadja? Is it still Nadja’s art? – the exhibition is her art, even though it’s like a combination of other people’s work, and her own work in promoting that other work and everything else. I’m not asking for questions, I’m just saying.
Female speaker (continued):
She will be curating like this.
Moderator:
She will be curating, so one way, but then the curator isn’t necessarily … curators don’t necessarily define themselves as an artist. They say, yes, it’s quite creative deciding what to put where, and arranging things on walls or on floors or whatever, but I’m a curator, I’m not an artist, but it may be that she sees herself as some sort of artist, an artist of collective events.
I was remembering in the 1960s, in England, probably maybe in Norway, for all I know, there were things called “happenings.” Things happened, and you arranged a happening, and a happening was a very well-organised thing which organise a chaos to happen, to it happened, and then after it had happened, it was over, and everybody cleared up the mess, and that was the happening, and the happening was over, so I suddenly thought, well maybe she’s an artist, her art work is the creation of temporary happenings, of an artistic sort, but her art is to create such happenings, and those happenings are a way, could be called art, or they could be called anything you like.
I think, yes, it’s now 12:30, and we said we’d break for lunch at 12:30, and then we’ll have another hour after lunch to go over some more data, but what I think I’d like to ask you to do now, just for five minutes before we go, is write down any notes. At the end of the next hour, I’m going to ask you to write for ten minutes about, what do you make of this professional development? – but because we’re going to have a large break, perhaps if you could make some notes now for yourself, just five minutes, any notes you want to make on how you think what we’ve done so far? – so then, after that five minutes, then we’ll go and look for some lunch, being kindly provided by the authorities.
New speaker (male):
So notes about our work today?
Moderator:
About our work today, and particularly about Nadja and what sense you make of her life so far, how you would describe it, or something.
New speaker (male):
Can I go for a cigarette?
Moderator:
I have no information about that. I suspect you can’t have a cigarette in here. Ah, now I’ve got a piece of paper with all your names on. I have no information about that, I suspect you can’t have a cigarette in here. You’ll have to ask somebody else – I’m not the curator, or even the artist.
New speaker (male):
What do you think …. if you had to sum up, what issues are coming up, about Nadja’s life so far? – and also you can make notes about your experience … [over-talking]
Moderator:
If you had to sum up, what issues are coming up, or what thoughts you have, about Nadja’s life so far? – and also you can make notes about your experience of it, but the main thing is, how would you think Nadja’s life, professional life, so far? – what you’ve been learning, what you’ve been puzzling, what you’ve been, whatever? In America, we would say, “Whatever turns you on, baby!”
Lecture 1 part 2 (file 002)
Moderator:
Right, hello. I hope everybody feels better after their lunch. Okay, so what we’re going to do is, we’re going to carry on with the series, and then there’ll be a pause and a discussion, and we hope to stop, our plan is to stop at three o’clock. I think this is a very artistic place, because the seats all roll downwards, and the tables all roll downwards, so it destroys any equilibrium, and therefore shows creative turbulence, at least among the felt tip pens.
So, we ended up with that, with the discussion of the short films, and that very interesting discussion, which is what we call a structural hypothesis – where is all this going, what’s happening, what has been happening in the life, and where does it seem to be going, or what are our problems in trying to understand it? – so I thought that was very handy.
So we’re now moving onto the next bit … oh yes, we have the nice new, modern … this one has two prongs, so we don’t, it shows that there’s progress in history, some technological progress. Now, we need a piece of Sellotape. So this is item, where are we, five to six. I’m sorry, it isn’t very large. So this is item six; the one before, where she was, the last item we had on this was, she had a one-year professorship in Grynov (? 2:31), and did those films, which were collectively authored, and after that, she became head, or co-ordinator, of the Masters’ programme in the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, and she took small study trips for students, to Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, Beirut, the Netherlands and Madrid, so she keeps on travelling.
Again, keep in mind, I suppose two things which point in different directions. One is, her previous experience that we’ve been going through, and what this does to it, how might she experience this particular function, this particular activity, so again, as always, hypotheses about her experiencing, and then about, if she was experiencing it that way, then what might happen later on in her life in the next chunks, so any thoughts about how she might experience that?
I don’t think we predicted, just before we do that, we didn’t do very much in the way of prediction after this one-year professorship, where she was organising short films among the students, and then did a distribution in Prague, showing in the Transit art space in Prague, so that’s what she was doing before she was organising student art works, and we discussed whether being curator of student films, was in fact an art, or was it just curating, or what was it? – but this is different again, or is it? – head co-ordinator for the MA programme of the Academy of Fine Arts.
New speaker (female):
So she continues working with students?
Moderator:
Right, yes, okay, well that’s one thing, so she experiences, so working with students … okay, anything else? Yeah?
New speaker (female):
If she was the head co-ordinator, it was much more administration work than she …
Moderator:
Had before, yeah, so it’s a bigger administration responsibility. So how might she have experienced that? How might people who’ve previously been working directly with students suddenly find, to be head of a study programme is quite a big responsibility, it’s not just teaching? Sorry, did you want to come in?
New speaker (female):
He already did it for two years, so I assume she didn’t like it!
Moderator:
(he laughs) Okay, so the experience …
Female speaker (continued):
It’s for people who have that role for only two years, I think.
Moderator:
Not too good.
New speaker (female):
Or maybe people didn’t like her? Maybe she was fired?
Moderator:
Maybe she was fired, not too good, so maybe fired.
New speaker (male):
She spent too much time on trips!
Moderator:
Okay, fired for too many trips! We’re now predicting what we may find in future chunks. And how might she … let’s take the not too good, or eventually fired – what might be the bad side, this is about the bad side of doing administration for a person who has not been doing administration. Anybody any thoughts about what’s bad about administration?
New speaker (male):
I guess it’s less creative than what she was doing before, it’s only paperwork and stuff like that. Of course, co-ordination of the Master programme, it is creative stuff to do, but more paperwork than the creative work.
New speaker (male):
To handle the bureaucracy.
Moderator:
To handle the bureaucracy, yes. So this is the diplomatic side, handling bureaucracy? That’s the diplomatic side, then when she was dealing with the Czech National Gallery and the 28 museums, it may have not have been very good for her diplomatic side, and now maybe she has to be diplomatic with the bureaucracies, and it isn’t very good either.
New speaker (male):
From a kind of, rather, a bit of a chaotic background, is she now settling now?
Moderator:
Okay, that’s very interesting, so settling down after early chaos. So if she is, we would expect, later on, to be further jobs like this, of a settled down variety?
New speaker (female):
It looks like those small trips are somehow, like a compromise for her, being this head co-ordinator of this MA programme, which involves a lot of bureaucracy.
Moderator:
Okay, right, small trips, compensation for all the paperwork? she hates administration maybe, and I hate these pens! … the administrative side of what I’m doing.
New speaker (male):
Has she now got a family life?
Moderator:
We don’t have any information.
Male speaker (continued):
We don’t, that’s what you said, okay.
Moderator:
So, we’ve been working on the idea that, which is perfectly possible, that the administration is something she doesn’t like, and she’s getting compensation by the small trips, and it’s a compromise, or she’s fired at the end, all these things.
Let’s imagine a counter-hypothesis, which would be that actually, she enjoys the administration, that really all her life has been a preparation for at last becoming a top administrator, so I’m going to write, top administration … wow! So that’s a counter-hypothesis, and however convinced we are that one thing is true, we don’t know what she felt like, and the counter-hypothesis may be …
New speaker (male):
It is possible, so when she was working with these different directors from the Czech Republic, it could be a rewarding experience for her to work with these people, and made up her mind to do more work like this, kind of stuff.
Moderator:
Okay, so in a sense she’s … although, and the fact that she’s been given this quite, it’s quite a central role, either that nobody in Norway knows what happened in the Czech Republic, which is not very likely, or if they do know, then they don’t hold it against her, that actually it wasn’t a political disaster that happened in the Czech Republic, and the 28 museum directors, actually, people, at least in Oslo, think that wasn’t a bad thing to do, and they’re prepared to trust her with another administrative responsibility.
New speaker (male):
For people in the Czech Republic, but not actually for people in here, because it’s not their politics, not their …
Moderator:
Okay, so in which case, we might expect her to carry on, she’s not carrying on as a top administrator there, because we know it stopped after two years, or whatever she was, but she may go into an even higher administration after that.
New speaker (male):
Like, she takes these trips with students?
Moderator:
With students, yes. she’s organising the trips. The trips aren’t for her, they are organised for students.
New speaker (male):
And I guess she’s doing this because she knows how much it gave her, when she was travelling, when she was younger, and now she’s doing the same for students, that couldn’t have made it by themselves.
Moderator:
Right, so her experience, spelling it out a little, would be that my experience of going to lots of places was very good for me as an artist developing, and I think Norwegian students, who all sit in Oslo and never move, should also be encouraged to travel and expand their ideas, and go to different places, so she’s very much saying, this is good for art. It is a very good thing for students to travel a lot, and get outside their home country.
New speaker (male):
To learn other cultures.
Moderator:
Other cultures, other countries, maybe other traditions of art, whatever.
Okay, so … let’s get this right. Here in Oslo, even the pads of paper are different from the ones in England, so the ones in England I can tear like that, the ones here I struggle with, so I’m expanding my range of capacity by coming here and struggling with these pads.
So, 2012 is a year without employment, making applications, one failed and one succeeded, picking up her own artistic practice again. So how do you think she experienced that? We don’t actually know whether she resigned, or whether she was fired. We know that, having been employed at quite a high level, she suddenly was not employed at all, and she made applications which, one failed, and one eventually turned out to have succeeded, so how might she have experienced that year?
New speaker (male):
Depression, and then, again …
Moderator:
Feeling better?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes!
Moderator:
Okay, so experiencing hypothesis, depression, because it may be, it’s quite a come down from running a high-level Masters programme, to suddenly having no work at all.
New speaker (male):
He was sitting in Oslo, for this whole year?
Moderator:
As far as I know, yes – I think she was in Oslo. Any other thoughts about how she might, so one thing was, she was depressed. Maybe the depression led to making applications, 20 applications every week, so she didn’t want, she wanted to be funded basically. I’m not sure if she wanted to be employed, or she wanted to get a grant, or she wanted something, but she needed money, so that’s one thing about it. How would she have experienced that year? What’s the counter-hypothesis about the year?
New speaker (female):
He stopped working, for taking up her artistic practice again? – and that maybe wasn’t enough for him?
Moderator:
Sorry, what wasn’t for him?
Female speaker (continued):
The artistic practice, so that’s why she applied for new jobs, if you read it from the … [over-talking]
Moderator:
Okay, that’s an interesting double thing, isn’t it? So, how did she feel about the not having an artist … there’s two things. One is, she hadn’t had, her artistic practice had stopped, then she picks it up again, and then she applies for a job or something, because the artistic practice is either not paying enough, or is not interesting enough, or not something or other enough.
New speaker (female):
He finds, she goes back to artistic practice again.
Moderator:
He does go back to artistic practice?
New speaker (female):
Maybe it’s not in the end?
Moderator:
We don’t know that she stops it. It’d be interesting – the next chunk may tell us, and she never did any art again after that, or the next one said, she did only art … so we don’t know what’s happening next. At the moment, she picked up her artistic practice.
New speaker (female):
So maybe it’s inspiration she finds again?
Moderator:
Okay, so this could be, let’s put it this way, something like … from admin hell to pause and creative artistic practice.
New speaker (female):
Artistic heaven!
Moderator:
But, there’s also the making applications, and we don’t, at this moment, know what the applications are. So we know that, so what, how could you combine these two things?
New speaker (female):
Can I ask? – it says that making applications, one failed and one succeeded, so there were two applications?
Moderator:
Yes.
Female speaker (continued):
Only two applications during the year?
Moderator:
That’s all we know. You have to understand, and this is where it gets complicated, that this information comes from the person themselves, so she may have done 42 applications, but she just tells us about two, so we can’t …
Female speaker (continued):
she’s not lying! If she’s telling the truth, there were only two of them. This could mean that she wasn’t that much interested in finding any employment. Maybe she was making applications for something much more interesting than she did before.
Moderator:
So that’s one hypothesis – she’s being very selective about the application, about what she’s applying for, whatever it is, yeah.
New speaker (female):
Maybe it was some kind of grant, that could nourish her …
Moderator:
Yes, her artistic practice, yes. In general, I was teasing slightly about the 42 – in general, we assume that, the work of creating the chronology, these facts, is largely based on what is said in the interview, and also by any other information that the researcher manages. For this biographical, for the chronology that you have chunks of, obviously it came from the interview to start with. The individual, the art professional, sent me her cv, the cv that she would send for a job application, I assume, and there were a couple of articles which I also read, but we don’t have to know everything – we have to have interesting hypotheses, because we are more interested in the story that’s told than in the facts, that this sets up interesting hypotheses about how a story might be told, and what might be the facts, so we sort of assume it was only two, unless there’s reason to think that there were 42, and she doesn’t want to mention them.
So, anything else about the experiencing of that slightly problematic, or maybe not problematic at all – her only reason for being an administrator for those two years was to have enough money not to have to work for a year, so she could stake up her artistic practice, and apply for the following years, or it could be that she was totally desperate. We don’t know anything about that – both things are possible. We’ll have to wait for the told story, in order to make sense of it. Any other, how this might have been experienced?
New speaker (male):
This is two parts of (?? 20:07), the first part, they visit, she failed, so it means that the first part where she was struggling, or something, and when she got success, so there is a second part where we said …
Moderator:
Right, so there’s one … I don’t know whether the applications were in succession, one failed, da da da, then another one, or whether she sent them both off in the same week – I don’t have information about that, and all I know is that, during that year, she picked up her artistic practice. I think we have to treat this one year all happening at the same time, because we don’t have information within it.
New speaker (female):
But one of these applications succeeded. This means that there must have been employment after this?
Moderator:
So that could be the next one, or she turned it down? It’s possible to turn down applications. If she was very selective about her employment, she was offered something she really didn’t like, and so she turned it down – it’s not true actually. I’m partly doing this in order to demonstrate that we don’t know a lot, and it’s very easy to make assumptions. How could anybody who’s been offered a job turn it down? It is so difficult to live in Norway, and coffee costs so much in the canteen, and all the rest of it, but actually, no, it is possible that people might turn it down, so you have to keep imagining possibilities in your head, even though for you they’re pretty difficult to think.
New speaker (male):
If she (?? 21:40) practice, after this time, maybe this year was some kind of silence before the storm. She was planning to do something big.
Moderator:
Okay, so from (?? 21:55) to something big. So, I think what I’ll put on, which is roughly the same period, but it’s a bit enigmatic, what is in a way the next chunk, but it’s really mostly within that same year. She goes up to a summer school (I think I’ve got the facts right on this), the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, in June in the summer school, and did she go twice or not? – I’m not sure. Those attending the summer school, which I imagine was something like a three-moth summer school, during the summer, I don’t know how long it was, those attending were therapists, people wanting to use art practice, not so much art producers, but art users, so this is a summer school which is for artists, but also art users, and that’s what it was. What might that choice, what was the experience such that she decided to do that, and having done that, what did that do to her experience? – and you don’t know, you can only guess … as it were, at the end of that academic year, is the summer.
New speaker (male):
So it was a course that …
Moderator:
She attended as a student, she wasn’t a teacher.
New speaker (male):
It was about using art in therapy?
Moderator:
Art in therapy, art in practice, or using art, rather than being an artist – it wasn’t training for making artists, it was a training in using art.
Male speaker (continued):
So she’s still expanding her art universe, and looking for different possibilities to do it?
New speaker (female):
And actually, she did this before, she worked with therapists, but now, maybe she’s thinking about becoming …
Moderator:
Sorry, can you say that again?
Female speaker (continued):
We saw the word therapist before, so she was co-operating with therapists, like in creating art, and somehow using art as an instrument, and giving it a more psychological perspective, and now she’s trying to do it herself, like almost being a therapist. There is this art therapy school, actually where people use art, and that is maybe what she did before, but using art in making people think different ways and so on, and now maybe she’s thinking about using art in other different ways, like even people … art therapy is very popular now. They use it sometimes when people are disturbed, sick. They use art a lot, it helps a lot. Maybe she comes, she said here that she could do it herself, like help people to feel better, with the help of art.
Moderator:
Right, okay, so that’s one of the things that could be going on. Any other ideas about how this fits or doesn’t fit with your sense of who Nadja is, or of her life?
Female speaker (continued):
And she becomes a student again.
Moderator:
(he laughs) Right, and what do you draw from that?
Female speaker (continued):
In her previous periods, like the last ones, she worked with students, mostly like, not tutoring, but being like the head.
Moderator:
Administering them.
Female speaker (continued):
Administering like, student activities. Now she’s become a student again, so maybe again she’s looking … she just cannot concentrate on something, she’s always looking.
New speaker (female):
Expanding her vision?
Moderator:
Right, well I put, there’s a portfolio of possibilities, which is also expanding the vision of somebody who has learnt how to do these various things. The other thing is, which has struck me, which I suppose is a structural hypothesis, is sort of, the student art making, art using, like therapy, and maybe administering? – and that’s like a tension between four functions, which she would like to do some of, but if she does too much of one, she needs to go back and do the other. She can be a top-level administrator for a bit. Presumably if she stays for two years, she wasn’t got rid of straight away because she’s useless, and she decided to stay, but then stopped from administering students and became a student again, at this. She picked up her own practice, which, let’s say, whatever that means, is art-making, and then she goes to this thing which is about art-using. So the structural hypothesis, which might be all rubbish, but the structural hypothesis is that there are these four aspects, or four things she’s interested in, and she’s constantly moving about between them.
Her objective life appears to have her moving about between them, and in a sense back to the restlessness, never being quite satisfied with doing just one thing. She’s somebody who needs a portfolio, even if it’s extended over time, doing a number of different things to stay in long term balance, or long term development, even though at any given moment, she has to focus on one of these things. She can’t focus on all of these things simultaneously. In a sense, she can’t have a full-time job and be a full-time student. She can’t organise other people’s work, but do her own practice at the same time, but those might be a model, or concept, or a hypothesis, about the sort of structural, the bits of her that she wants to keep changing, and has to keep moving between, because there is no one job, or something or other, that can do all of that. Even being unemployed, you can focus on your own artistic practice, but you’re not administrating, you’re not teaching, etcetera, so that would be one of the things we get to, and it’s very interesting.
Towards the end of this type of process, is you start seeing patterns, like I’ve just seen that pattern, which I didn’t have in my head before, but the result of the discussion we’ve had is, I suddenly think, yeah, maybe that would work as a way of understanding her life, moving between these four attractive points, but never wanting to commit long term, just to one of them, or even more than one, two of them – maybe, maybe not.
Okay, where are we time-wise? We have to now make a little faster progress. Two of you come up, and take these things down for me, so I don’t … the next time I come to Oslo, I’ll bring my own flipchart, English-style, and be able to take it down myself.
Right, which number are we? Six, seven, eight – sorry. She becomes employed as a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Art.
New speaker (male):
Political participation?
Moderator:
Okay, no – I’ll come back to something else. That’s what her employment is, so the application that succeeded was to become a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo.
New speaker (male):
That was after this summer course?
Moderator:
That was after the summer – she’d applied before the summer course. She didn’t know whether she would, what would happen afterwards, and then found, after he’d done the summer course, that he’d got the fellowship.
New speaker (male):
In Oslo?
Moderator:
Is Oslo, yeah. Right, and now we’re looking at her projects, so we’re shifting focus really down into a micro thing – what did she do while she was between the ages of 40 and 43? – in 2013 to 2016? This is the first thing she does. She joined, I should say, she wasn’t in Oslo until she got this job. He’d been away from Oslo, based in Prague for about fifteen years, and she came back to Oslo, this was, the summer school was in Switzerland, in Saas-Fee, and she came back to Oslo into this particular job, having applied from abroad, so what did she do? she joined as a member, all the political parties in Norway.
I don’t know how many political parties there are in Norway, but she joined all of them as a member, and she attended meetings at local and Oslo city level, and some outside Oslo, and she interviewed leaders, she received the literature, she went to Christmas tables, whatever a Christmas table is, and at one of them, she was, as a member of, whatever the conservative party is, she went to the polling station and observed and watched the polling that took place in the polling station for three days. That was as a member of the conservative party.
New speaker (male):
That story was on the internet not long ago.
Moderator:
It was on the internet, I see, okay. So, that was the research she did, and because we haven’t got very much time, I’m going to compress a few things. She then made an exhibition, based on these experiences of political parties. She didn’t just do this, would have been interesting in itself, and it may be on the internet. What did she do? – there’s an exhibition building, and in front of the exhibition building, there are some playful lions. They’re there anyway, she didn’t put them there – they’ve been there since 1929, and then the first sculpture that you see, when you go into the exhibition, is that same sculptor’s 1950s’ work, which he did later, called “The Breakthrough”, and I haven’t got time to describe it, but it’s also to do with, the labour movement.
Anyway, those who come in, and I’m asking you to wrap your mind around the object that she’s made, this is an installation, that people who came into the exhibition were given radio broadcast headphones, addressing all the objects in the exhibition, and this was a 40-minute broadcast, which is quite a tough thing to experience. The first, one of the things that the voice does, is to read a list of all the people who received labour statuettes, together with the activities they’d been honoured for, so this was a labour movement building – I can’t remember the details. In England, it would be the trade union council’s headquarters, but I don’t know what it was here, and one of the things that happened regularly in this labour movement was that people who had given especially good service were given an honour, a little statuette, and so there was a list of all the people who had received the statuettes, but no knowledge of why they’d received it – Fred got a statuette in 1957 or something; why, I’ve no idea. So the research she did was to find out, as far as she could, what the statuettes were given for, so she integrated that into her radio broadcast through the headphones, so that a list of this person, fought against the depression of wages in this industry, by organising this strike or whatever it was. I haven’t heard the radio broadcast, and it would be in Norwegian, so there would be no point in my doing so.
Anyway, so she does the work of finding out these activities as far as she can, and then reads the voice in the headphones, reads the list of those who’ve been honoured by getting these statuettes. Then there’s another piece, which is four metres of piled pieces of wood, very precisely cut, and it quotes the headlines in the Ministry of Health, which refused to use an original big sculpture, so there was a very big sculpture piled up, cut pieces of wood, which was supposed to, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Health refused to use it, for some reason or other, and there was a great scandal, and they refused to use it, and is this democracy, and can they refuse? So anyway, she got from the artist a very small version of the same work, and put in the exhibition, together with the headlines, about the thing.
The other thing there is in it is, an interview, based on an interview with a conservative Christian party leader, and the thing she’s got from that is, you go into what looks like a cinema setting, you go into a little cinema, and all that happens is, there’s a tune, some music from the 1940s, called “Mother, Dear Mother”, which is a sentimental thing about motherhood, and you’re coming back, and you’re honouring your mother, and mothers are very honourable, and The Honoured Mother, and this plays away, and for all all those who were alive in the 1940s, this is a deeply moving, or infuriating, or whatever it is, piece of music. Did anyone go to this exhibition, by any chance? – no, okay, so anyway, I didn’t either, so that’s all the information I have about it.
So how might what’s the experience that the construction of such a … doing the research on, joining all the political parties to begin with, and then doing an exhibition about political experience? What’s going on here? Who is the person behind the installation?
New speaker (male):):
She has changed her mind from fine arts to political parties?
Moderator:
Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? So maybe, there’s not been very much sign of explicit politics before, has there? So this is, this feels like a first. So shift to political experience, or political, you can’t really call it engagement, because actually, she’s engaged in all the political parties at once, so it’s hardly a sign of deep commitment to any one.
New speaker (female):
Yes, because that’s also a way for her to be not personal, into politics, because we don’t know her view on politics, so somehow she keeps her curator role, just showing the audience.
Moderator:
So she keeps her curator or distant role. It’s a certain distance from the experience that she’s had, which she’s conveying something of, but she’s a bit shadowy behind it. You aren’t quite sure what it means for her personally, but what she does is, something professional, which is quite complicated and unusual, quite a deliberate experience. It’s not something that happened to him. She signed up for all these parties, and went to these meetings and did this work and all the rest of it.
Female speaker (continued):
But that was a part of her resource? – so maybe it’s not art. Maybe she got, probably she got paid for it by the Academy of Arts?
Moderator:
No, she didn’t get paid for it. She has got employment as a research fellow, and therefore she gets payment, presumably, I don’t know how research, wages as a research fellow, but she wasn’t paid for any particular thing that she does.
Female speaker (continued):
No, of course, but she gets an income.
Moderator:
As a research fellow.
Female speaker (continued):
For doing that.
Moderator:
Well, for doing something.
New speaker (male):
And this was the research?
Moderator:
This was one of the pieces of research, this is my understanding – this is one of the pieces of research that she did, while being paid as a research fellow, where you do what you like. You have to do something, I imagine, but there is no control over what you decide to do.
New speaker (male):
You could do, quite similar to what she did with the museum directors from (?? 40:19).
Moderator:
Okay, could you say what you see is the similarity?
Male speaker (continued):
Let’s say, from the beginning, she was, at the beginning, she was an artist. She wanted to talk, to see the perspective of people of the, let’s say, higher rank in this artwork, and the directors, the museum directors, weren’t that much artistic, let’s say, and what I mean, that similarity is, right now, for me the same thing, but with a higher level of people that use it.
New speaker (female):
She’s making a prank.
Moderator:
It’s another prank, okay.
Female speaker (continued):
I mean, if, like what she did before, it’s very similar.
New speaker (male):
Exactly like a prank, but she (?? 41:07)
Female speaker (continued):
And also, not taking serious. For instance, not taking political parties serious.
Moderator:
Okay, so let’s go carefully with this, because … no, no, these are very fertile hypothesis, and the point about a fertile hypothesis is, you let it grow and develop, like anything fertile. So one is, that it’s just a pure prank. It’s a practical joke played on even more important people than the ones before, like the leaders of political parties in Norway, so that’s one possibility. Art has revenge on politics, or art dislikes top leaders of anybody, sort.
The second is that it’s actually, being about politics, it’s a serious work of art in a way, or a serious something or other, a serious event, but the person, Nadja stays both in and out of it. She keeps her distance, so it’s about the politics, maybe quite seriously, in some way or other, but she’s not in it, so you can’t guess what her politics are, so that’s another component. The two things can be combined. You can do this in a sort of … somebody mentioned earlier the notion of irony, so these things may be done ironically, but it doesn’t mean to say they’re not being done, but they’re doing in such a way that you can’t put your finger quite on what is happening, so if I wanted to do a serious exploration as a political scientist, of politics in Norway, it would be very sensible for me to join all the political parties, and see what’s actually happening, as opposed to just reading about them in the newspapers, so that’s a very serious piece of research. How I then use the research, if I was a political scientist, I would write a monograph on the subject. Perhaps, as an artist, she does something quite different. It doesn’t mean to say, it’s just a prank, and just to make top leadership of political parties feel deeply embarrassed, but it may be, or there may be components of both things going on which we don’t know.
Any other fertile hypothesis about what all this, how she might have experienced all this? Sorry, did you want to come in? – or are you just holding your chin thoughtfully?
New speaker (male):
Did she become a conservative?
Moderator:
I have no idea. This is her professional life. I have no reason to believe she became a conservative.
Male speaker (continued):
That would have been very unexpected, I think, from her background, that she would become.
Moderator:
I don’t think she became a conservative, but at the moment, no, and I would say probably from the fact that she did all this research into who got the statuettes, that if she was going to join any political party, she’s done most research on the left party, whatever the left party is, by finding out, it must have been very difficult, ring up all the people who had statuettes, and said, well what did you get your statuette for? That’s quite a long, laborious thing. For the conservative party, the only thing we know is, she interviewed the top leader, who at one point played this tune from the 1940s on her piano, and this was the tune that she put in, so it required much less work for the conservative exhibit in the pavilion.
Okay, well let’s leave that there. Sorry, I am pushing ahead, because of time … no, there is time. Any other thoughts about this, as the lived experience of, is she an art professional still? What is she doing? Remember what this is meant to be about, or is done under the aegis of, a research fellow in the Academy of Fine Art.
New speaker (female):
she’s becoming a researcher, and what she does, in that political party, all that activity, and this exhibition, she’s acting more like the observer, and like the researcher. she’s like, I’m just staying there, observing, and then I’m sharing the information, and that’s it. It’s not like, it’s not that straight, but still, she’s …
Moderator:
So a number of transitions are being suggested. Earlier on, I think it was you who suggested she was becoming a psychologist, and now, it’s something to do with becoming a researcher, but researcher of what? Yes, we know what she was researching was by participating in the four political parties, etcetera, four, or however many there are, but she’s not producing a journalist’s report, and she’s not producing a social science report. she’s producing a recording of a song made in the 1940s, or she’s producing a radio broadcast that tells you about what the statuettes of labour were given for, so it’s a funny … yes, she’s doing research, but what is she doing with the research in her public thing? The research she does is what she does privately, and what’s she doing with the research that she does? So I think you’re right about, she’s doing research. She may have been doing research for earlier stuff as well, but what’s she doing with the research as a sort of public artist?
New speaker (female):
She’s still doing art?
Moderator:
She’s still doing art.
New speaker (female):
And she is not giving the ready-made conclusions? She’s not seeing something there, like not making people to be like insulted (? 46:46). She just gives us political thoughts.
New speaker (male):
She gives the rod, not the fish.
Moderator:
Okay, and would you say it’s a political exhibition, or an exhibition using politics – what is it?
New speaker (female):
I would say that she’s just using politics. Maybe she’s hinting at something. My personal opinion, judging from every activity of her, she’s observing the people’s nature, from the different aspects, like cross-culturally, psychologically, like from the point of view as a personality. She looks at a person in the middle of society. She’s just looking at the human being, from different perspectives.
Moderator:
She’s looking at them, but what is she conveying to her audience in the installations and the things that she does? I don’t disagree, I just think that’s fine, but one has to push your fertile hypothesis a bit further, sorry.
New speaker (male):
Now she’s trying to analyse political culture.
Moderator:
Political culture, right, okay, and convey some understanding, or what is she trying to convey? That’s what’s always interesting.
New speaker (female):
I think like, I mean, again I’m stuck in this prank thing, but she’s kind of maybe also, again with what she did in the past, it’s a little bit like she’s trying to show the stupidity in things.
Moderator:
The stupidity in things?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, like in this museums in the Czech Republic.
Moderator:
What would be the stupidity in the things she’s, what is being shown as stupid? – or which stupidity is she showing?
Female speaker (continued):
Because she is an artist …
New speaker (male):
That’s the point!
Female speaker (continued):
That’s the main point. I think she is just, she’s using her observations to show, I mean … maybe because it’s also my personal opinion.
Moderator:
I’m very glad to hear it.
Female speaker (continued):
But I don’t vote, I’m against voting, so maybe she is observing all these parties, and there is a little bit of stupidity in all political views actually, and they all fail in different ways.
Moderator:
So you think she shares your opinion?
Female speaker (continued):
I think she shares my opinion.
Moderator:
(he laughs) Okay, a couple of people – did you want to come in?
New speaker (female):
Yep, I think she would like to show the public something she knows, which she has, figuring or finding out during her research, both by interviewing those directors in the Czech Republic, and joining all the Norwegian political parties, and telling the public what’s going on behind the curtain on the art scene, or the political scene.
Moderator:
Okay, so it’s some sort of demystification, or going behind appearances, or something like that.
Female speaker (continued):
I think it’s more serious than, I don’t think it’s just a prank.
Moderator:
It may be a prank, but it’s not just a prank, or it may not be a prank at all. She may be disguising it as a prank. In fact, it’s a dagger aimed at the heart of the political class, disguised as a prank – just my fantasy.
New speaker (male):
Artists do not have limitations, so she could join all parties, and try to find the culture of, political cultures at least.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s true.
Male speaker (continued):
So there are no limitations on why the …
Moderator:
Maybe that’s one of the key things about her experiencing, and wanting to be an artist of some unspecified sort, is because there are no limitations on what you can comment on, or in the way that you can comment on your observations, or convey your observations, and that may be one of the great assets.
New speaker (male):
I was a bit surprised that she didn’t pursue this therapist orientation that she had, because she had this course, and she had also been working with therapists in Czechoslovakia, so I would have thought that that would have been, and pursue that a bit more.
Moderator:
Alas! Maybe he’ll come back to it later, but anyway, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Now, I’m going to, actually, I’m going to hold this piece of paper together, so we’ll just have a bit of Sellotape for this, save world resources – don’t take another flip chart sheet if you don’t need it. This is the second thing that she’s done, and I’ll read this out as well. This is another, and that was in Norway, the political party one, and now this one is in Prague, and there was an exhibition going on, I don’t know what about, and she did an internal exhibition, which is a very interesting one, and if you wanted to go to the exhibition, you started off by going into a room, and there was somebody hidden behind a wall basically, whatever, and you were told, in order to enter the exhibition, you have to put your hand, you have to draw a picture of your hand, and then put your hand and the drawing through to the person on the other side, and that’s what you have to do, if you want to go into this exhibition – a drawing of the hand, and the hand, and if they’ve just put a scribble in, they couldn’t in, and were asked, can you go back and take some more trouble over your drawing – it’s not a very good one, so something like that, so that was the first stage.
Then, what you did was to go into a room where there were three stories on headphones, and I’m not too clear what apparently these stories are about. This relates, they come from an elders, she did some research before, which I’ve forgotten, I didn’t put it in, but anyway, she did some research interviewing older people who had trained as professional artists in their youth, had completed the training, and then not gone on to be professional artists – they’d gone on to do something else, like from chemistry to something completely different, or whatever it happened to be, so they’d train as professional artists, and gone on to live the rest of their life, retired, and then they were interviewed after retirement, and what I think the point of the research was to find out if any of the aspects of their professional art education had fed into what they did afterwards, so something that stayed, even if they didn’t become artists, they did other things – I don’t know, joined a political party. In what way did their training as professional artists influence or not influence whatever they did in the rest of their lives, so this was the elders, the interview with elders project, which I don’t know why I didn’t put that in, but anyway you can’t put everything in.
So, out of these stories of elders talking about their lives, and what they did or didn’t get from doing fine art, there were some stories were generated on the headphones which were about aspects, they were about competence, being competent at this, or not being competent at that, then after those stories on the headphones, you go into another room, and there’s somebody again that you can’t see behind a wall, the importance of walls or coverings up or whatever it is, and there’s a conversational partner, and you sit down, and the conversational partner talks to you, and she gave the example of one of them being a child psychologist, notice the psychology thing, a child psychologist who provokes a peculiar conversation with you. An example I remember from this is about, can you tell me about drawing your hand, and how you felt about drawing your hand and putting it through, to an invisible person on the other side of the wall, and then the conversation goes on and says, okay, now imagine the hand got off the piece of paper and went to the other side of the room, and you have to sort of somehow cap this. The conversational partner provokes you to imagining things, as a result. Whatever it is you say, they point it in a sort of imagination-generating direction, a fantasy-generating direction. So this goes on for a bit, and then the fourth station is when you go into the next room, and what you find is a photograph of your drawing of the hand on the wall, so you go into this room, and the drawing that you did to get in has been photographed and put on the wall of this room, and that’s the last exhibit in the exhibition, and then you go out, and you’re back in the other exhibition that you came in from.
So, what’s going on here? What’s the purpose, what’s the lived experience? What’s the point? – and there were several hypotheses, which don’t have to agree with each other?
New speaker (male):
(?? 56:49) hand.
Moderator:
Right, well, okay.
New speaker (male):
Is it her exhibition?
Moderator:
She designs this installation. She designs the four stations. She hires the conversation partner, she hires the person who looks at your hand to see if you’re drawing it alright, or not alright, so that’s all hers.
New speaker (female):
I have a thought about this, everything she does is very playful, and she uses humour a lot. This is usually what kids do, and what adult people do, but those adults who have their inner kid, who is still very strong, and I think that again, with this exhibition, she’s learning the personality of a human being, how it develops, how you play when you’re a grown up in those political games and everything, and this exhibition, it’s like, all these texts about this exhibition gives me this thought, that her inner child is very strong, and what she wants to show us is that maybe sometimes we should nourish our inner kids, and to look on those serious things, like politics, or being the head of a very serious museum or something, that sometimes you have to listen to your inner kid, and to look at all those things with a bit of humour.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s interesting. Any other thoughts about what this exhibition is doing? – her purpose and point, so to speak?
New speaker (female):
I really like this thing, with these hands, put inside the hole. It’s like you’re putting the hand inside yourself. This person is taking …
Moderator:
Taking the inner child out?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, like you are literally going, and this thing, like imagine your hand going from this.
Moderator:
From the page, and going to the other side?
Female speaker (continued):
It’s just genius.
Moderator:
Okay, any other thoughts about what this might be doing, which aren’t necessarily the opposite of what you’re saying, but just different? If you were designing an exhibition like this, as an art professional, what would you be doing?
Well, the thing that struck me about it was the, overcoming the division between the makers of art and the users of art, that actually, you have to draw something, you in a way are forced into being an artist, at least for ten minutes in your life, otherwise you can’t get into the art exhibition, and the exhibition is sort of, a conversational provocation, the stimulus of whatever the stories are about competence, or I’m not sure, I really don’t know what that was, and then, the conversational stimulation, and then seeing your own hand, a photograph of the drawing of the hand at the end, which in a way must, I mean the fantasy I had, I hadn’t been to this exhibition, was that in a way, when you see the photograph of your drawing of the hand, you’re thrown back to the moment half-an-hour before, or whatever it was, when you drew it, and are thinking about the experiences between the doing of the drawing, and all this stuff involving provoked imagination, so to speak, and then seeing it again as an object on a wall out there. I think that’s the thing I got from it.
New speaker (female):
Yeah, I agree with you, and you will probably look at your hand very differently, when you see it on the photograph.
Moderator:
Your original drawing on the piece of paper.
New speaker (female):
Because as you said, some people could just scribble something.
Moderator:
They didn’t get in.
Female speaker (continued):
And even this drawing of the old hand, it wasn’t serious for them. Okay, I’ll draw it, just to get into there, but then, after having this conversation, after doing something, you hope so, that something moves inside, they looked at it, and it became this thing, that they put it on the wall, as if it became the artistic work.
Moderator:
It’s like, a hand by Rembrandt, or whatever it would be, yeah.
Female speaker (continued):
It became important, by being put on the wall, and it became important for you, because you had all those experiences between … and now you look differently.
New speaker (female):
It’s like the psychoanalysis of your hand.
Moderator:
Yes, it’s the psychoanalysis, or the dynamics in you of the drawing of your hand, and what happens afterwards, and then seeing it again, but this time as a single …
New speaker (female):
Yeah, and you also made up stories around your hand, so you’ve got like visually, and imaginatively, stories of your hand, a different way.
Moderator:
Imaginatively, yeah, okay. Any other thoughts? Sorry, I’m having to watch the time. I think we’ll just go on to, there’s two other items, that are actually, I think we’re not using the writing up, so just one piece of Sellotape, thanks.
Right, and this is back to the Warsaw Museum. This is, all this is happening in the last three years, while she’s been this research fellow. Volunteers, so she’s using the pedagogical department of the Warsaw Museum, preparing new work for a group exhibition, strategies of usership in art, and the way she does it, there are volunteers who were unpaid volunteers who work in the museum, and they’re invited by their head of department to volunteer for this extra thing, and the extra thing is, four weekend workshops in which they do an exhibition, so the workshops are held in the exhibition on Saturday mornings, or I don’t know if it’s Saturday mornings and afternoons, but anyway, on Saturdays, and I think it’s the case that actually, the workshops, people can come in and watch the workshops working, so the volunteers are working, as you say, you might be working here, and ordinary people in the museum can come past and see you working at whatever you’re working at.
The volunteers never know what’s going to be discussed in the next meeting. There are four meetings. For the volunteers, it’s completely new – they come afresh to each meeting, and then after, so this goes on for four weeks, and I don’t have any more information about that, except that one month after the exhibition closes, I think, say one month after the exhibition closes, then Nadja interviews all the ten volunteers who’ve taken part to, I think, explore their experience of what they were doing, so they all participate, and then she interviews them to see what they made of it. I’m not sure what she interview … I mean, I know they were interviews like the one that, like BNIM interviews, like the ones I normally teach, because Nadja came on one of my training courses in London, and I think she then used that methodology for these volunteers here, but I don’t know what she interviewed them about. I suspect it was about the experience of volunteering in general, and including volunteering at her special little exhibition thing that they did, but I don’t know, and I have no information about anything else about it. So anyway, any thoughts about what she’s doing there, and is she doing anything differently from what she has been doing so far? Or how does it fit in, or not fit in?
New speaker (male):
I was about to say, in the last one, with this fence (? 1:05:23) exhibition, I think, in my opinion, she’s trying to share her view on art, like she sees art almost everywhere, and she makes art from different stuff, like political stuff, and these art directors. Now, what she’s doing, it’s like, when she interviewed the volunteers after this exercise, it’s made me think about the Zimbagwe, and her experiment with inner evil inside us, and I guess her point is to reveal the inner dark side of ourselves, with different people.
Moderator:
Can you just explain, for other people who don’t know the experiment, Zimbagwe?
Male speaker (continued):
The Zimbagwe experiment? Dr Zimbagwe put two volunteers, different people from some university in the United States, and she made it a fictional prison, and they divided the group, so five of them were prisoners, and five of them were …
Moderator:
Jailers, guardians?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, something like that, and by their, how they act and stuff, she was looking for, propose why we do bad things, why we do evil things, and what is making us evil, and the point was that power makes you evil. If you can make things, you will probably do bad things.
Moderator:
So nice people becoming jailers, and doing jailer things, become nasty jailers, because that’s what the role brings out?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, and what I see here, with this hands exhibition, she was making artists from every customer – not customer, person, from every person in the exhibition, because you had to draw something that was, blah blah, and at the end, this photo of your piece of art, so you are also art.
Moderator:
So she’s bringing out the artist, you were talking about the inner child, and that you’re talking about the inner artist. Okay, that’s an interesting thing.
New speaker (female):
But all artists have a very strong inner child.
Moderator:
Maybe. They may have invariably strong … maybe, let’s leave that question open for further interviewing, find the most non-childlike artist you can, and see if you can ….
New speaker (male):
But she is (?? 1:08:09) better, I can see no child in her artwork.
Moderator:
No child, okay, fine, alright. Any final points on that? We’ve got exactly five minutes. There’s just one other thing. I think we’ll have to leave that there, because we were going to stop at … and Nadja is currently engaged in the new project, details unknown. So if you were going to imagine (this is a bit silly), but if you were going to imagine, based on her track record, we’ve actually gone through her life from pretty early on, what might be the sort of project you’d be currently engaged on? There’s no way of knowing, because this is the last thing, but she is engaged in something else.
New speaker (female):
This one?
Moderator:
This one, go on.
Female speaker (continued):
I see her as the director of these interviews. She wants strangers to … she wants to get the strangers’ point of view of her professional career.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s a very interesting idea. That could well be it. I don’t have special knowledge about this, because I have no idea what her project is, but yes, that might be. Any other ideas, what might be her current project?
New speaker (male):
It is unknown, so we can just guess. She’s again, some kind of exhibition, she’s thinking about.
Moderator:
And any characteristic – what would it not be an exhibition of? If you had to say, okay, it’s an exhibition, we don’t know what it is, but what sort of exhibition would you be very surprised if she did put on at this stage? I would not expect her exhibition to be …
New speaker (female):
People are just starting painting, and putting prints on the wall?
Moderator:
It wouldn’t be an exhibition of art objects, is that what you’re saying?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, objects that others … I mean, maybe I could understand it, if she was bringing objects together that others made, maybe.
Moderator:
Not her own art objects?
Female speaker (continued):
Not her own art. She is creating collaborative art and she’s just … I think she’s trying to make other people do art, and bring them together, and make one big artwork, under her ….
Moderator:
Supervision, under her organisation.
New speaker (male):
This is a very open option, it could be anything.
Moderator:
Right, okay, but what would you think it couldn’t be? We’ve had one volunteering of …
New speaker (male):
I would be surprised if it would be an exhibition focused on the beauty of art, just on the beauty, because as we can see, she’s always trying to put something behind, some thoughts behind, to make us think about something, and if she would do some exhibition, like only, say paintings, I would be surprised with that.
New speaker (female):
Yeah, she’s not interested.
New speaker (male):
Yeah, that’s not her driver, that’s the thing.
New speaker (female):
But if she teaches people how to paint, I would be surprised if it would be like the workshops, like strictly teaching people how to do art – you have to do it this way.
Moderator:
I was interested in what you said about trying to think, she’s interested in making people think. I think that’s quite interesting.
New speaker (male):
I think it was a point through all of her projects before, we’ve said that before, that she’s not giving the rod, she’s not giving the fish, she’s giving the rod, so through her exhibitions, she doesn’t give us her opinions, like she could, because she interviewed these people, these directors from Prague, and he, being in these parties, and listened to these guys, but she didn’t give us any opinion, I think.
Moderator:
No, no, that’s fine, all you can do is work from …
Male speaker (continued):
He doesn’t give us any opinion, she just makes people think like that.
Moderator:
Okay. Any other thoughts about it, before we conclude?
Okay, let’s stop there. We’ve got twenty minutes – it’s a little less now. Could you spend ten minutes making further notes on her, and what you think the puzzles are about her, or what you think is clear about her, or what might be the case about her, just something? This will be taken up and used for stimulating my further research, so actually if could be in English, that would be nice. If it’s in Norwegian, or even in Byelorussian, it would be more tricky, so if you just spend ten minutes, perhaps completing, or adding to whatever you wrote in the interval, just hypotheses about Nadja, and that’s, here it is. You don’t have to come up with a final narrative or anything, but just things that I should remember when I’m going back to the data, and thinking about it. So ten minutes on that, and then finally, ten minutes on the discussion of the exercise of the panel work.
(1:13:57 – 1:22:15) (making notes etc)
Moderator:
We’ve got about seven more minutes. Does anybody have to leave exactly at four o’clock, or can five or ten minutes … anybody very pressed for time? Okay, well we’ll try to finish at four, but we can run over a bit if we have to.
So, that completes the study of Nadja, from the biographic data. Any comments on the process, your own lived experience, thoughts and feelings, as you’ve gone through this, anything you want to share obviously?
New speaker (male):
Well, I think a systematic presentation.
Moderator:
Yeah. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Male speaker (continued):
That was good. Seeing (?? 1:23:04) in my mind, (?? 1:23:08).
Moderator:
Yes, no, it is very systematic, that’s true.
Male speaker (continued):
But it’s positive.
Moderator:
I mean, as a sort of trainer, my main job at the moment is training people in this method, and one of the advantages is that it is very systematic. It can be very interestingly complex, as doing it, but the steps are straightforward and learnable and repeatable.
Male speaker (continued):
The same thing can be in a paragraph, so then it’s difficult to …
Moderator:
That’s right, the breaking up. What’s happened is, it’s been broken up, because you get all this, I mean the transcript, this was a six-and-a-half-hour interview, and I can’t tell you how many pages of transcript! I didn’t transcribe it myself, but I can tell you, it’s very hard work, and you have to break it down into, what are the objective things that happen, not what people thought might happen, or whatever, and so that is quite a discipline in itself. When you’re looking at the telling of the told story, which is the subjective side, you also have to find a way of breaking things down into manageable things.
Okay, any other thoughts about your experience of it? So you experienced it as a systematic, and you liked the system. Any other, your thoughts and feelings, that is to say, lived experience of doing the exercise?
New speaker (female):
It’s a really good exercise for myself, to look at some facts, like it’s what you said at the very beginning, from the perspective of my personal experience, because it’s very easy to jump to some conclusion, because you think so, because you believe so, because you haven’t had this experience before, but actually everybody’s experience may be very different, and it’s really nice to have this research method, and I’m sure that it’s used a lot, but I thought that it’s really nice to use this method, when you are studying some of these biographies, not of a living person, whom you can always call and say, well, I have these thoughts about this fact. Am I wrong, or am I right? But when you don’t have a person to ask, you have nobody, but you have some bold facts on the person, switched to this, switched to that. In this case, you can make assumptions.
Moderator:
I think, in a way, taking up your point, you could say, which is a bit different actually from what you’re saying, it’s a training in knowing when you don’t know, it’s obvious from what you’re saying. You think it’s obvious that this must have happened, or this, but actually no, actually it might have been the opposite. This is, like a hypothesis, instantly go to a counter-hypothesis, to free your mind from your certainty that you know what happened.
Female speaker (continued):
As you said, there is no obvious.
Moderator:
Well, the point is, but everyone feels, whenever I put forward a hypothesis, it’s pretty, somebody said obviously they saw clearly that, or whatever, it’s not – it’s just your projection about what might be the case. You don’t have enough data to know whether becoming head of department is a wonderful experience or a terrible one, or wonderful in one way and terrible in another, or you don’t even know whether it’s wonderful or terrible, but you know what it means, because that’s what it would mean for you, so it is a training in not knowing, and in a sense partly knowing yourself, knowing your own projections, what you are liable to project. I think you said, well clearly, how could this be bad – it’s about the applications, wasn’t he?
Female speaker (continued):
I was mostly joking, because when you live in Oslo, it’s not that easy to find a job, for many people.
Moderator:
No, no, absolutely. It’s a perfectly legitimate thing, but actually yes, of course, for somebody else, it might be very easy, and the problem might be too many jobs, and you turn them down. It’s hard to imagine, I mean jobs are difficult for most people most of the time, but actually, for any particular person, they might have the problem of too many jobs, which you couldn’t imagine from your own experience, but okay, yeah, it’s possible.
Female speaker (continued):
I had both experiences, too many jobs offered, and the burden of responsibility of choice, you’re going to choose. There was another thing I wanted to ask. I’ll think about it.
New speaker (male):
I would like to complain about the lack of more intimate data, about herself, because like, we can guess, after some steps, which she can make in her life, and some decisions, that she made it her life, but I guess there are more things that terminate (? 1:27:58) what she’s doing, and how she’s acting, and what decision she’s making.
Moderator:
Yes, you can’t explain very much without knowing much more, that’s true, but what did you predict her next project was going to be, since you know so much about her professional life?
Male speaker (continued):
No, I don’t know much about her intimate life, so it’s hard for me …
Moderator:
But her professional life? – her next project is her professional life.
Male speaker (continued):
As social as ever before, I guess.
Moderator:
Or she’s had enough of it, and goes into a project on her intimate life. Anyway, I’m teasing. What I’m saying is that, actually, I agree with you, that we don’t have enough about the rest of her life to be able to say terribly much about her subjectivity. We work with what we’ve got, and even with what we’ve got, with the knowledge of all the exhibitions she’s done, we don’t know what her next one is going to be about. If you’d all come up and said, I know what it’ll be, and you all said the same thing, that would have been amazing, but very unlikely to happen.
New speaker (female):
It’s exactly because we know all this information, that she is pretty unpredictable. You can never guess.
Moderator:
Right, well that would be the characteristic, as opposed to some other artist who always does the same thing, and has always done the same thing throughout her professional career, so there’s not the slightest problem in predicting the next thing – oh yes, bloody hell, it’ll be landscapes again, or whatever it would happen to be.
New speaker (female):
I remember what I wanted to share with you. When I was a schoolgirl, we had this exercise in our English lessons, like we just needed to have some speech practice. Now, the teacher divided us into two groups, and she gave us like this classic thing to discuss, like for instance, abortions, and she divided us, without any reason – you two and you two, and now you have to discuss, like you are a pro-abortion fighter, and you are an anti-abortion. Then, we were fighting, because we weren’t really both, but then, in five to ten minutes, she said like, okay, let’s change groups, and now you have to prove the opposite, but when you were proving this point, like for ten minutes, you’re already pretty sure.
Moderator:
Ready to fight the world, in favour of your position!
Female speaker (continued):
That was a very good exercise, to be straightforward, not to be one-sided.
New speaker (continued):
Not to make opinion, but to prove some opinion.
Moderator:
Well yes, but you could actually be also called on to prove the opposite, and you can do that too. It comes from a medieval practice of disputation in the Catholic church, in which exactly what you say happens. Somebody is the devil’s advocate, who’s called the “advocato diiabli” (? 1:30:48), and actually his job was to argue the counter-case to the theology, and half way through the debate, the monks had to change sides, to show that it wasn’t a question of what they personally believed in, it was looking for the best argument, and they must learn not to identify with the arguments that they put. I remember hearing one of these medieval disputes on the radio once, and it was so beautiful. It was a beautiful operation, and very good at forcing people to dis-identify with the positions that they felt, or were required, as in your case, to take up, whatever they felt. Any other thoughts about the experience of doing this exercise, that you’ve been engaged in?
New speaker (male):
Even if we didn’t get much of her life, information data, I still kind of feel some, maybe it’s a big word, but intimate relationship with this person, like I know quite a lot of her life right now, and what she has done, and what was her childhood like. I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to talk about my feelings right now, but it’s, in a weird way, I like this person, and I don’t know really why, because like, I don’t know her!
Moderator:
(he laughs) Well, you know something of what she’s done. You’ve gone into details of how she, the different decisions, how she was formed and the different decisions she took, and by implication what she didn’t decide to do, what paths she didn’t choose to follow, and you’ve looked at some of the artworks or installations or exhibitions, or whatever you want to call it, that she did, and you’ve tried to think, well, what’s inside the mind of somebody who sets this up in this way, particularly if you’re right and she’s set up, as with this particular operation, as part of her artwork, or whatever it is, and even if not, so yes, you do get, the intimacy is a sense of a person who’s done all these things, and so in that sense, although we know nothing, or next to nothing about her non-professional life, nonetheless there’s an intimate sense of somebody who leads a professional life like this, and so in that sense, you’re right to have some sense of an intimate knowledge of some aspect of the person.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, we are like, discussing fictional events which could occur, and could not, and stuff, but we’re still talking about a living person,
like she is somewhere there.
Moderator:
(he laughs) Right, and that shows she’s in some sense living inside you?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, yeah.
Moderator:
Okay, anybody who hasn’t said anything yet, want to contribute?
New speaker (female):
Or maybe, if it is the art project, or (?? 1:33:49), maybe this person doesn’t exist, we don’t know.
Moderator:
Ah, that’s possible. She could be a fictional construct.
New speaker (female):
I thought about what you said about her personal or private life. Maybe if she didn’t go into art, we would not, thought of it, or wouldn’t have been that interested in her personal life, if it was a diplomat or a politician or something. Then it maybe would have been enough to see her professional life. I think for authors and actors and artists, there is, the viewer is more often interested in like, oh, is this experiences from your own life, or … there’s a different curiosity about the personal life.
Moderator:
I think that’s true, but Sofia, you’re not an artist, are you? You’re a chemist, by training, and did you find yourself able to be interested in this woman’s life, even though she’s an artist, and not in the natural sciences?
Sofia:
It is interesting, we discussed in an open way, the positive and negative sides.
Moderator:
Right, so, although being an artist like her (assuming she exists), being an artist like her gives an additional interest to it, like if you’re an artist yourself, you say, well, these are the sorts of choices or possibilities, or whatever rings bells, but actually it may ring bells with non-artists. It may be, how does a chemist live their life, and there may be interesting analogies in the types of choices, which I don’t know, because I’m neither an artist nor a chemist, but Sofia might be able to just to say, well actually, what I found interesting, as a chemist, I’ve had to choose between X and Y, and A and B, and so she’s having to choose between L and P and N and O, is similar to that, so you can think, by analogy, I’m not denying what you’re saying. I think it’s not the only way to become interested in other people. She might just be a traveller, if I’m a great traveller, or if I’m not a traveller at all.
Female speaker (continued):
But that wasn’t what I meant. I didn’t mean what I am, I mean, if Nadja was a politician.
Moderator:
One wouldn’t be interested in her?
Female speaker (continued):
Not in her personal life, as much as if she’s an artist.
Moderator:
I’d be fascinated in the private lives of politicians. Why are they so sadistic? – they were beaten by their parents, when they were children. Anyway, sorry! (he laughs) No, I think the private lives of any professionals are interested, myself, I’m not saying you should agree with me. I think some people’s professions are such that you think, oh, they must have had an interesting life, and other ones, like, I don’t know, a senior-grade civil servant who joined at the age of 16, and rose to become head of the civil service when she was 66 – oh, what a boring life. It may not have been a boring life at all, and she may have had the most extraordinary private life wrapped around this very boring professional life – you don’t know. I mean, I’m a biographical researcher, and my own thought is, everybody has extraordinarily interesting lives, once you get to know them, and that’s a much safer assumption, that most people have boring lives, and there are one or two fascinating, interesting people, or professions or something, who are peculiar. My own feeling is that everyone lives an extraordinary life.
New speaker (female):
I think a bit different. Most of the people are interested in other people’s personal lives. That’s why people still like TV series and everything. What I liked here, because I also, it’s very interesting to know how my favourite author, or my favourite artist, or how this politician, why she’s so sadistic – maybe she had some problems in her childhood, but I feel that maybe sometimes, it’s better to get aside from the personal life, and just look at these facts, like, if we studied somebody’s professional life, maybe we shouldn’t be so much interested, like what her relationship is with wife. But on the other hand, again, I feel that, if you study all the aspects of somebody’s personality, you can better understand why a person switches to that?
Moderator:
I completely agree, and normally this method isn’t used to study one aspect of a life – it’s the whole life, so the default question is always, how did a person who lived their life like this, which is what we’ve come to tell their story like that, and the question that you asked them to start the sub-session, the interview is, basically can you tell me the story of your life? It’s wrapped up a bit, and there are different things around it, but it’s the life. She doesn’t say, your professional life or your intimate life, or your life with your dog, or whatever it would happen to be – it’s your life as a whole, and they decide what to talk about it, and sometimes what they talk about is, entirely their domestic life, and you never even find out what work … they say, I came home from work, and there’s nothing which tells you what the work was that they came home from.
Other people tell you only about their work, and not at all about their intimate life, and that tells you something about them, what they feel safe to talk about – tell me the story of your life as a whole, and they only talk about one thing, and hardly about anything else, or at one period, they talk about their personal life, and another period they talk about their political life, and then their professional life. What they choose to talk about, and what they choose to not talk about, is really interesting, particularly what people choose not to talk about, but you have to ask a whole life initial question, but in this particular case, it was about, the question was about the professional life, and so you can’t, I can’t make any assumptions, well they really didn’t want to talk about their personal life, because the assignment was professional life, but yes, I think it’s always more interesting to have all the pictures, as the person sees it, and as you reconstruct it. So, any thoughts – Bjorn, have you any thoughts about your experience of doing the exercise? (more loudly) Do you have any thoughts about your experience of this session that we’ve done?
Bjorn:
Session? Well, for me, the personal life was very abstract, so I’m not too sure if I can evaluate that really seriously. I found it very interesting, that I did.
Moderator:
What was the interest? In it, what was interesting in it, for you?
Bjorn:
It was interesting, just to participate in a session like this. For me, it was very useful, but particularly the last couple, the (?? 1:41:17), that I found very difficult to evaluate. But I think this person probably will continue to be restless, travelling about, and may have projects, maybe mostly abroad, and finding maybe, if she settles down in Norway, that she will buy a small farm up in the mountains and just disappear, I don’t know!
Moderator:
(he laughs) Okay. Well, if she does, I’ll send … oh, I was going to say, can you put your email addresses, if you have email addresses, can you put them on what you write, so if I find something difficult to understand, I can get back to you about it?
New speaker (male):
Because I have written that, everything on my folder, I could send you this with my email?
Moderator:
Yeah, that would be lovely. Do you have my email address? Do I have my email address? – yes, I do. Okay, I think we should roll it up now. Are there any points that anybody would like to raise, before we go, in the last three minutes?
New speaker (male):
I would like to ask, if you are the one to interview this person?
Moderator:
I am the one, yes.
Male speaker (continued):
Okay, so do you only, based on that data that you have to? – or the emotions that she …
Moderator:
Evoked in me? – the second, that’s to say, with this method, what the interviewer does, after each interview, you write your own field notes – what happened, how you felt about it, and then when you look at your transcript of how you ran the interview, and your hair stands on end, you said, what was going on then? – and so you write more field notes, so the responses that you have, the emotions – not just the emotions, but the thoughts, your lived experience of the whole thing, is part of your experience of the person which feeds in. Now, I may say, when I read this, I thought, “What a bastard!” It doesn’t mean she is a bastard, it just means that at that moment, I felt, what a bastard, which may tell me much more about me than about her.
She may have been acting completely naturally, but I had that reaction. So you note your emotions and your inter-subjective experiencing, but what conclusions you draw about her is another matter, and you have to go carefully. If it’s such a strong reaction, she blew her nose and I thought, “What a bastard!”, then there’s something probably rather peculiar about me, rather than about her, so you note emotions, and you note your sudden feelings, that she is this sort of person or that sort of person – that isn’t evidence. This is evidence about, well, it’s evidence for something only when you’ve thought about it, not what it means, that this is a person that you personally find incapable of sympathising with, and actually that doesn’t mean she’s an unsympathetic person – it just means that frankly, you can’t bear her, or whatever it is.
I should say, I get on very well with this person, but the point I’m making is, yes, you do monitor your own emotional reactions to the person as a whole, and to the unrolling of the interview as it happened, but you don’t say, because I felt that, or thought that, it must be true. You always think of the counter-hypothesis, and the counter-hypothesis, I felt that, so what’s wrong with me? What is it that I can’t stand, what is it that I can’t cope with? she’s dealing with higher-level bureaucrats, and I thought what a bureaucratic shit she is – well, that just tells me, I can’t deal with higher-level bureaucrats, and I’m terribly envious of somebody who can; I mean, whatever. So yes, you do note your emotional reactions, but you don’t believe them. You take it as evidence that you look at.
Male speaker (continued):
I was asking more, like, if you look at her emotions, while she is …
Moderator:
How do you see the emotions? – you think, a little emotion-ometer going on her head, as she does the interview?
Male speaker (continued):
You can see what she acts like.
Moderator:
You can see your observations, and your observations are just your observations, but they are a faulty instrument, which is yourself.
Male speaker (continued):
No, but you can say if someone is happy, or if someone is sad.
Moderator:
They may just be pretending to be happy, and pretending to be sad.
Male speaker (continued):
But that’s the counter, as you put it?
Moderator:
That’s the counter – right, so you have to evaluate that, and sometimes, yes, the emotions they show are the emotions they feel – you decide, and some other times, you may decide that they are self-conscious presentations of emotions, which are not quite, they may say, I was very happy about this, and look at you with a nice, smiling face, but certainly, somebody who has been doing acting should be able to act happy, even if they’re feeling quite complicated inside. So I mean, this is not to say, this is just to say, this is what you have to think about. The fact that the person looks happy to you, and feels happy to you, is something you notice, and then you think about it.
Actually, she’s telling me about the death of her dog. Why is she so happy about the death of this dog? Maybe she’s got a great misery, and she doesn’t want to look silly in front of me, so she says, my dog died and I’m really happy. It means I don’t have to look after the dog any more. Anyway, this is all imaginary examples, you must understand. So yes, you do know your emotions, you do know your own subjective reactions. You do register the inter-subjective something, but how you interpret it later on is, you have to think clearly about, and if you find that everybody, that everybody has, all the people you interview, you all have exactly the same emotion about, irrespective of how different they are, then really you’re just talking about yourself, and not about them. This is always a problem.
Okay, well thanks very much indeed. If you can leave your bits of paper here, or give them to me, I really appreciate you all making the time to come here, and I hope you had fun while you were here. We’ll let you know how the project continues.
I’m giving a presentation of the method as a whole, I think later on today, I’m not sure – yeah, I think I am, or maybe it’s tomorrow. No, I think it’s today actually.
Bjorn:
On this process?
Moderator:
This methodology, yes. I’m giving an overview of it all, including the particular bit of interpretation that you’re doing.
New speaker (female):
What day is it? Is it today, or tomorrow?
Moderator:
Let me just check. Isabella, am I giving my presentation today or tomorrow?
Blind panel Microanalysis, Oslo, 14 October 2016 (transcript)
part 1
Moderator:
Okay, well good morning. My name’s Tom, and I’m running this session, and some of you may not be terribly clear what the session is about, so just to put you a little bit in the picture, that I’m an expert in life history interviewing, and in the interpretation of life histories. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, please wave your arms or do something, because I won’t know that you don’t understand, and also if my voice drops, so anyway, that’s my area of expertise. I come from London, and what I’ve done is to do an interview with somebody who we’ll call Nadja, and what you are is an interpretative panel, which I hope I will say very clearly – an interpretative panel, goes through chunk by chunk through bits of the interview, and what we are looking for is, and I don’t know whether this translates well into Norwegian or not, “the lived experience of the person telling the story”.
We’ve got the sequence of the told – what’s said, this is said, then that’s said, something else is said, so that’s the sequence of the told, and what we’re trying to infer is the subjectivity of the teller – what sort of person was telling this story in this particular way? – so we’re trying to infer the subjectivity of the teller, which we don’t know, from the chunks of material of what they said in the interview, so that’s what we’ll be doing. So, we will be looking at these chunks, chunk interpretation and so on. There are probably about twelve chunks in all, or something like that, and the point, I’ll just explain why the method is like that – if anybody’s interpreted interviews in a different way, then this is different from this way, and this way says basically, a story or an interview is an improvised telling.
People are making it up as they go along. They are partly in control, and partly not in control, so the question is, when a chunk is over, the interviewee has either started a new topic, or they’re talking about the same topic in a different way, so there’s the topic, and the way a topic is talked about, and we’re trying to say, well, given that the person has changed from this topic, talked about in this way, to that topic now being talked about a different way, what can we infer about the subjectivity of the person who improvised in that way? So we’re looking at, we’re trying to see, infer a pattern of an improvising subjectivity, as they tell their story chunk by chunk, over the range of the interview, so you won’t be able to see much of the interview. The interview was about, I think, one-and-a-half hours, and then four-and-a-half hours, so it’s two sessions, so we are just taking a bit from the first interview, but I think you will find that it is quite interesting in trying to work out how do you think about situated subjectivity?
The last point I want to make is that you need to think, you’ll be putting forward hypotheses, and it’s a brainstorming session. You don’t have to be right, you just have to be interesting. You can’t know whether you’re right or not, because you aren’t inside the subjectivity of the teller – I don’t know, you don’t know, so all you can do is to put up hypotheses which are risky, about what the person might be experiencing at that particular time, when they said, what do you mean? What are they thinking about when they’re doing that? And then later chunks will come on, and tell you whether you’re starting to guess right or starting to guess wrong, and then you’ve changed your mind, so you’re constantly putting forward two sorts of hypothesis after each chunk.
The first hypothesis is about what they might be experiencing as they said that. They’ve said something, a chunk, and what might they be experiencing as they tell that chunk, and as they’ve now stopped, as it were, to say something different, so that’s the experiencing, and if you say, for example, I think, when the interviewee says, what did you mean? – that they are being puzzled. Well then, what will happen next is that the interviewer won’t understand what’s going on, and they will stop talking or something. We distinguish between experiencing hypotheses – your guess as to what the person is experiencing, and following hypotheses – what might happen next, if you’re right? So you put forward two sorts of hypotheses, the group as a whole, puts forward two sorts of hypothesis: what might be the interviewee experiencing at that time, and if I’m right, I would expect this to come up, a later chunk to look like this, so experiencing a hypothesis, and what would follow if my experiencing hypothesis is right, and usually it isn’t, so you have to change your mind about what they were experiencing, and this is how you get closer and closer to somebody’s experiencing.
Okay, that’s a bit abstract, but I just wanted to say those two things – no I didn’t, I wanted to say three things, and the third one is, that when I am telling the story, let us say you’re telling the story of your first kiss, assuming you’re engaged in some sort of kissing with somebody or other at some point, your first kiss, that actually there was the experience of the kiss at the time that you had your first kiss, which is what you’re talking about, and then your experience in the interview of telling the interviewer about it. Now, those are quite different things. Technically, we call it “then” experiencing, what did the person experience then? – and a “now” experiencing, what are they experiencing now as they tell the story of that first kiss in the interview now? – so there’s always a double experiencing. When you’re telling a story of the past, you are in the present, remembering the past, trying perhaps to recall or to hide the then experiencing, and you’re doing it from a now experiencing. If the interviewer looks sympathetic, you might say more about your first kiss. If they’re really nasty and unpleasant, you might say much less, because you’re now experiencing them as a potential hostile witness – yes, I’ve heard of the word witness this morning, a potentially hostile witness, so there’s always a double experiencing – talking about what happened then, and your experience then, and thinking about telling something about it, and not telling something else about it, now in the interview. It’s never a simple experiencing, it’s always at least double.
Okay, so what we’re going to do … could anybody who hasn’t yet put their name on this useful piece of paper, just put their first name on there.
New speaker (male):
Can I just ask, what chunk means?
Moderator:
A chunk is a bit. I will now put up a bit. A chunk is, it’s like a quotation, except, if you like, it’s a summary of a quotation. Afterwards, I can go how into we develop it, how the chunks are developed. Now, if you can’t read this from where you are, it’s because you’re sitting too far away, so if you can make sure that you can read it, because otherwise you won’t be able to comment on it. I will read it out, but you will forget it, so it’s much more sensible if you move up. There’s this theory of porcupines, which is, people need to be close enough to be in connection, but not so close that they feel deeply embarrassed by the presence of somebody else, so this is a porcupine situation. I think the philosopher, Wittgenstein, talked about the porcupines who feel cold, who gather together for warmth, but because they come too close, they feel uncomfortable, so they move away again.
So I’ll read this out, and this is a segment of an interview with Nadja. She was at Brno (? 8:07), Banja Luka (? 8:08) and Prague – there as a collective authorship of short films. Where they’ve got quotation marks, it’s a quotation from the interview – otherwise it’s my summary. An experimental pedagogic project, with former students, professors and theorists; small film scrips with everybody changing each other’s scripts, collective authorship – for example, one film was about washing clothes in the river, changing shoes with a person in the bar. She cried, “It was more than just funny”, so that’s her remembering, Nadja remembering something from that particular moment of the past, and the question is, what might she be experiencing at that time – this is chunk one. So we want two sorts of hypotheses, an experiencing hypothesis, and also a following hypothesis, what we might find later in the interview, if the experiencing hypothesis is right. Okay, so what might the person be experiencing, as they remember that? Can everyone read it, or pretend to read it? – or imagine they have read it? – or anything like that? If not, you just do have to move your chairs. Normally there are only six people doing this panel, and so you can gather round this table rather carefully, so anyway, and there are no right answers. What might somebody be feeling as they remember that, and tell that to me in an interview?
Male speaker (new):
Trying to be, to the point, so I think that she’s condensed her form.
Moderator:
Right, so she’s wanting to be precise, so she’s feeling she might not be precise, and she’s wanting to be precise, in order to overcome a lack of precision of which she might be afraid, so she’s condensing it – right, okay. Any other, a counter-hypothesis? That’s one hypothesis, and whatever hypothesis anybody puts forward, I ultimately say, well, what might be the opposite? Supposing she’s not wanting to be precise at all? We don’t know, but what would be a counter-hypothesis, a quite different hypothesis of what she’s experiencing as she says that? If you said that in an interview about your past history, what’s a quite different thing you might be feeling as you tell that? What might you be trying to do something, or make the interviewer think something, or stop the interviewer from thinking something else?
New speaker (male):
Can I say? I think that, okay, she’s contradicting the first thing here. I’d say that I wants to mislead somebody.
Moderator:
You wants to mislead somebody?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, so I start off by lying, the initial, starting with a lie.
Moderator:
Okay, well let’s pretend that’s right at the moment – it’s a hypothesis, so two is a counter-hypothesis, wanting to mislead. Well, we can’t guess at what the facts might be that she’s trying to mislead us about, but what, let us say, I don’t know whether anyone has done sociology, any sociologists? – probably not. There’s a sociologist called Goffman, who says, we are all presenting ourselves in everyday life. He’s written a book, called “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”, so here is Nadja presenting herself in one way. Supposing she’s presenting herself in order to mislead the interviewer – what in general, what does she want me as an interviewer to think, or you, as an interpreter of the interview, to think? What does she want you to not think? – not so much about the facts, but about the sort of facts? What would be a quite different sort of fact, that she doesn’t want us to think about?
New speaker (female):
I would think that she wants us to think that she’s good at collaborating.
Moderator:
Collaborating, okay, so, in fact that could be from both. If she’s being precise here about collaboration, it could be because she really is doing collaborating, or if she’s trying to mislead, she’s telling us about a collaboration that she wasn’t doing, so collaborating would be an important thesis, whether she’s telling the truth or whether she’s trying to mislead.
Okay, any other hypotheses about what she might be doing in this chunk? Let’s assume for the moment, being generous, we always start by being generous, that she’s telling the truth. What might she be feeling now about that period then? What might she be feeling now, about that period then?
New speaker (male):
The chunk means like the last ….
Moderator:
This is the chunk. This sheet of paper is the chunk. I shan’t go into the technology of how you get chunks, but let’s assume that is the chunk. she’s said all that, and she’s stopped, so we’re now trying to think, okay …
New speaker (female):
And this person said, she cried – it was more than just funny.
Moderator:
They’re quotations. Because they’re in inverted commas, they are quotations from the transcript.
Female speaker (continued):
What she said, yes?
Moderator:
It’s what she said, yes.
Female speaker (continued):
He said, she cried?
Moderator:
She said, not, sorry – she is not the person in the bar, is he, not he, the interviewer. It’s about the person, the person in the bar cried, and Nadja says, “It was more than just funny.”
New speaker (female):
I think she’s probably pretending to be very emotional and very insightful into the emotions of other people?
Moderator:
Okay, so she’s wanting to be precise, so another thing is about emotional connection. I’m not sure if connection is the right way, word, but something like that. These are very rough words. The important thing is to remember the feel of it. Whatever I write down is itself a ridiculous condensation of what anybody said. It’s like a telegram that you send. Okay, let’s look for a moment at, any quite different hypothesis, something that is not to do with wanting to be precise, or trying to mislead, but some quite different thing that she’s doing by talking in this way. What else might be going on, as she tells the story in this way, or says this story?
New speaker (male):
Maybe her own position within the group, or within the subject somehow? she says, experimental pedagogic project, or is she a fellow, or is she a teacher, or more a kind of … what she wants to say about where she is attending?
Moderator:
It doesn’t at the moment – she just says who she’s doing it with. She doesn’t say anything about herself, except that she is doing a, quote, experimental pedagogic project, so she’s using the language of somebody who knows about projects, about pedagogic projects, and about experimental pedagogic projects, so in that sense, she’s … well, I’ll call it situating self as, let’s call it a pedagogue, a teacher, because if you aren’t some sort of teacher, you wouldn’t be doing an experimental pedagogic project. she’s also situating me as somebody who would know what that meant. If I didn’t know what an experimental pedagogic project was, I wouldn’t know what she meant by that, so she’s situating me as an interviewer in a certain way.
Okay, something quite different that occurs to you about that particular segment?
New speaker (female):
Well, it appears to me that she’s a cheater and a con-woman. She’s trying to pass as a very deep person.
New speaker (female):
she’s using her experimental pedagogic project, and making her, that it was more than funny, just pretending there’s some depth inside of what she did.
Moderator:
So you don’t trust her at all?
Female speaker (continued):
No, no!
Moderator:
It’s called the “hermeneutic of suspicion”, in which you suspect everything, as it were. Okay, that’s very good. Any final points, before we leave this chunk? Sorry, can people say their name, because I know that, I don’t know any of your names. I have got them on a bit of paper which is somewhere else – oh there, thank you.
New speaker (male):
The thing is, because she …
Moderator:
This is one, two, three.
Male speaker (continued):
She talks about (?? 17:57) authorship, like the third part could be either, like something which is written together, or it could like, lots of different people, so it cannot necessarily stand, what she means, she can just like, kind of, list, or summarise, like different chunks, of like the different authors.
Moderator:
And if she’s doing that, if she is just giving a list of different things, what would you say about the subjectivity that does that?
Male speaker (continued):
You cannot really … okay, her subjectivity would be just like, wrapping up, or like listing, or making a list of authors, so she doesn’t say so much about it. She doesn’t necessarily say so much about her, or it’s very, like slippery, like you can interpret it in lots of ways, if it’s her, or somebody else saying that.
Moderator:
I’m going to call it “list-making objectivist”, in the sense that – sorry, these are my words, but they’re just for me to be able to shorten it down, it’s something about what it is out there, she’s not saying very much about herself.
Male speaker (continued):
Or not necessarily, it depends, you don’t have the context.
Moderator:
No, you don’t have the context, so the point is, context will build up as we go on with the later chunks, so let’s imagine, let’s go through each one of these, and put down at least one following hypothesis. There could be any number of following hypothesis. A following hypothesis is the next chunk that I put up, or later chunks that I put up, so if she’s wanting to be precise, what would she then go onto say? What would the next bit be? There’s no right answer to any of these, but just, it’s so that you can start imagining a type of person. It’s called empathy.
New speaker (male):
I think she might want to hurry to a conclusion as early as possible, as something that she could conclude, and sort of get to another seminar, or something like that.
Moderator:
She’s not – go slowly. This is an interview, so she’s not, unless you’re saying she’s in a hurry to finish the interview, which I don’t think – you’re saying something else, which I haven’t understood.
Male speaker (continued):
I’m sorry, I was suspecting that this, I’m sort of suspecting of both those positions that occurs there, but when both are wanting to be precise and misleading, so this could be the same thing, almost.
Moderator:
Okay, but let’s take one at a time. Let’s just take the wanting to be precise. She wants to be precise, and she wants to bring something or other to an end. Is it, she wants to bring the interview to an end, or she wants to bring this story to an end? What is it that she wants? Spell the things out.
Male speaker (continued):
I think that she wants to bring the story to an end.
Moderator:
Okay, so if that’s right, then there’ll be a new story. That would be the prediction. If I’m right in that she wants to bring the story to an end, then she would go on to a new story, or at least not say any more about this. Okay, let’s try a few others. If she wants to mislead, and she’s a con-woman, what would she do next? What would be the following hypothesis from that?
New speaker (female):
Well, I also agree with you, that either, (?? 21:37) has to be a con-woman, but definitely she would like to explain what it means, it was more than just funny, so she would elaborate more.
Moderator:
He would talk more about that?
Female speaker (continued):
Of course, because she wants to be precise, or, she is a con-woman, then she has the advance story, but she works more on, what is this, more than just funny? she’s displaying more details.
Moderator:
More details about the event – okay, that’s another …
Female speaker (continued):
And also about the emotional outcome, not only funny, but maybe sad, or maybe, I don’t know.
Moderator:
So emotional side of story, okay.
New speaker (female):
I don’t know what a con-woman is?
Moderator:
A con-woman is a confidence trickster, somebody who tries to get money or something from you by pretending to be somebody she isn’t. Thomas Mann wrote, “Felix Krull – the Confidence Trickster”, but anyway. Okay, let’s imagine she’s trying to situate herself as a pedagogue in the interview. She’s doing something in the interview, not so much remembering the past. If that’s what she’s doing, what sort of chunk would you expect to happen next, from somebody who’s situating herself to me as a pedagogue, doing an experimental pedagogic project? What’s the sort of thing she might say next?
New speaker (female):
Maybe you feel that you mastered something, make you feel that you’re very good at something?
Moderator:
Making me feel? – so she’s making me feel good. How might she do that?
Female speaker (continued):
Making you feel good at.
Moderator:
Okay, perhaps at what, at interviewing? As far as she’s concerned, I am the interviewer, and so the only thing she knows, so she might say, wow, this is really interesting. I’ve never had such an interesting thought before, and it’s all thanks to you.
(they laugh)
It’s not very likely, but you know! And finally, she’s a list-making objectivist. she’s just listing things, that’s what she does. If that’s what she does, what would the next thing she do be? – another list! That’s my hypothesis. I’m allowed to join in from time to time, so I’m going to put down, another list. Okay, so there are attempts to understand what she might be experiencing, and what she might be trying to do in the interview, and we’ve got, in green, some hypotheses about what might follow next. Now, what we need is somebody who’s very good at using sticky tape to stick this somewhere. We can play hide and seek around this thing at some other time.
Okay, where were we, two? What was the … bread. So we now move to the second chunk, the second bit of thing she said. I’m gradually going to learn this technology. That’s much nicer. Okay, so she then goes on to talk about her decision to return to Oslo. She spent many years away from Oslo. She wanted to see her brother, her sister and her parents, “wants a job or assets” in order to go back. She applies for one job and doesn’t get it. Then she gets a job as a study co-ordinator in the Academy of Fine Arts for the Masters programme, and becomes the Masters study co-ordinator for two years. It’s well paid, deciding with others, a rich experience. It’s more, “nuanced” than her English or Czech environment, and she says, “I had different … “ – that shouldn’t be “I” actually, she doesn’t say that. She refers to herself as having different competencies from the normal study co-ordinator, and it was a good return.
If you can’t see, you just have to move up. I’d like to put an enormous magnifying glass in front of the thing, but I can’t do it. I’ll read it once more: The decision to return to Oslo, he’d been many years away from Oslo, away from her brother, her sister, her parents, but she wanted a job or an asset in order to go back. She applies for one job and doesn’t get it. She gets a job as a study co-ordinator in the Academy of Fine Arts for the Masters programme, and is the Masters study co-ordinator for two years. It’s well paid, deciding with others, making decisions with others, a rich experience. It’s more “nuanced” than the English or Czech environment, and she had different competencies, or competence, different from the normal study co-ordinator – a good return. So if we just look at the hypothesis we had here, she wants to be precise – well, she’s not moved, well, she’s moved to a different story, so a sense, the hypothesis that, she’s said what she’s got to say, and she’s going onto something quite different, is sort of accepted by two.
She doesn’t give more details about that event. The side of collaboration, it’s interesting – is sort of connected up again, because here it’s about deciding with others, so obviously all this may be, if we take the con-woman hypothesis, we just go through saying, I don’t believe a word of it, through all the chunks, but let’s pretend for the moment that we might believe a little bit of it, that she has got a little more emotional, in the sense of, she’s talking about wanting to go back to Oslo, wanting to see her family more, and she’s talking about collaboration, so this, not about the emotional side of that story, but about the emotional side of something. Does she make me feel good as an interviewer – no, I’m afraid I can’t see anything there. Maybe she’s trying very hard, but it doesn’t work, and then is she making a list? – I don’t know, is she making a list?
It doesn’t feel very much like a list, it feels more like a narrative, so I’m just going to put, leave that as a question mark. So a slight, let’s start again on here. The decision to return to Oslo, study co-ordinator at the Masters level for two years. What can we say about that? What’s she experiencing, as she says this? Imagine she’s saying it to you, and you are trying to say, what is this person experiencing, as they tell me this story? This is what it’s all about. Well, I’ll throw in a few, just for fun. So the first one, she’s experiencing a sort of pride, or perhaps a sense of self-worth. It was a good return, a rich experience, (?? 30:11) others. she’s been able to get back. she’s managed to achieve something. she’s got back to Oslo, and she’s got a good job which is interesting, and therefore let’s call it pride, or a sense of self-worth.
New speaker (male):
Maybe a bit of relief? she might have had some, like (?? 30:32) her return.
Moderator:
Okay, so that’s another possibility – it’s relief at what?
Male speaker (continued):
From the stress of not having a job?
Moderator:
Relief at having a job. She says, it’s well paid – it’s one of the things that she mentions. Relief at having a job, WP for well paid. Any quite different things she might be feeling? Remember she’s telling the story of what she felt then, and she’s talking about it now, so any other thoughts?
New speaker (female):
He also feels the need to explain why she leaves the more experimental environment.
Moderator:
Right, explaining, ex, explaining – could you say that again? – feel to explain what?
Female speaker (continued):
The reason why she leaves the more experimental … ?
Moderator:
That was the past thing, so is that here as well?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, because she’s explaining it. she’s kind of …
Moderator:
Explaining her experimentalism.
Female speaker (continued):
she’s turning to the family values, and leaving behind something different.
Moderator:
Okay, I’m going to make that a separate one – turn to family values. Anything else?
New speaker (female):
She might be sad, because she might be leading into something happening after that, that is not as happy as that, so she might be sad at the moment, remembering a period that was good, because she’s getting more confident in the situation, and is now going to open up for something that is more, harder to talk about, and what people very often do before that is to say, well, before that, my life was great, and I was handling it, to present themselves as stronger.
Moderator:
Okay, so this is an increasing happiness before I tell you the bad news!
Female speaker (continued):
It can be! – presenting itself as, and somebody handling life before this happened.
Moderator:
Okay, happiness leading to later bad news, but you’re not, or are you saying that this itself is the bad news? Is this the bad news, or this is still climbing the mountain?
Female speaker (continued):
You said about the now experience and the then experience. The now experience is like, being not unhappy maybe at the moment, but knowing that she’s going to talk about something that is hard to talk about, instead of presenting good news.
Moderator:
she’s setting up some good news first before some bad news still to come.
New speaker (male):
He started with, like, fundamentally questioning her credibility, so everything is the opposite of what she says, so everything is already the opposite, so we should always write the opposite of everything we are writing.
Moderator:
Right, well, it takes a long time to do that, because if it’s just the opposite, I’ll just put a line.
Male speaker (continued):
One is the opposite version.
Moderator:
Wait a second – hold it, hold it, minus to everything positive.
Male speaker (continued):
And she would have to analyse, like her motive, so we can put different clues together, like within those sentences, and just wait, how they add up, and describe those motives.
Moderator:
If we had a lot of time, we could certainly do that – we don’t, so I take your point, and it’s a really important one. What we will do, or what can you do, is to bear in mind that actually the opposite of everything she says may be true, and we have to wait for some evidence to show that this is now more likely than not. At the moment, it’s just a general hypothesis – she may be lying through her teeth, which is always possible, but there’s, as yet, no evidence for it in the telling of the story. When we come up to the first bit of evidence, that she is lying through her teeth, or misleading us like anything, then we can start going back and reconsidering it. At the moment, just imagine there’s another sheet of paper in green, which says minus to everything positive on the right-hand side, and we’ll wait for some evidence, a further block to actually suggest that, and there may be something like that, which will be really interesting, or there may not, in which case we’ve saved a lot of writing time, instead of putting the opposite, the opposite, everywhere.
Male speaker (continued):
But I want to say another thing, because I said that only because of something, I didn’t find any hint of this as you just said, in the text, like which (?? 35:22) kind of with suspicion? It’s just because, we start asking that way, or like kind of … like I saw in the first part of the text, like that we’re already questioning her position, like strongly, or her credibility, and this is already kind of shifting in a really extreme …
Moderator:
No, sure – paranoia is something that we all enjoy, so all I’m saying is, hold onto your paranoia, that everything is the opposite of what she says, but don’t let’s waste time spelling it out in each item, until we say, hey, well, after this next chunk, I really am starting – it’s not just a possibility that she’s misleading and lying, here is some rather clear evidence. Right, then it makes worthwhile spending a lot of time on it. Until then, as I say, just imagine a minus to everything that’s said here, and that will be ready for, suddenly, when people are paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t being persecuted, as somebody else said.
Any final thoughts about what the person is experiencing as they say that? I’ll read it again – a decision to return to Oslo. She’d been many years away from her brother, sister and parents. She wants a job or assets in order to go back. She applies for one job and doesn’t get it. She gets a job, a job as a study co-ordinator at the Masters level. She’s there for two years. It’s well paid, it’s doing deciding with others, a rich experience. It’s more “nuanced” than the English or Czech environment, and she had different competencies from the normal study co-ordinator, and it was a good return, or it brought about a good return. Any final thoughts about what she might be experiencing? What we’ve said, is some sense of pride or self-worth; relief at having a job. she’s explaining her experimentalism, she’s turning to family values, and she’s telling a happy story, preparing for bad news to come. Any other hypotheses about what’s going on as she tells this story? Sorry, can you just say your name?
Anna:
Yeah, my name is Anna. I’m just thinking that maybe she’s trying to pretend to be happy with this job, or pretend to, like you were saying, she might be a con-woman, but also not so much a con-woman, but trying to convey a sense of strength or success – yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, because to me it doesn’t make sense. Someone that’s very interested in experimental …
Moderator:
Pedagogy?
Anna:
Yeah, why would she be so happy in a job like this?
Moderator:
That’s very interesting, okay, so, well two things might be true: one is, that she’s happy in both sorts of job. People can be happy in different sorts of jobs for quite different reasons. One is that she was very happy in that job, and is really unhappy in this one, and is therefore trying to pretend that she’s happier than she was, and the other is that she was very unhappy in that job, and she’s really happy in this one, so I think it’s very good that you’ve said there is a bit of a problem – these are quite different sorts of jobs, and the question is then, we could interpret that declared, if you like, satisfaction with both in a number of different ways. I’m going to put, “hiding? – happiness, sadness, in one job or another”. I used to have a much longer arm, but it got shorter. That’s a question to be borne – yeah, sorry.
New speaker (female):
For me, in an interview, you can talk about something that happened, more in the past. For me, that happened first, and then this is what she’s doing now, but that is, she’s telling the story of her life, but she’s presenting something that is closer to her life by now. I just perceive it differently than you.
Anna:
It’s not chronological.
Moderator:
Right, hold it a second. It’s perfectly true that people in an interview can jump, and tell a story of the now, and then go back, or whatever it is, and a lot can be read out of that – why do they suddenly go back, etcetera? Just as a matter of fact in this interview, this is the real sequence in real time, so that’s a very good thing to bear in mind, that people do jump around their history in all sorts of funny ways, but as a matter of fact in this case, this is not the case. This did come after that – she did do the experimental pedagogy with collective films.
New speaker (female):
And then she went to Oslo?
Moderator:
And then she did that, yeah, so that happens to be what the real sequence is, but it’s a very good point to think about. The fact that something comes later in the interview doesn’t always mean that it came later I the life.
New speaker (male):
But the now thing also is, I think that she is sort of gathering strength, in a way, for the next perspective, that is sort of, have to move onto.
Moderator:
Is this a version of the … where was it? – happiness to later bad news? – or are you thinking she might be preparing a different sort of thing?
Male speaker (continued):
I think it’s just to see the structuring of her outlay, of the chronology, or the dramatic outlay of her telling. I think this might be a sequence where you want to gather some strength, talking about …
Moderator:
Gather some strength? – but then this is the sort of, this is a strength-gathering story, albeit for some thing that she’s going to need more strength later on. she’s going to need that strength later on. One sort of strength is, well, there’s later bad news, and that’s one thing. Is there some other sort of … she’s gathering strength for something quite different, maybe not bad news?
Male speaker (continued):
For the situation, actually just being in an interview situation, maybe.
Moderator:
Right, so later bad news, or later, a new situation.
New speaker (female):
Or not exactly bad news, but something that … that could be perceived as worse than this one, because she seems to build herself as a successful person, just to make an impression, because maybe later she’s going to say, okay, and then I quit, and I decided just to be a homeless person, so she wants to somehow persuade the listener that she has had a career, so she wants to judge herself as a successful person in order to make it easier for herself and for the interviewer, to listen later than what she subjectively chose, is not that objective, is successful.
Moderator:
Success before objective …
Female speaker (continued):
Because that’s what she’s doing here, describing herself as a successful person, and it seems a preparation, yes.
Moderator:
Yeah, we’re not going to be taken in.
New speaker (male):
But except rather than to the interviewer, I was thinking, how she sort of constitutes herself within herself, rather than to the interviewer, so she might be talking to herself.
Moderator:
Yes, people very often are talking to themselves, and they forget they’re being interviewed. They’re really talking to themselves, and there happens to be an interviewer in the room.
New speaker (female):
So maybe not, herself, she’s building herself, like a better person, more successful, and she’s persuading herself that what she did is not that bad.
Moderator:
Okay, well let’s hope she’s successful. Let’s do a few following hypotheses – if it’s a story of pride and self-worth, what might follow, if she’s told this story, this is what she’s done so far, or this is the telling of the story so far? Relief at having a job, explaining her experimentation, a turn to family values – well, it could be, she will now only talk about her family – that’s a possibility. I don’t think it’s worth going into too much detail. Let’s leave it like that. I’m aware of the time, and I want to get through a number of chunks, so there’s always, you can actually quite often spend half-an-hour on one of these chunks, and it’s very interesting, but there isn’t really time.
New speaker (male):
I have one question.
Moderator:
Is it on this?
Male speaker (continued):
On this.
Moderator:
Do I need to write it down on a piece of paper?
Male speaker (continued):
You’re always suggesting this is a job interview, but you didn’t say that. You said this is a job interview.
Moderator:
This isn’t a job interview, this is a life history interview – nothing to do with the job.
Male speaker (continued):
So a life history, because we are always arguing that she wants to convince us of anything. I think in a life history interview, like, wouldn’t there be also, what is the motivation of this person, to put all the effort into putting …it seems like, very off …
Moderator:
In a job interview, you could understand it a bit more.
Male speaker (continued):
In a job interview, that would happen maybe, but in a life interview?
Anna:
But still in a life interview, I think it’s like, you’re always … first, you try to give, like coherence to the narrative, to the story, and life is not always like that, and your mind and your memories are not always like in a sequence, or logically, so probably there will be some … blanks, and then, the second thing is that, when you’re being interviewed, you have to present yourself, so you are not too, you won’t say everything in an objective way, because you can’t. You’re a person, you think, you know your mistakes, you know your virtues, and there are things that people always want to hide, and things that they want to show.
New speaker (male):
I think, for example, (?? 46:09) she’s already, like the sort of rhetoric of mistrust, which I think for a life interview, is not adequate.
Moderator:
Well, I think we’re getting into a contextual problem to some extent, which we can’t necessarily do very much with.
Male speaker (continued):
You think (?? 46:20) on that information?
Moderator:
Well, at the moment, one of the things that happens in the particular method of interviewing that this is from, this is a life history interview, it’s not for a job or anything like that, and so that’s just a reality about the interaction. The second thing is, yes, people very often are doing psychological work for themselves, by actually allowing themselves, or ask to be interviewed, or asking to be interviewed, or whatever it is, and you have to think about that as well. I wouldn’t go, at the moment, what can I usefully say? I can say that, as far as I know about Nadja’s real life, this is not telling untruths about her life. She did do these things, she’s not somebody from Mexico inventing a story about an imaginary Norwegian. This is pretty true – the objectives facts in here are true to the objective facts as far as I know them, of Nadja’s life, and therefore it’s not worthwhile going very far down the hypothesis, if she’s inventing everything.
I did once have a student who invented everything. She represented herself as a member of the Irish Republican Army, when the IRA was very active in England, blowing things up. Actually, I heard from a real member of the IRA, that she had never had anything to do with the IRA. She was just trying it on, to see what would happen and enjoying it, but this is not the case of this. Although the values, when she says she was happy with it, she may have been sad, or she may have been happy then, but sad now – all that’s perfectly possible, but the objective record that she’s giving is quite a good objective record, which you can’t know, but I can. Of course, I may be lying through my teeth too, but in that case, it’s hardly worth proceeding very far.
Let’s try the third chunk. So she talks about being the study co-ordinator, trying to build up the courses, promoting student self-organisation possibilities and budget possibilities, “working on the structures.” One shouldn’t be teaching students directly, but … she sees herself as “promoting different ways of thinking about studies”, which led to trips to Beirut, Khartoum, Alexandria and Cairo, not Paris, New York and London. She said, “I found it very stimulating to be in the place I’m from, and to work from there.” At the same time, she talks about doing her own work, and applying frameworks. I’ve been keeping in touch with the Norwegian arts scene, and participating in shows. I received a working grant. I applied for a research fellowship to do my own work, “to do my own work but with institutional resources.” My first application failed, and then – sorry, her first application failed and then she applied again, and got the research fellowship, so this is how she is continuing the story. If we go back to this, we could say that, is she hiding? – oh, happiness, and later bad news. Well, if it’s happiness and later bad news, she’s still delaying the bad news, as far as we can see, because this still seems more like a success story than a failure story, so maybe it’s going to come later, but at the moment it isn’t there.
Explaining her experimentalism – that’s the trouble with different-coloured pens. Let’s go through it – pride and self-worth, well, this continues to be a story of having something to be proud about, or feeling self-worth about, so we’ll tick that from three. Relief at having a job – it doesn’t particularly say that. Explaining her experimental – she’s not so much explaining it, but continuing her experimentalism, because she’s helping students organise these study trips to go to, not to New York, Paris and London, but to Khartoum, Alexandria and Beirut, so I think, not so much explaining, but maybe continuing. Roman iii, turning to family values, not much trace of family values.
Happiness for the later bad news – not yet. Who knows, we’ve got lots of chunks to come. Is she hiding happiness or sadness in one job or another? Well, in a study co-ordinator job, she seems to be quite pleased. It doesn’t sound as though it’s an unhappy period, if I read it out again – promoting student self-organisation, promoting different ways of thinking about studies, very stimulating to work from there, and be in the place I’m from – so that all sounds quite positive, so there may be sadness about the past, but it doesn’t feel terribly much like sadness about the present, and again the success before the objective non-success, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s not supported by the third chunk. So what can we say about … where are we, time-wise? Okay, we’ve still got time. What’s she experiencing, as she tells that bit of the story, about how he, what she did as a study co-ordinator, promoting this, that and the other, and continuing to do her own work, and then getting a research fellowship?
New speaker (female):
I don’t know if I’m answering exactly what you were asking, but it gives me, all of this gives me the impression that this person used to be, like, this is a very structured person.
Moderator:
A very structured person?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, but she likes to experiment with things, to have new experiences, but at some point, she got tired of this, like at the beginning maybe she was like, in a kind of adventure, professionally, and then she wanted to come back to her land, to her family, and she is trying to innovate from a safe place.
Moderator:
Innovate from a safe place?
New speaker (female):
Yeah, to change the system from within.
Previous speaker (female):
Like more relaxed, yeah. She was looking for stability.
Moderator:
Okay, well … yeah?
New speaker (male):
I disagree, a little bit. I think she put a lot of effort into going into the world, and trying to understand the world, and now she’s come back, and her effort, of getting experience, is paying off. She’s getting a position, she’s at a goal, and she’s also having fulfilment, she can use her experience. She has something to give.
Moderator:
Right, so in a sense, it’s not a movement, a rushing back to somewhere safe? There’s an agreement, she got new experiences, and your hypothesis is, she’s moving back to somewhere safe, and yours is, that actually she’s now cashing in, so to speak, or using these new experiences for some more general purpose, or something.
New speaker (female):
He enriched her life, and her experience is, she is enriching the situation that she’s going back to, and that is enriching him. It’s like a growth and a fulfilment, and she’s feeling fulfilled. she’s happy that they’re going to Cairo instead of New York.
Moderator:
Sorry, to make a point – the idea here is not to decide on anything, but to put forward different hypothesis, so when two people, I mean I love it when people put forward counter-hypothesis, because that’s when it gets interesting. We don’t have to decide on them, we just have to notice that they’re there, and they’re suggesting different things to different people, and later on we may eventually, but probably not in this panel, come to think, well, I think there’s a bit more of this than of that, or maybe they can be combined or whatever, but this is brainstorming, this is under brainstorming rules, in which you don’t criticise other people’s ideas, you just put forward your own instead. They’re very often triggered by other people’s ideas, but they’re not a criticism, they’re a different idea. So enrich for new experiences, enrich self and maybe others, and it’s not a question of rushing back to safety. There’s no way of knowing, we just put them both down. Sorry, you wanted to say something?
New speaker (female):
Yes, this sort of belongs to your hypothesis. I just get the feeling she wants to change the system from within, or at least.
Moderator:
Okay, so we’ll go back from, one is …
Female speaker (continued):
Like there is a decision on how to try to change the system, and it is through the institution.
Moderator:
From within.
New speaker (male):
It can also have been very useful, so that they have headhunted her for new positions, so they were ready for her, and her perspectives on teaching.
Moderator:
I think that’s useful, but get back to her lived experience. It’s hard enough to work out why she herself, how she experiences it, rather than worry about the them, if we don’t have any data on at all, but I mean, it’s a very good point.
Male speaker (continued):
He found this place.
Moderator:
Okay. We could put, found her place, because “they”, whoever they may be, may be wanting something like her around, so one and then two.
New speaker (female):
I just feel like she makes a point, of still having those kind of experimental pedagogical views, like that she’s (?? 57:04), that she’s saying, I’m still a radical person, within this precision, so she’s presenting herself as someone still, like politically engaged, and she’s kept the same views.
Moderator:
So in a sense, this is the sort of experimentalism of this, she’s continuing it?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah.
Moderator:
She’s developing her experimentalism, if you like.
Female speaker (continued):
Also it seems important to her that we know that she didn’t give up her former views.
Moderator:
Three, goes on, and she tells us, well, she tells me. Any other quite different things about what she’s sort of experiencing, as she tells this story? Okay, let’s see what … well, she might go on, if this enriched, these are structural hypotheses, which are sort of looking over the thing as a whole. They’re not about, the next chunk, but like, what general structural ideas are we starting to have about it. One is that she has, she’s very structured, she looked or looks for new experiences, but now she wants to innovate from a safe place, and this one, which doesn’t have the same sort of insecurity thing or anxiety thing, enriched from her past experience, she’s now going on to try and enrich the self and others. She wants to change the system from within, and she’s … I can’t even read what I’ve written here. It’s about experimentation – she wants to know that she continues to be innovating or experimenting, and so she says that. She gives examples of it.
New speaker (female):
Or at least she wants to present herself to others, to whoever is interviewing her, that way.
New speaker (female):
And she’s presenting herself as a persistent person, because I think twice she has said that she didn’t get something, but she pursued it and she did it. Do we then need to say that she did it again?
Moderator:
A persistent person, right.
New speaker (female):
Do you want me to put up?
Moderator:
That would be lovely, thank you very much.
New speaker (male):
She might also say that she’s missing room for, or maybe she’s missing, they’re not letting her do the things the way she wants to do them, and they’re not asking why she does it, only if she’s done it, or not.
Moderator:
This is where I have a fight with Sellotape! My waste paper basket at home is full of Sellotape, that’s wrapped round itself. A bit like in fairy stories, you touch the magic goose, and then you can’t get your fingers away. Now, I’ve done it on the wrong side.
Now, this is, there is a chronological problem about this, which I’ll tell you. she’s talking about going to a Swiss Saas-Fee, art health and society programme, a kind of summer school.
New speaker (female):
I can’t hear what you are saying.
Moderator:
You can’t? I will say it very loudly, in a dramatic voice. I take your point completely, I’m sorry. A Swiss Saas-Fee (EGS) art health and society programme, a kind of summer school, and she talks about that. It’s a practice-based approach, not big names, theory and philosophy; an adult learning group from all over the world. It’s a different use of the arts, “more like therapy” – low skill, high sensitivity, and quite interesting old people, still developing people and ideas from the Sixties, ways of learning by doing all the time, and then thinking, and then sitting in circles, and being challenged in a very different way, in a more spontaneous way. I’ll tell you that again – the Swiss Saas-Fee (EGS) art health and society programme, a kind of summer school, a practice-based approach, not big names, theory and philosophy; adult learning group from all over the world; a different use of the arts, more like therapy – low skill, high sensitivity, and quite interesting people, old people, still developing people and ideas from the Sixties, “ways of learning by doing, all the time, and then thinking, and then sitting in circles, and being challenged in a very different way, in a more spontaneous way.”
New speaker (female):
More spontaneous than what?
Moderator:
Exactly – I don’t know.
New speaker (female):
Was she the teacher there?
Moderator:
No, she was a student. I think she went to it twice, she went to it one summer, and then the following summer, she went to it again. I might be wrong about that, it might just be once. Very often, you find in interviews, people don’t make clear what actually happened, so all you can get is, how they feel about it and how they think about it. Okay, so if we look at that, we go back to this … she’s continuing to acquire experience. She’s going to a quite different sort of thing from a conventional arts school – she’s going to something rather different, a different use of the arts, more like therapy, low skill, not for high skilled artists, but low skill, high sensitivity, quite interesting people, learning by doing, not by giving, or listening to lectures, so in a sense, the experimentation goes on, so that’s four, yes, that’s that one.
A persistent person – nothing very much on that. Well, she’s continuing, unless we disbelieve what she’s saying, she’s continuing to acquire new experiences – that’s the main thing. I don’t know whether, talking about old people from the Sixties having good ideas, whether that’s a return to family values, and the three-generation family, but it might be. We’ll put it in just for fun – iv, a terrible shock that old people might have some good ideas. It might come to her as a really horrible thing. While situating the self as a pedagogue – oh I see … okay, I don’t think there’s anything much there. Alright, so there is Saas-Fee, what is she doing, as she’s saying all this? What’s she feeling? What’s she trying to get us to feel? What’s her lived experience?
New speaker (female):
I feel there’s still a very strong focus on the community and the collaborative, and continuous.
Moderator:
Right, community and collaboration.
New speaker (female):
Yeah, I agree, but I also think there is something of individuality, that is showing that she’s doing something outside of the system. She’s not going back to her family and her background, she’s not going to the school system, that this is something that is, in a way, she is enjoying something that is not considered being, for everybody else, so in a way she’s showing that she’s doing something on her own in a way.
Moderator:
Right, non-conventional, on her own. Any quite different hypotheses about what’s going on here?
New speaker (male):
I think she is sort of bringing this experience forth as something that has a political, she will use it for placing herself politically, so she loves (? 1:06:35) to see her own alternative (?? 1:06:43)
Moderator:
Sorry, there’s somebody unloading rubbish next door. Placing herself politically – can you spell that out a bit?
Male speaker (continued):
I think that she has other motives for going to this summer school than her peers, so she’s in another position, on the surface of this, then I think that she’s preparing his, like, in the interview, her thoughts on art and practice.
Moderator:
Art and practice, so she’s placing herself politically, and you’re expecting, following hypothesis, thoughts on art and practice will come next, in some later chunk. Anybody else got any thoughts about what’s happening here? Anything surprising? What’s happening to your sense of this person? So, I was just turning to you, to say, what is it you would like to say?
New speaker (female):
It’s the first time I doubt her story. Until now, I’ve believed everything, without doubt, and now I’m thinking, either like her, that she’s there, not for the motive of joining in the group of low skill, high emotion, but she’s there to understand what they’re at, and how to become a better teacher, either that or that she’s really lacking some things in her life, because why on earth is she going back to low skill, high emotion? It sounds like her high skills and her emotions didn’t join in.
Moderator:
So, she’s doing repair work, or she’s …
Female speaker (continued):
Either, it’s the first time … the doubt or me is, either she’s learning something from the experience of seeing this low skill, high emotion, or she’s doing some (?? 1:08:57) work on her own account, being very private.
Moderator:
Learning …
New speaker (female):
So you feel she’s depressed, and hiding it?
Previous speaker (female):
Exactly, either, or a (?? 1:09:15) feeling that she’s been too clever at climbing, and that now she has to do some repair work, either that or (?? 1:09:25).
Moderator:
Get away from clever climbing.
New speaker (female):
No, but this can also be seen as clever climbing.
Moderator:
Different, even cleverer climbing?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, cleverer.
Moderator:
Cleverer climbing.
New speaker (male):
But like, to consider the context we have so far, that she’s not having to impress anybody else, that she’s like a normal person who is not kind of, also has to, has like a personal problem where she has to convince herself of being something she’s not, so I would just say, and not like a statement of what I’m projecting, so that, even if that is still a little bit the task. I guess what we can see from it is more, I would say, her motive is to unfold like different spectrums of her personality, and I think this is just like a way of laying out … it’s like a record of different facets of her. I guess one, what she understands, or where she has the project, is to work to a philosophy, and she thinks, and is something that’s more related to practice.
Moderator:
Okay, so she’s rebalancing – in a sense, she’s rebalancing her activities?
Male speaker (continued):
Well, she’s kind of trying to show, or give a full spectrum.
Moderator:
Go for full spectrum.
Male speaker (continued):
Because like this other motivations are just like suggesting that he, something we cannot know.
Moderator:
Right, okay, and when you say, going for a full spectrum, is a spectrum aspects of activities to do, or parts of the self to develop, or both?
Male speaker (continued):
I would say, if there’s a prejudice to (?? 1:11:48), which is a very secluded place, and has a secluded context, but she’s already counter-acting the thought of, like knowledge she might suggest the interview, she has about the place, so she can’t access by saying, okay, or makes it more of a façade, so it’s not about the names, because (?? 1:12:07), they are like, this kind of, a little bit of, questionable institutions, but they pay for a famous philosopher to come there, so she kind of suggests like, that’s also a context, which, I don’t know who has it here, like when you know that context, so you know, okay, she wants to make sure that she’s not going for famous names that this questionable institution pays for, but she goes there for something, which is …
Moderator:
It’s practice – she says, practice-based, not (?? 1:12:42) theory and philosophy.
Male speaker (continued):
Something more serious or more decent.
Moderator:
Okay, in that sense, it’s a sort of, like an antidote to something she disapproves of?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, she goes to the place where she knows there are a certain kind of crutches (? 1:13:02) or judgements about a place, so she has kind of to distinguish herself by saying, okay, that was like, very down-to-earth. What she doesn’t say is like, how much (?? 1:13:16).
Moderator:
Down-to-earth, not elite – I shall put, just for fun.
New speaker (female):
And isn’t that all connected to the point, like (?? 1:13:27) made, about the political?
Moderator:
Right, we haven’t yet got to her being very political in any sense, but it’s interesting, the different use of the arts, more like therapy, and so clearly there’s some sense of, arts can be used in some way which isn’t like therapy, whatever that is, and it can be used in a way which is more like therapy, and we have yet to quite know what that would mean.
New speaker (female):
But it’s also, I’ve observed that I’ve been imagining things, that maybe she didn’t say? It’s her returning, and getting this nice position. I have presumed that she had acquired a high skill, so this no skill, high emotion, is what makes me (?? 1:14:25). It’s maybe, I had just, it was my fantasy, her high skill. Maybe she never said that.
Moderator:
Maybe she had never had any skills at all? – what the hell, yes. Okay, hold it a second – I just want to correct one thing, which is, she says, more like therapy – low skill, high sensitivity, which isn’t quite the same thing as high emotion. If I want high emotion, I go to an encounter group, and spend half-an-hour screaming my life out into a pillow. This is not, she talks about low skill, by which I think she means artistic skill, and high sensitivity, so it’s a slightly different polarity from the one that you had in your mind, but yes, we do start reading things, and it’s a bit unfair because I haven’t told you about her early career, and therefore you don’t know. In fact, she is going on doing exhibitions, individual and group exhibitions, pretty constantly throughout the previous 15 years, let’s say, so she has sufficient skill to be exhibited quite frequently, and presumably has sufficient skill to be appointed as a research fellow or whatever.
Whatever’s wrong with her, if that’s what it is, it’s not that she hasn’t got any skill. This is a different skill. It’s low artistic skill, but actually the people who go there, she says are, oh, it doesn’t say there, but actually, are therapists, teachers, and a whole variety of people who are not professional artists, and that’s what she means by low skill. They are not there because they are, because they have high artistic skills, but they do have other skills which are very high in their own way, which is not that typically of a professional artist, but sorry, I didn’t put that down, and therefore there’s not the slightest reason why you should know. I think we probably need to stop in about fifteen minutes for lunch, if that’s alright. If that’s terrible, or if you have to go for lunch straight away, I’m sure …
I’ll put this up. We’ll do this chunk, and then we’ll … thank you very much. So, accepted by the Oslo programme, good news; well-funded, they employ you. Two years with supervisors, you develop your work for the project you applied for. My project is work/work. The process is of producing art, and is it working, or a different type of working? The more demand on people to be creative and invent their own working life. Popular at the time, the new creative class, art is being caught up by the entrepreneur basically. Sorry, this is my rather confused summary, which now I read it out, I’m not sure it means anything at all, but anyway, that’s what I wrote down. What you do, what you have to do for the two years, you need to map out a budget for a deadline and an exhibition place. It’s not like an academic PhD with a thesis, but criteria from the arts, a practice-based thing. The Minister of Education is allowing ten or twelve years to build up how this third cycle, education with in the arts, on the principles of artistic practice. You don’t have to make an exhibition in the end, but, “you do have to have some reflection on your activities and artistic process.” So, she’s telling us about the programme that she was enrolled in, and what her project is, which is work, work, work, or perhaps just work, work – I can’t remember. So, any thoughts about that? I mean, there are two things there – one is about the acceptance, and it’s interesting, she says, well-funded – they employ you, so the worry about, where did we have, something about well-paid? – relief at having a job, well-paid, is sort of borne out again as an important aspect … one, two, three, four, five, six, okay … she’s in a new, rather experimental situation, because she decides what she wants to do.
Well, she has to submit a project, apply for it, and it’s for you developing your work. It’s for the person developing their work for two years with supervisors. You have to sort of map out a budget. You don’t have to make an exhibition, but you have to have some reflection on your activities and artistic process, and processes, more and more demand for people to be creative and invent their own working life. I think she’s talking about 21st century society, that in general, people in 21st century society are going to have to invent their own working life, to be creative therefore, and there’s a new creative class, and art is being caught up by the entrepreneurial spirit, so in a sense, you have to be more like your own entrepreneur than just a funded-from-the-outside artist.
I think it’s that sort of feeling. Sorry, I can’t put it more sharply than that. Okay, so what’s her experience as she tells … but most about what she’s doing at the moment, or has to do for the next two years? – and what’s her lived experience of that period, or that situation? We’re now in the now situation by the way, this is what is happening at the moment. If you can’t read it, remember, you are in charge of where you entrepreneurially put your chairs, and if you put your chairs too far away from the blackboard, you won’t be able to read what’s on it, but then it gives you a greater capacity for a laid back experience.
New speaker (male):
He seems to be ambivalent about enter … ambivalence towards the situation, where she is an entrepreneur?
Moderator:
Can you say what the two sides of the ambivalence would be?
Male speaker (continued):
I think that is, I would guess that it’s (?? 1:21:40) dynamics, that she is positive towards, but she’s sort of having difficulties, problems seeing it, it’s instrumental and relates to some of the bad aspects of life, post-industrial, (?? 1:22:01) situation.
Moderator:
Okay. Any other thoughts about …
New speaker (female):
I now, the impression that she is trying to present herself as neutral as possible. What she’s telling us is, she’s trying to, that she’s not going to come to any like, building up for something. Maybe she’s even aware though, that she’s going to be analysed, as we
are analysing her now. she’s trying to not lead us, in a way. she’s not trying to lead us.
Moderator:
Yes, she doesn’t express her own values very much, is that what you’re saying?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, or at least … yeah.
Moderator:
Yeah, maybe. It’s interesting, the two things do connect. If she’s ambivalent, then she doesn’t want to just say one side of something. she’s leaving us to make our own judgement about whatever it is.
Female speaker (continued):
she’s trying to be honest, but she’s not trying to … she’s trying to be honest, but at the same time, not trying to lead us.
Moderator:
Okay, well, I’ll call her an honest non-leader.
New speaker (female):
It feels like she’s still the list maker, the list making man, as we said on the very first page. It feels like she’s still on this kind of, trying to inform the interviewer, before she’s kind of clearly stating any positions. She did have a positional at the previous page, on the previous chunk, but not as much. This one feels more like, just …
Moderator:
So maybe, I think that’s very interesting. It’s the difference between different chunks, that at some point, in this point, she’s just trying to give, in a sense, facts about, well what do you do if you’re enrolled on this programme, what’s the project that I put in, etcetera, and on this, which is all about the practice-based approach, sitting all the time, sitting in circles, doing and then thinking, and all the rest of it, I think this is clearly a positive thing about the sort of thing that should happen. This is her innovative way of doing things, so on some things, like that, on her study co-ordinator period, promoting different ways of thinking about studies, going to the Saas-Fee thing, she’s saying, this is a good thing and should happen, or certainly, I’m glad it happened to me, and on this thing, she’s just saying how it is, and if you’re right that there’s an ambivalence towards it, then she’s just holding back her own final value, evaluation of it all, just saying, well, this is how it is, and I’m not being either very enthusiastic or not very enthusiastic, but clearly … yeah, okay.
New speaker (male):
But she’s careful (? 1:25:03) about how it’s being judged, I guess, because her part is talking about, the inventiveness, and the sort of, getting the experiences, and then producing the list, and the list is sort of like, the shield of the democratic. It’s almost, probably just water (? 1:25:20), but then a democratic ideal, the emotional, the democratic. The list is somewhat, equality, and you can trace back the information. You have some catalogue, and it’s flat structured.
Moderator:
I’m going to put the list as a shield. The list is some sort of shield maybe ….
New speaker (male):
So it’s sharing, if that’s what she’s doing, presenting things as objects within the list, and it’s something about, how you constitute the good debates around the arts, and interiors, so it’s on the list, presenting a whole field for everybody, but then the (?? 1:26:01) was saying, hey, you’re a coward. You should have some ideas that should, not just wave the grey flag.
Moderator:
I’ve put down, go and be a hero, because actually, as we go through this, you will have your own subjective responses to your imagined version of Nadja, like you thought she was telling the truth, and actually then you think, no, that doesn’t quite work. Maybe you have an image which gradually builds up and changes, sometimes with each chunk, sometimes over a number of chunks, so I think what you might want to do now, we’re going to stop in five minutes and break for lunch – would you like to spend five minutes just making notes on your sense of Nadja? – what sort of person you think she is, at the moment, not where you thought she was five chunks ago, but where you think she is now, just to put yourself in the picture for when we come back after lunch. So bear in mind, you don’t have to be right, you just have to have your own thoughts, and if all that happens is a large blank, then by all means write down a picture of a large blank with some nice diagrams in it. So five minutes, just summarising for yourself what sort of image of Nadja you’ve got at this point in the discussion, and you can’t write down oodles of facts, you can only write down one or two, but just see if you can crystallise something or other – a word painting. It’ll have to be a very small word painting, because it’s a very small piece of paper.
New speaker (female):
Are we giving it to you?
Moderator:
No, you’re just keeping it for yourself, to help you get back to where you were after lunch.
New speaker (female):
May I ask the question, (?? 1:27:53), who conducted the interview?
Moderator:
I conducted the interview … and I’m sorry for my handwriting. It means a little to people who were here, and virtually nothing to people who weren’t. Perhaps I should say, your sense of Nadja and her story so far.
New speaker (female):
But I have a question regarding this format, because …
Moderator:
Deal with that later. Sorry, could I ask you not to have conversations here? It’s difficult for people to concentrate their thoughts, if you’re talking. It’s difficult for people to concentrate their thoughts anyway.
New speaker (female):
I wondered if I could ask questions?
Moderator:
Afterwards, when we come back, but not now. Now this is a moment for you, bringing together in your head, your sense of Nadja, and her story so far, her story-telling so far.
[people write quietly]
Part 2
Unclears are shown in blue with the timecode in brackets.
Moderator:
Well, we’ll just carry on with the process. The last thing was, and I’ll read it in a minute …
New speaker (male):
We’ll do it in Norwegian from now on!
Moderator:
You may do it in Norwegian, but I certainly won’t! I feel like a science fiction monster in a really bad, second-grade science fiction movie. Okay, so, I mean there’s lots of ambiguity, and I wonder what she was deciding when she spent eleven seconds trying to decide what she would say it was lots of, and it ends up with ambiguity, and just one thought I had was, perhaps she means ambivalence? Ambiguity is when you look out there, and you can’t quite make out what it is, and ambivalence is when you’re having very contradictory feelings about something, and my guess would be that perhaps ambivalence, taking up the hypothesis, the BNIM forward, she’s not quite happy to be so personal as to say, I’m ambivalent, I’m feeling contradictory. She prefers to say there’s ambiguity out there, rather than ambivalence in here, but that’s again another hypothesis.
I mean, there’s lots of ambiguity in all this. Even if I feel like I’ve been talking here, and then this and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this cv-ish thing, eleven seconds pause, and I mean, I think it also could be in a story about, like an emotional human being, and then she starts posing questions, either for herself to answer, or for me to answer, and she knows I won’t answer them, so she’s going to have to grab them. What’s the attraction to this, for example? What’s the longing for sharing that process, or why this? I don’t know, to add, but in general I think that’s maybe what’s interesting to work?
New speaker (male):
Well now that you’ve said she’s an actor?
Moderator:
No, I said, she trained … sorry, say what you were going to say.
Male speaker (continued):
It’s kind of obvious that she’s talking about her profession as an actor, and her feelings towards a certain play.
Moderator:
I’m sorry – I have to stop you here, because I don’t remember saying she was an actor, and she isn’t an actor. She has done acting training at a very early part of her life, so I’m sorry to mislead you. If I said she was an actor, then I was having a fantasy.
Male speaker (continued):
Then also, when she’s saying, what’s the longing for sharing that process, I think she’s sharing this process with the audience, and also that it could be in a story about, like an emotional human being – she’s talking about a play or a book or a film or something.
Moderator:
Right, okay – she’s actually an artist, and therefore what you said is as applicable to an artist as to an actor.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, it’s natural that she’s thinking about what she does is shared with an audience. That’s why she keeps going back and forth between I and we.
Moderator:
Okay, so in a sense, there’s the I and we – there’s only one “I” hopefully, apart from we all have several personalities, but in a sense, there’s the we, so I’m expanding slightly on what you said – the we can be the artist and their audience, or audiences, and the we can be, “we artists”, because you remember, there’s, why do we, why do we be part of this? What’s interesting and working there? – so it’s working people, so it’s the, we are, including the other artists, using artists in a very general sort of way, and the we is, self and I’ll call them audiences – she hasn’t given a name for them herself, but the people for whom she does her art, whoever that we is. So, now the question – right, any other thoughts? – so what is she feeling there? What’s going on when she says that?
New speaker (female):
Is she still referring to the first question, when she says, I don’t know, to add?
Moderator:
Yes, the too add sounds as though, I don’t know what to add – is there anything you would like to add?
Female speaker (continued):
Is she looking for what?
Moderator:
What to add? What is she going to add, yes, okay, so it’s a question mark, so one is about, still thinking about the question, the add question, so she’s still thinking about that. Who’s she talking to, when she says, what’s the attraction to this, for example? What’s the longing for sharing that process, or why this?
New speaker (male):
It’s more, she’s speculating on other ways to approach these questions, or other kind of doors that could be opened up in this interview process.
Moderator:
Yes, but are they … I mean, it’s quite interesting – sorry, I just jumped, this is me jumping about a bit, which is, when she used the word “desire”, and we wondering about whether desire meant desire, or just something in a general, here she’s taking about a longing and an attraction, so it’s definitely not a chance use of the word desire. she’s talking about a strong emotional pull, using different words for it, which wasn’t clear before, so let’s say that, six-one, six-two, six-three, there’s a strong emotional pull, and she’s no longer saying it could be a story about an emotional human being – this is actually becoming an emotional self-interrogation about longing, desire, attraction. It’s sort of shifted to a much, a less professional and more personal register of enquiry, it seems to me – this is my speculation, so I’m just going to put that down as a hypothesis. So strong emotional pull, more personal, emotional register.
New speaker (male):
It seems like she’s trying to view herself from the outside, sort of, why am I doing? What am I trying to achieve with this?
Moderator:
Right, we had a little earlier thing about a debate with herself, where was it? – I can’t remember. “Why didn’t you continue there if, didn’t you?” – so her asking a question of herself. We don’t know where “there” was, but why didn’t, Nadja asking Nadja, why didn’t you continue there? – and now Nadja is asking, what’s somebody’s attraction to this? What’s the longing for sharing that process? – so she’s continuing with a sort of, a self-interrogation, that’s one hypothesis. The other, of course, is that she’s wanting to ask some other people something or other, her audience maybe. So self-interrogation, or, and in principle, an audience interrogation, or maybe a sort of, a “we” collective, we artists.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, or “we”, the human race, for that matter.
Moderator:
Yeah, let’s think big, yes – no, certainly that’s possible, we collective, we the human race, interrogation – so it’s like a general philosophical thing about humans, yeah. Any other thoughts about what might be the experiencing underneath? The ending is interesting.
New speaker (male):
Sort of starting to approach an idea of, what are the deeper motivations behind what she’s doing. she’s talking obviously a lot about the output and the projects and the work that’s visible, but she’s realising there’s a whole layer of deep motivation within herself about it, which is the longing to share this process, the attraction to doing it in the first place.
Moderator:
A deeper level of motivation, but it’s interesting, what I found interesting is, she’s gone back into distance – “I find it interesting to work.” she’s talking about desire, and making questions about desire, longing and attraction, and it’s interesting to work, so it’s sort of taking it away again. It’s the sort of movement between avowing something quite strong, and then using the word “interesting”, which is a sort of, completely uninteresting word, interesting – oh God, it’s interesting. If somebody says, look – I’ve spent three hours making this beautiful object, what do you think? – and they say, “Ah! – very interesting.” (he groans) Say something real, for God’s sake! So I always find the word interesting is a wonderful, having talked about desire, longing and attraction, it’s interesting – the movement away. I’ve forgotten your name, sorry?
Kastia:
Kastia.
Moderator:
Kastia, but it’s a shift into something, and then away from it. I think we had an arrow of, there were three arrows somewhere – distancing from self, oh yes – avowing her desire, and then distancing and undermining, so this feels like again, the last phrase, what’s the attraction, what’s the longing? But in general, I think that’s what’s interesting to work. It’s sort of a similar movement, at the moment of experiencing or expressing.
Kastia:
Can I ask a question?
Moderator:
I promise not to answer it – sorry.
Kastia:
The first session, everything that was before all this text …
Moderator:
Sub-session one, yeah.
Kastia:
Did she finish talking about her past? Or did she finish with talking about her future as well? – because I notice that she talks only about some future possibilities maybe?
Moderator:
Yeah, okay – I’ll answer your question, and the answer is, she went basically from early on, and the last thing she was talking about was the most immediate thing she’s just done, and the fact that she is planning to do something new, which she doesn’t give any details about, so she’s gone up to the present in her projects, and then she cuts out now, because if she went on, she would be talking about the future, but she doesn’t talk about the future, because she wasn’t asked about the future – the question is, can you tell me roughly the history of your professional life up to now, and she does that, and she ends with, the now.
Kastia:
I see. It’s just interesting that, when you ask her to say something else, would you like to add something, she adds something about her possible future maybe, but nothing about her past projects.
Moderator:
Right, okay, let’s think. I’ve been focusing on the projects, can be interesting, another desire to be working in an institutional context, the motivation behind it, the private Nadja, why we want to be part of this, difficult to take off the cv-ish thing, a story about an emotional human being, what’s the attraction, what’s the longing? So what was your point again?
Kastia:
My point is that, when she had the possibility to talk uninterrupted, she talked about the past and the present, which was, I suppose, which could be more like a prepared speech – she knew what she was talking about, and then, as if this question, maybe she wanted to add something, as if she was, she started to become emotional, thinking about this, as if she was, all of a sudden she became unprepared.
Moderator:
Okay, so that’s a very interesting thing about, I can’t get sort of … so it’s, going to a deeper level of motivation, which she mentions. I just say, is there anything you’d like to add? I’m not pushing her to add anything she likes. So she goes to a deeper level, and unpreparedness. So, in a sense, I’m putting what we’ve already said. We’re trying to do, constantly moving towards a structural hypothesis that will explain all of this, or describe it in a way that’s interesting. I have been talking about my projects. Clearly, if she wanted to, she could just add more detail about her projects. She could go on that line of, level of work as long as she liked. It doesn’t say, don’t talk about the same thing, talk about something new, it just says, would you like to add something? – and what she uses it for is somehow for struggling her way to a deeper level around emotional human being, around motivation, around what’s the attraction, what’s the desire, what’s the longing, so she’s not just adding at the same level, she’s going to another level, or struggling to find some other level from which she would say something of a different sort of order of saying, and I think that’s what’s going on, and just before she broke for lunch, she’s taking off this cv-ish thing, I am a walking cv, so I’m going to, for an hour-and-a-half, I shall be my cv. I’m telling you about my official history. I sometimes call it the official press release, so she does that, and she’s trying, anything you add is, really, I’ve decided, when you ask me what to add, I’ve decided I’m going to try to take off the cv-ish thing. I’m going to not add at the same level. I’m going to take off my cv official press release-type thing, and I’m finding it very difficult, and she is finding it clearly very difficult, and she’s struggling towards some, she wants to understand something in terms of attraction or longing or desire, particularly what’s the longing for sharing that process. We don’t know which process she’s talking about, but she wants, well this is one hypothesis – she wants to share, she longs to share that process with other people, whatever the “that process” is, so she’s forcing to some level of self-understanding. That’s where she’s trying to get to, in what seems to be an unbelievably difficult way, and I’m sure we’d all find it difficult to do that, so it’s just saying, this seems to be what’s happening.
New speaker (male):
It’s like an interview with Morten Harket, the vocalist in A-ha.
Moderator:
Who’s that?
Male speaker (continued):
It’s a Norwegian pop band, it was huge. He always talks about, sounds like he’s very deep, he’s got these deep thoughts, and when you read through it, you’re like, it doesn’t really say anything in a sense to anybody else, than maybe herself, if she remembers what she said.
Moderator:
Right, well this is why microanalysis would be very helpful, but anyway, carry on.
Male speaker (continued):
That would be interesting.
Moderator:
Right, okay, and what’s interesting …
Male speaker (continued):
My point was, she doesn’t seem to be saying anything – she’s just using filler sentences, while she’s thinking about what she really wants to say, so she’s just saying things …
Moderator:
So what we’ve got, if we take that and turn it round, she really does want to say something, and she’s using filler sentences because she doesn’t know what it is yet. She’s sort of plunging through a very dark forest, getting a bit lower down, getting closer to something or other about attraction, longing and desire, and a real human being, and taking off the cv-ish thing, but she’s a long way from actually finding out what it is that she’s not yet found, but she’s in an exploration, and she hasn’t yet found anything very much, except notions of desire, longing and attraction.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, she could have just stopped and thought for a while, and then said what she was trying to say.
Moderator:
That might have been possible.
Male speaker (continued):
But she just keeps going.
Moderator:
Right, so that’s one hypothesis. One hypothesis is that she could have just stopped, and – yes, this is what I want to say, which is possible, and the other counter-hypothesis is that she has to do this to find it out, that it’s only if she goes through the jungle of not knowing, will she actually find out what the animal is that she’s hunting, and if she stops in the middle of her journey and says, what is the animal I’m hunting, she doesn’t yet know, because she’s still got to do a lot of travelling to find out, and both are possible.
Kastia:
The courses get shorter.
Moderator:
Can you say more about that?
Kastia:
She’s talking her way into it, and her reflection is that, coming out of her mouth, that are just in her head.
Moderator:
Yes, but there’s a phrase in English which is, how do I know what I think until I see what I say? So you have to keep saying, which then tells you what you’re thinking, and so you can’t, you know it already – just do it, stop talking, which is sometimes true, but the other thing is sometimes, it is through the talking that you actually discover what it is that you were trying to say, and if you said, don’t talk, just tell me, they couldn’t, because the talking is the mode of discovery.
Kastia:
But then she is also getting more and more engaged. In the beginning, I sensed a resistance, but now there is …
Moderator:
So she is getting into it, and she’s doing it, through the process of talking. It is the talking that is engaging her more and getting closer to something, whatever it is which we don’t yet know. The animal is still a mile or so ahead in the jungle, and it’s only the talking, the ongoing talking that is enabling her to sift through, at least that’s the hypothesis, okay.
Kastia:
Maybe she hopes for some response?
Moderator:
He knows that I don’t do that! (he laughs) Well, I hope she knows that I don’t do that. Well, put it this way – if she hopes I’ll respond …
Kastia:
Yes, well just the blink of an eye, yes.
Moderator:
I have to tell you in advance that she won’t get it, and doesn’t get it. Where are we? – one, two, three, four, five, six – looks beautiful. Okay, next one, because you work, even in an institution, you work very close and very hierarchical, so it’s also, well, it’s healthier to have a focus on the art, and this is also … a five second pause … it could be, I think, fulfilling in many cases, to … four second pause … when there’s more. Just remember the last thing she said – what’s the attraction to this, for example? What’s the longing for sharing that process, or why this? – I don’t know, to add, but in general, I think that’s maybe what’s interesting to work, because you work, even in an institution, you work very close and very hierarchical, so it’s also, well, it’s healthier to have a focus on the art, and this is also, it could be, I think, fulfilling in many cases to … four second pause … where there’s more. What’s the sort of emotional zig-zag that’s going on?
Kastia:
It’s a health issue?
Moderator:
It’s a health issue? – ah, yes, well, okay, so that’s very interesting.
Kastia:
Maybe this is the word.
Moderator:
So she’s worried – whose health is she worried about?
New Speaker (female):
Mental health.
Moderator:
Mental health?
Kastia:
But she wants to generalise. She says you, she doesn’t say, me.
Moderator:
Okay, so there’s two things – one is the thing which I think we’ll find so often – is it you, is it him? Is it, in English, we often say “one”, if you’re trying to say, “One feels that one’s health would be better improved if one did this.” It’s an impersonal, everybody in general and nobody in particular, or it means, her in particular, and the point about saying “you” in English is that you have no idea, except from context, which it is, or it could be the interviewer. After all, it is an interview, and she’s talking to me, so she says, “You work”, so it could be to me, but that’s a bit unlikely, but you never know. Okay, so you work very close, even in an institution, you work very close and very hierarchical, so that’s one thing, so it’s healthier to have a focus on the art, and this is, or could be, I think, fulfilling in many cases, to where there’s more …
New speaker (male):
It sounds a bit lost, like, is this the right place for me to practise my art?
Moderator:
To practise my art? – yeah, okay.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, well, she sounds like she’s not sure if she should be working where she is working. Maybe she is looking for other places.
Moderator:
Okay, so there’s an uncertainty, relating it back to, you made the point about mental health – let’s call it psychic health.
Kastia:
Yes, about her own psychology.
Moderator:
Mental health or psychic health.
New speaker (female):
Is she back to focusing on the project? That’s why she didn’t choose to add something at first – she concentrated, or focused on the projects? That’s almost the same, helped her to have a focus on the arts, or her project, instead of thinking of the whole institutional focus.
Moderator:
Well, what’s come into my head is a diagram. There’s the projects, which she’s been talking about at the end, in the first part of the interview and talking in great detail about her projects, leading up to the present, and then she’s talked, in this coda, she’s talked about the institutional context, if you remember. I can’t quite remember what she says about it. “I’ve been focusing on the projects” … there’s this desire to be work, the institutional context is a desire to be working in the institutional context, and then here she’s putting something which sounds a bit negative perhaps, very hierarchical. I mean, maybe she likes hierarchy – it’s not at all clear.
So there’s the institution, which has projects, and just for information, she is clearly happy with, from the sub-session one, she is happy with her projects, she likes doing projects. That’s information you don’t have, but I’ll just tell you, she does, so the projects are good, and then there’s the hierarchical of being in an institution which feels more minus. It’s very close and very hierarchical, so it’s healthier, ie, if we just focused, being in the institution, its closeness, not what close means, but close and hierarchical, so it’s healthier to have a focus on the art, and this could be fulfilling, so I think (but this is my fantasy) that it’s more fulfilling to focus on the art than not to focus on the art, and the project for the art, so there’s something about what you could do in an institution, which is very hierarchical and close, whatever that means, so if you focus on the art, it’s healthier. So there’s something going on about what goes on for a person’s psychic, it’s healthier – let’s call it psychic health, we don’t quite know what sort of health here.
New speaker (male):
If this was in any other job, I guess she could say that it’s more healthy to focus on the work that you’re actually supposed to do, than the sort of underlying maybe, fight with the boss, something like that? – or the management, is sort of, trying to control her, because she says, close and hierarchical, which is sort of, they’re watching me and making me do things.
Moderator:
It doesn’t feel good, does it?
Male speaker (continued):
No, I want to focus on the art – I don’t want to be in this institution where everybody tells me what to do.
Moderator:
Okay, so the close and hierarchical aspect of the institution feels negative, not so good, something to avoid, maybe psychically unhealthy, but it’s healthier to focus on the art.
Kastia:
Maybe has to fight for her position, and feels that …
Moderator:
Well, one thing will be fighting for a position, and the other thing is fighting to do your art, or is she fighting for her art, and that’s the way to maintain her position?
Kastia:
And her position in the hierarchy, or the constitutional …
Moderator:
Yes, but it is a dilemma? You can either focus on fighting your position, or you can focus on your art, so you have to choose? Or is the way to safeguard her position, by focusing on her art, and that’s what will safeguard her position – do you see what I mean? I don’t think we know. I think it isn’t clear, so we can’t solve this problem. There’s something about, something is healthier, and something is less healthy.
New Speaker (male):
The more I read it, the more ambiguous it seems. She actually doesn’t say it’s negative anywhere there. For a start, she said she has a desire to be working in an institutional context, in the beginning. Now, she’s saying, you work very close and very hierarchical. She doesn’t say that’s a bad thing, or an important thing. Also, it’s healthier to have a focus on the arts – well, I mean, close and hierarchical, that could mean that could be helpful to have a focus on the arts.
Moderator:
You have a firm position and you know where you are, so yeah.
Male speaker (continued):
And then afterwards, she said, I think it could be fulfilling in many cases, so actually, there’s nothing specifically negative about the institution in what she says there.
New speaker (female):
I feel like she’s coming to kind of a conclusion, that art is, if she focuses on her art, she is going to feel more satisfied.
Moderator:
As opposed to if she focuses on … we don’t quite know what.
New speaker (male):
Bureaucratic aspects maybe?
Moderator:
Okay, so I think all we can do is to register that there seems, that there was this thing about the desire to work in an institution, which she says earlier, and at that point, that seems fairly unambiguous – she just desires to work in an institution. By this point, she is in an institution, but it’s a more ambiguous thing than she originally said it was. It could be that it’s not very good to work in an institution. It depends if she’s a hierarchical person, he’ll say yeah – it’s close and hierarchical, that’s the best place to be – fantastic, except she’s talking about something, is healthier to focus on the art in this institution, so there’s some other focus that she thinks is less healthy, at least for her, but it is not clear what it is. So I think you’re quite right in saying, she doesn’t say anything particularly negative about the institution, but there is an implied negative about what is not so healthy, but you don’t know what it is. That’s all you can say about the state that she’s in, or the thinking that she is, at this moment in the chunk.
New speaker (male):
It’s like, she’s happy with the work itself, but not the workplace maybe?
Moderator:
Yeah, so it could be that, so if you just focus on the work and ignore the workplace, but of course the workplace is either supporting you, or being hierarchical and dominating you, or it isn’t. These are issues in her mind, and I think all one can say at this stage is not to find an easy, simple answer that just gives one view. She isn’t giving one view, she isn’t saying what she doesn’t like. she’s sorting through a muddy experience in the middle of the jungle, and she hasn’t found the beast on the other side yet, so okay, this is where she is at this moment, this particular moment in the transcript.
New speaker (male):
But she gets more and more diplomatic, I think, during this, at least in this case. I feel that she kind of clears more, particularly when points out that she wants to focus more on the arts, but also, as we just mentioned that, of course, hierarchy is a good thing as well, in my case, the art is maybe my strength, in this case. That’s what I’m thinking about, that she’s trying to put it like, two sides. At the same time, she wants to put her case.
Moderator:
But we aren’t clear what her case is? (he laughs)
Male speaker (continued):
Exactly.
Moderator:
So it’s quite interesting, because it’s the move from, I don’t know, maybe I’m overstating this, but for me the sort of, in which she is trying to get the emotional human being, and desire, longing, attraction and all that stuff, so she’s moving in that direction towards more of a self-revelation of herself as a human being, and that’s also increasing danger, and therefore she goes into things like, well that’s interesting, or not specifying anything very much, so you don’t know what’s … it may be, is the institution good or bad? What is she not focusing on? – so she’s being diplomatic again, so at each level where she goes a bit deeper, she also starts retreating, and becoming more diplomatic, because it’s getting into dangerous ground, so we’re talking about a dangerous jungle, dangerous shift of levels, sort of trying to get a bit further, and at the same time feeling very nervous about getting any further. Anyway, that’s my feeling about it – you’ll all have your own.
Okay, any final thoughts on this?
New speaker (male):
Maybe there’s a bit of fear? – okay, I want to tell you something, but I can’t, because they will shoot me!
Moderator:
(he laughs) Yeah?
Male speaker (continued):
I’ll be punished, if I tell you what I really mean, so it’s kind of hard to get to the gist of it.
Moderator:
Or in a sense, the closer she gets to the gist of it, the more dangerous and the harder it is to do it. It’s like ….
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, I don’t like to work here, but I love it, because I have to say that I do.
Moderator:
(he laughs) Okay, sorry.
New speaker (female):
Then also the resignation towards her desire?
Moderator:
Can you spell that out a bit?
Female speaker (continued):
She says she has a desire for something more around her project, but there, she is closing the doors to this, I think because that’s best for her. “I wanted to, but I … “
Moderator:
But I can’t?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, I can’t.
Moderator:
Okay, so a resignation to not doing something that she wanted to do? – okay.
Well, all in all, which is a way of like, this is a sort of attempt to sum something up, or to stabilise where she is, well all in all, I think it’s a very hard and competitive environment, which also takes a lot of, well makes you vulnerable maybe, so this, I think, has … which I’m missing. That’s maybe what I wanted to say – I’m missing that.
New speaker (female):
she’s coming to an answer to her own questions.
Moderator:
she’s coming to an answer to her own questions.
Female speaker (continued):
I have this feeling that, again that when you asked her to add something, which, of course, might be a formal way, like you are obliged to ask things in the end, I mean, you didn’t imply that you have to say something now, but usually, if I put myself in the shoes of this person, I don’t know why, but I always feel obliged to say something after this question here, and maybe it was just an incentive for him. She started to reflect about this, and I feel that first she was afraid to open her emotions, because there was some trouble inside of him. Then she somehow recognises deep emotions. She starts to be more personal, to speak about herself, then she somehow zooms out, and she recognises her emotions, but the previous chunk, there she somehow makes it a bit more structural, like she recognises that hierarchy is not that bad maybe, I just need to focus on the arts, and she comes to an answer – what’s wrong? Why is she so troubled about this? – because she understands that, well I like the idea of working with the institution, but there is something sitting inside of me, and telling me that I’m not that comfortable about this idea, and then she reflects about it, and in the end she comes up with, well, that’s just me – I’m missing this.
Moderator:
Right, well remember the hard and competitive environment.
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, this is not just her.
Moderator:
It’s not just her, but anyway, no, I mean, I think that’s helpful.
New speaker (female):
Yeah, I felt like she’s, she thinks that, although she wants to focus on art, then she maybe thinks that she needs to get stronger, have strength in dealing with competitive …
Moderator:
A hard and competitive environment.
Female speaker (continued):
A hard and competitive environment, so she, which also she says, makes you vulnerable, but this is maybe what she’s missing, but she hasn’t been in a competitive environment, which is, in an institutional context, so maybe she thinks that it has a positive side, so she can be in this kind of place, with her projects, and she can learn a lot from that, which makes you also vulnerable, but you learn to compete with others maybe, I don’t know.
Moderator:
Any other thoughts about it?
New speaker (male):
Just to clarify, I mean, I read it from when she says, the desire to work in an institutional context – that implies that she’s not yet, is that right? – or is she already in an institutional context? – because I read from that that she is sort of working alone at the moment, that she wants to move into an institutional context. Is that correct?
Moderator:
No, it’s not correct, but she may be saying, she has a desire which, at the moment of the telling of the interview, she is in an institutional context, but she may be reflecting on before that, when she wasn’t. I have a desire, I had a desire to work in an institutional context, which I’ve now satisfied, but I know at the moment I still have a desire to work in an institutional context, which is now, a being satisfied desire, and then there’s the question, is a hard and competitive environment inside the institutional structure, which let us imagine is, you work very close and very hierarchical, so is it competitive and harsh inside that, or is it a harsh and competitive environment if you leave that, then you meet the harsh and competitive environment? So it could be inside or outside, or both – I’ve no idea.
Male speaker (continued):
It’s just on a context point as well, so has he, I mean, recently entered the institution, or has she been there for a long time, at the point of this interview, do you know?
Moderator:
I think I’ll not answer that (he laughs), and leave them both open as possibilities, and if you knew …
New speaker (male):
It has a lot to do with what I was going to say.
Previous speaker (male):
It’s to do with, because when she talks about, which I’m missing, because that made me think she is not yet, or she has experienced an institution, and now she’s outside of it, and she misses the experience, of hardness and competition and vulnerability. If she’s just re-entered it, then, “which I’m missing” implies that I have been missing that, and now I’m back into it.
Moderator:
The tenses are very variable.
Male speaker (continued):
If she’s been there for a long time, then I find that more confusing.
Moderator:
I’m glad it’s more confusing. Okay, sorry – did you want to come back, you said it was sort of something similar to what you were thinking?
New speaker (male):
Yeah, I was thinking, if she had just entered this institutional context, and she used to be like a free artist, then I think she’s talking about her missing her freedom, but at the same time, she wants to defend her own decision to go into this, because that’s what humans do, have to make a decision, we want to stick to that, even though we know it’s wrong, like being in a relationship you shouldn’t be in, or something like that. It’s really bad, but it’s good, because it’s not worse.
Moderator:
I think in a way there’s a cost of any decision you make, so if you go back to, there’s a lot of ambiguity, there may be lot of ambiguity or ambivalence, sort of being torn in different ways, whichever way it is?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, and there might be an even bigger cost of going against that decision now, that it’s kind of too late.
Moderator:
It’s too late, yeah – this is maybe your resignation thing.
New speaker (female):
Yes, but I was also thinking maybe she’s a person that shows her strengths in her project, but not as a colleague or as a social person. Maybe she wants to widen her horizon and be a part of something, but it’s difficult for him.
Moderator:
Yeah, that’s not the sort of person she easily is.
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, so maybe she has suffered, tried to speak her (?? 42:32) out, and …
Moderator:
It’s been very dangerous, and she’s been squashed by a large comic hammer, bong!
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, and then she tries to make herself visible for the others, to her projects, to her work, not as a person.
Moderator:
Right, okay, that’s interesting, yeah.
New speaker (female):
Maybe I’m wrong, but I understood this piece …
Moderator:
We can all be wrong!
Female speaker (continued):
… this piece totally different. I thought that, I’m missing, it’s not like wanting to come back, it’s like not having something. It’s like, what she talks about is, she doesn’t say it straight. I think she wanted to say it, but then she changes the phrase. She says, also, it takes a lot of, well, she doesn’t say what it takes a lot of – maybe courage, maybe strength to stand against this competition, and it’s a competitive environment and everything, and then she says, which I’m missing. Maybe that is the answer, why she cannot be 100% comfortable in this environment, because she’s missing some quality, some suspense, something new.
Moderator:
Something, we don’t know. I will go straight on, which is a very good moment to go straight on, I actually have forgotten, I’ve made an intervention at this point, and it wasn’t a very detailed one! (he laughs) “Sorry, what are you missing?” – I obviously couldn’t stand the strain of not knowing what she was talking about!
New speaker (male):
Is that the first time you asked her to elaborate on something, during all of this?
Moderator:
Yeah, I mean, anything anybody says, so I haven’t said a word about all this, but obviously it’s been very painful, or something! Anyway, so at this moment, I say, well, sorry – what are you missing? So you’re not the only ones who aren’t certain about what is being said and not said, okay. So we’ll put this up, and now all will be revealed, or maybe not.
New Speaker (female):
It’s like brainstorming, when everyone saying some crazy ideas, and then in the end, you clear it up.
Moderator:
Well, let’s hope so, but the important thing, even if she could have said it all at the beginning, the fact that she doesn’t is important in understanding the sort of person she is. Let’s say she knew the answer completely at the beginning, she just took this incredibly long time to say it – well, that’s one sort of person she is; or she didn’t know the answer at the beginning, and she’s only discovering it now in the jungle, towards the edge of the jungle where the beasts can be found, so we’ll see.
So this is, what, seven? So, what exactly are you missing? – I’m sorry, “What are you missing?” “Erm … “ – she hesitates. “Well, when explaining or presenting, that there is …. a seven-second pause … in my own presentation, but in general in the environment, there’s not so much room for, why are you doing it like that, or what’s the …
New speaker (female):
There are definitely some secrets!
Moderator:
(he laughs) So she’s now talking about my own presentation, so we’re moving from the level of generalities, and this is all my hypothesising, but in my own presentation, but in general in the environment, so she’s about to zoom off into generalities again, she says, “There’s not so much room for, why are you doing it like that?” What’s going on, what’s she trying to say about that?
New speaker (male):
There’s not so much space for stepping back and analysing those motivations again, why is the project turning out, (?? 47:12).
Moderator:
No space for …
Male speaker (continued):
Self-analysis.
Moderator:
Yeah, a description of motivation. So it’s the sort of lack of space, she says, “When explaining or presenting, in my own presentation, but in general, in the environment …” (remember, it’s a harsh and competitive environment that she’s referred to), “… there’s not so much room for questions like, what are you doing that, or what’s the … something or other.” So that’s what she’s missing – I’ve asked, what’s she missing? – and she’s missing that space for either exploring herself, or telling others about, if she already knows, her own motivation.
New speaker (female):
Or maybe asking questions to others, like, why are you doing it like this?
Moderator:
Okay, so own motivation is one possibility. A second is, their motivation, whoever they are, asking questions to others, but the whole thing in explaining and presenting, there aren’t room for these sorts of questions, and that’s her answer – what are you missing?
New speaker (male):
He might also say that she’s missing room for, or maybe she’s missing, they’re not letting her do the things the way she wants to do them, and they’re not asking why she does it, only if she’s done it, or not.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s interesting.
Male speaker (continued):
It’s kind of, there’s no room for doing things another way than what you’re told. There’s no room for being artistic.
Moderator:
For doing differently, or talking about doing differently – she can’t talk to them.
New speaker (female):
Questioning, maybe?
Previous speaker (male):
Or being creative, maybe.
Moderator:
Okay, doing differently or being creative. So if there’s no room for questioning, then she can’t question herself. It’s not useful for her to explore her own motivation, because she has to do what she’s told to do anyway.
Previous speaker (male):
He would like to explain why she’s doing it like that, instead of just being told, she’s not doing it the right way.
Moderator:
Sorry, did you want to come in?
New speaker (female):
I think she wasn’t that much happy about the hierarchy.
Moderator:
He wasn’t happy about the hierarchy?
Female speaker (continued):
And this piece of her speech proves it, to my opinion, because it’s as if she’s suffocating a bit, being inside the institution.
Moderator:
Sorry, I’ll just write this down. I can’t hear, my ears flap sideways.
Female speaker (continued):
It feels like she’s a bit suffocating, inside of the institution, like she feels this pressure, these rules, hierarchy, like you work very close, all these words. For me, it’s a sign that she doesn’t like it so much, like not 100%, and she’s trying to, all this stream of consciousness, it’s just the way to express this anxiety inside, like there is something wrong, but she doesn’t know herself what’s wrong, and she’s trying to understand ….
Moderator:
And here she’s just explained what’s wrong. She said, “There’s not so much room for, why are you doing it like that.” I mean, it’s not a very good explanation, if you like, but it’s something.
Female speaker (continued):
But she’s not saying it straight. Again, she’s just going around, and trying to say in different polite ways.
Moderator:
Okay, this is a structural hypothesis called the going around, lost in the jungle, hypothesis. So the question is, is she as lost in the jungle as she was when she started off, or has she got closer towards the beast, but she’s still lost in the jungle, but at a further point?
Female speaker (continued):
Or maybe she’s not that lost. she’s just afraid to speak straight.
Moderator:
She’s afraid to what?
Female speaker (continued):
To speak straight.
Moderator:
Okay, not that lost … can’t speak straight, in the harsh and competitive environment of the interview.
New speaker (female):
Maybe her way of expressing herself is a problem, to have this discussion in the institutional context. Maybe she isn’t that good in finding words to describe this thing. Maybe that’s why she chose to, in her presentation, and then, when she got the question, the things, she got confused in her head, and is struggling to find words to explain her thoughts about her work. Maybe they’re in her head, but they don’t come out of the mouth.
Moderator:
Well, I’m going to put the final chunk, which of course will make everything completely clear! (he laughs) “I’m not saying, but in general in the environment, there’s not so much room for, why are you doing it like that? I’m not saying that it should be, what’s the psychology of this, or what’s your … but I’m not sure if I can say it better.”
(they laugh)
Which bears out your thesis, doesn’t it? – that there is something she’s trying to say, and she’s aware she’s not saying it well, and she’s saying, I’m not sure I can say it better, so she thinks she’s said something. She’s aware that she said it badly, for whatever reason, and she’s just saying, I’m not sure I can say it better.
New speaker (male):
She’s a bit tired out, after maybe an hour (?? 54:15)
Moderator:
That’s a very nice materialist explanation. Okay, what I’d like you now to do, in the last, well, seven minutes, is to write a little note about what you’ve learnt about what appears to be to you, the key things about the subjectivity of Nadja, so take this as a way of getting, struggling to understand somebody’s psychosociology, their situation. I call it situated subjectivity. What’s the sort of strongest feeling you have about what you’ve learnt about this person, through this sample of their talking? – just from the talking, don’t worry about the other stuff I’ve told you, just from the talking, so if you could just spend seven minutes writing this down on a useful bit of paper, and hand it to me. When I come to look at it all, your hypotheses will help me remember this discussion, and as always, some of the things I’ll have in my head, because I’ve thought them myself, and other things will be the opposite of what I’ve said, and so if you don’t write them down, I’ll never remember them, because like everybody else, I only remember what I want to remember and forget the rest, so if you could write something down, that would be great, oh, and we even have paper, fantastic!
New speaker (male):
Bullet points, or … ?
Moderator:
Bullet points, any way that works for you. Bullet points are absolutely fine. Don’t make it a sort of beautifully-polished thing – there isn’t time and it isn’t useful, so bullet points would be absolutely excellent, and it’s just like, the strongest point that comes to you across. You’re not doing a long extensive study.
New Speaker (female):
I think she’s getting desperate. She doesn’t really know what to do say.
New speaker (male):
Sorry, I’m a little stuck about this, you want us to write … ?
Moderator:
I want you to say, what do you think you’ve learnt about the person whose bit of speech we’ve just been studying? What have you learnt about this person, and what do you think you’ve learnt?
Male speaker (continued):
My views?
Moderator:
Your views, whatever, the thing that strikes me most about Nadja is …
New speaker (female):
And after this, are we finished?
Moderator:
Not quite finished. Hold it a second.
New speaker (male):
It’s a bit difficult to say if she’s actually using more words than other people.
Moderator:
Write it down. It may be, just put it down as a hypothesis. I can’t answer any questions. If that’s a difficulty you’re struggling with, put that down. Let’s not talk about it now, because it interferes with other people writing their thoughts. Just put down your thoughts, whatever seems to be significant.
[pause while people write]
Okay, two more minutes, or whenever you’ve finished. Unless anybody has to rush off very fast, I’d just like to ask a more open question about anything that you’d like to feed back to me about your lived experience, doing this exploration of her lived experience, and having said that. Is there anything, what have you, having done this session, which I hadn’t realised you didn’t know what it was going to be, but having done the session, whatever it was, what are your feelings about it all, what are your thoughts about it – for you, not for anybody else.
New speaker (male):
Still a little bit unclear of what exactly you’re studying, actually.
Moderator:
I’ll answer that in a minute, but yes, I take that point.
New speaker (male):
I found it quite interesting, and I mean, I had a little bit of an idea what to expect, a little bit of background information on, that it was going to be analysing the text of an interview. In my own work, I actually do a lot of interviewing myself, and I find that it’s more of a journalistic context, so there’s not often a lot of time to go over and analyse transcripts in such detail, but you do encounter a lot of this kind of, quite difficult to decipher dialogue, and it’s actually really interesting to go and look at all the tiny twists and turns of where, what somebody, what could have been a thing. I actually think it’s quite enriching to do.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s nice, good. Any other thoughts about your experience of doing it?
New speaker (female):
As it’s my second day, and I already have some background information about Nadja, I have this feeling that she’s almost a relative already.
Moderator:
(he laughs)
Female speaker (continued):
And yesterday and today, I still feel that, I feel, you know this, I have this feeling that, though she’s quite unstructural, and it’s not 100% clear what kind of person she is, of course it’s impossible to analyse her by this piece of speech, but I still feel some connection, you know? Maybe it’s because of this close analysis, microanalysis, because of that, but I would be happy, if it’s possible, if it’s not a big question of confidentiality, if it’s not the question of confidentiality, I would love to know her real name, to check if she exists and everything, to check her creative works, because what we talked about yesterday, and today he, now it’s a bit more personal, what was going on today.
Moderator:
Okay, I’ll think about that.
New speaker (male):
Just one question – is she actually spending more words than other people? – because this looks like a lot of words. I don’t know how long it takes to say something like this. Maybe I just didn’t know.
Moderator:
Hardly anything. Just to say, as I think I said – no, I didn’t, I might have said, that what this panel is, it’s called microanalysis of puzzling bits of text, so what you’ve got is a bit of text selected because it’s puzzling. Most of what she says is not like this – most of what she says is quite fluent and well-developed. I only found two bits in this, an interview which took six-and-a-half hours, there’s probably about two, say this is ten minutes at most, about twenty minutes …
Male speaker (continued):
Is this ten minutes of talking?
Moderator:
Not more. Oh no, wait – there’s seven seconds pause. No, I’d say ten minutes, not more than ten minutes, so no more than two passages, so twenty minutes out of six hours and 40 minutes were like this, and the other six hours and ten minutes were all perfectly fluid and clear – well perfectly, they weren’t like this, and that’s what’s ordinary, which is, everybody, most people who come for an interview are fairly clear about some stuff, and then occasionally some of them get into what we might call deep water, of which they’re uncertain, and then they start talking more like this, so I would say, this is ordinary. she’s probably more fluent than other people I’ve talked to, and less … I can’t make a comparison. she’s not very unusual in having two ten-minutes, twenty minutes out of six hours and 40 minutes of uncertainty about what she’s saying, and trying to work out what she thinks and feels, and doing all this. But you asked another question, didn’t you? – which I’ve forgotten what it was now, because I can’t read my own writing – this happens very often.
New speaker (male):
That’s what I was trying to ask, when … I mean, it looks like a lot, but it might take like 30 seconds to say this.
Moderator:
Yeah, it’s very fast. I mean, I’m putting ten minutes at the outside, and my own feeling, it’s probably much more like five minutes, so really, and it is not characteristic of how she talks. It’s taken, when people don’t talk like this at all, then you don’t do microanalysis, because you don’t have something complicated and problematic to struggle with. You have fairly clear statements running all the way through, and you wouldn’t want to waste people’s time by saying, can you give up an afternoon to look at this particular passage, because you can make sense of it yourself. These are, where it is very difficult to make sense of it yourself, and then you try and summon up a panel, which is what this is.
Male speaker (continued):
What actually I realise now is that, I was just asking, what are you actually studying?
Moderator:
I’m studying situated subjectivity – this is my magic phrase, I think! I could write it out in lights, but I’m studying people’s subjectivity, ie, how they subjectively experience reality, and what sort of person they are, and it’s situated because they are always, have been in different situations, so let’s say Nadja has been situated as a free artist; she’s also been situated as an artist in an institution, and her subjectivity has changed over her life, and over the different things she’s done, and all the rest of it, and I’m trying to get a picture of the evolution of this situated subjectivity, either because I want to understand the person through the history of that, or I
want to understand the Norwegian regime, or the regimes or the situations through which she’s passed, as we all pass through our lives and experience different regimes or situations. So this is what, this system of doing biography does – it explores situated subjectivities as they move through a passage of their life, or all their life. That’s what I’m interested in.
Male speaker (continued):
So it’s psychology, it’s not language?
Moderator:
It’s not language, no. It’s psychology, I would call it psychosocial, in the sense that I’m interested … I could do this, for example, if I was studying institutions – what do institutions do to people? So I’d take a number of people and a number of institutions, ask them for the story of their life, whatever, and then see, do they experience it as close and hierarchical, do they experience it as liberating, do they experience is as bad for their health? Is it very good for their health, is it good in some ways and bad in other ways? – etcetera, so you can either, it’s not more psycho than social and not more social than psyche – it’s psychosocial. So if you want a word for it, it’s a psychosocial interest, and sociologists can use it, and psychologists can use it, and studies of institutions can use it, and it’s useable in many sorts of ways. Anybody else want to say anything about their experience of doing this panel, and what they have or haven’t got out of it?
New speaker (male):
I’ve become partly confused actually, because in my work, I also work with a lot of people every day, in a different way, because I see their faces. I see their expression, and for me, when I just see the text like this, it’s the total opposite, and I feel, you kind of get some points through, but as well, you feel a little stuck maybe, at some point.
Moderator:
I think that’s a very good sensation – I’m glad you feel a bit stuck, because being stuck is realising the limits of your own knowledge, and one of the dangers of having all of it, the visual, the audio, and not just the words, is that very often, the dominant emotion is what people tend to go for. As people living in a harsh and dangerous environment called Planet Earth and other people, we’re on the lookout for danger, and we have to read people’s faces very fast, or read people’s bodies very fast, and somebody said, I think I said this yesterday, that there are studies that show that, within 30 seconds of meeting somebody, you’ve decided whether they’re a danger or not a danger, and whether you like them or you don’t like them, and whether you’re going to date them or not date them, or whatever it is, very fast.
So actually, because you’re reading emotions, you’re reading some global thing about their personality very fast, when you have all that information. So actually, what, just looking at the words, and not having that information from the sound of the words, and from the face of the person and all the rest of it, means that you have to work harder on the words, and you then may get some more subtle and complex readings than if you have an audio-visual tape, a video tape of the person. So this, okay, here is a bold statement: you get more complicated pictures of people by having just their words stripped of sound and vision, and you get simpler things if you just get them fully frontal in sound and vision, and in the room at the same time. So, I’m not saying it is simply better just to have a transcript, I’m saying that you learn some things by working closely on a transcript, which you will not get from a video tape of the person themselves, but you don’t have to accept that – I’m just explaining a possible rationale.
Male speaker (continued):
I’m just saying that it’s very good, that we are different at some point, in this case, because you get different views as well?
Moderator:
Yes, no, I mean it’s been interesting, how many different interpretations of quite little things there have been. Just think of the word “it”, and all its many possible meanings, and “you”, etcetera. Anybody who hasn’t said anything like to come in on this round, before we close it up?
New speaker (female):
Is this also communication? – although already asked two questions, because we know that she is sitting opposite to you, and you asked, she has presented something, which she has prepared, and then you ask her a question.
Moderator:
Well, in the interview thing, I start a question saying, “Can you please tell me the story of your life, or your professional life?” she hasn’t presented me with anything before. This is what, it happens, and then she talks …
Female speaker (continued):
But when she presented her project, it sound fairly …
Moderator:
She can talk about her project, she talks about her project, so in that sense she presents it, but within this improvised interview situation, and then I say, at the end of it, is there anything more you would like to add? – and this is what she adds.
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, I understand, but the first question, she had some thoughts about what she was going to tell you?
Moderator:
Yes, I’m sure she had.
Female speaker (continued):
And she … cut out.
Moderator:
She cut out other things, yes – everybody does.
Female speaker (continued):
So maybe she, what’s hers, maybe she is content with her project, and then you ask her this question, and then the situation gets dangerous for her. That’s made her stutter maybe? – a lot of thoughts, and she had to sort her out, and maybe it was difficult for her to do it, so it’s about the situation.
Moderator:
It’s a situated – her subjectivity is situated in the interview, and its coda. I think what you say is a very nice summary of what happened.
Female speaker (continued):
And she describes, I think she describes the same, in this institution, where maybe she knew what she was saying, but someone else above her in the hierarchy led the conversation to another …
Moderator:
I’m clearly not in that, because I’m not in the hierarchy. I’m not even in Norway, but obviously, when you do an interview, then there are lots of imaginary people in the room. If you’re a journalist, you’re going to publish your thing in whatever your journal is, and so when people say, I’m a journalist for the Norwegian blah blah blah, can I interview you, it’s not just you that’s in the room, it’s the readers or viewers of the blah, blah, blah, so there are always imaginary other people in the room. It’s the public, and whatever, whatever. Okay, any final points from anybody who hasn’t said anything yet? Some people are deeply silent. Go on, say one thing.
New speaker (female):
Well, for me, this is a very interesting experience, because I studied political science, and I’m a journalist, so I work as a journalist, so it’s very useful information I heard here, and I don’t know …
Moderator:
That’s fine. I mean, I just hope it has been, obviously I haven’t decided … you’ve come here because, for whatever reason you decided you thought it might be interesting, or whatever, and I just hope it has been useful to you in different sorts of ways, just doing this sort of exercise, and if it hasn’t, I’m very sorry, and if it has, I’m very pleased.
I’d just like to thank you very much for coming along, and joining in. For me, it’s been very very helpful, because together you’ve pointed out all sorts of different aspects of what’s been going on in that process, which on my own I would never have seen. I knew I couldn’t understand it, that was why I brought it, but actually I now feel I have a better grip on it – not a complete grip, by any means. I still feel there’s lots that I haven’t, still haven’t understood, but actually I feel much clearer about some of the things that are going on in that, and that’s very helpful, so many thanks, and thanks for coming along.
Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016 (transcript)
part 1
Moderator:
Good morning. Thanks very much for coming. If I speak too fast or use words you don’t understand, please tell me because I haven’t met you before and so I don’t know what my level of comprehensibility is. So, let me just explain what we’re doing, because I don’t know how much you know. What this is, is a panel for interpreting a piece of interview text. So, an interview has happened and the material is going to be analysed in different sorts of ways but one of the ways which is what we’re doing today is to have a piece of text which is puzzling, it’s not quite clear what it’s saying. It seems to be saying different things, or is it saying anything at all. We don’t know.
And therefore what happen is, in this particular method of research, we have a panel to discuss it and go through it bit by bit by bit, in order to see, okay, I don’t quite understand what’s happening in this text, so I’ve brought it here for you to help me put forward your hypothesis about what it might be, and the point about it is to take this particular method of interpretation is to imagine the person who is speaking. There’ll first be a question by me, then there’ll be a response by the interviewee, and I will put them up in chunks, and any given moment for any chunk, the question is, what is the interviewee experiencing at that moment. What are their thoughts and what are their feelings at this particular moment? I mean there’s a number of sheets of paper, each one has a chunk on it, so it’s almost like stopping the film and saying, okay she’s said that, what was she thinking for feeling. What might she be thinking or feeling now that she’s finished because she’s now going on to do something a bit different.
So what you’re doing is exploring in a sort of micro theme, the whole thing might have taken five minutes or something to say, I can’t remember how long it takes to say but we will be going through it very slowly and we might spend an hour, an hour and a half going through it trying to understand, trying to imagine, trying to hypothesise what the person said might be experiencing as they said it, and why they’re now going on to say something a bit different which may not fit with what they’ve just said.
So, there are two sorts of hypothesis, and one is okay this is what I think the person is experiencing at the moment, and if I’m right, you then ask for a following hypothesis, what might she say later. If I’m right, and say that her feeling is such and such, then I think she will go on to say this, but if the hypothesis is this, then she’ll go on to say that. So what you do is you have a hypothesis about the experiencing of the person who’s just said something, and you say well we could test it, because if I’m right I think she will go on to do such and such, and somebody else will say, well no I think quite differently from you, I think she’s feeling something else, and if I’m right, then the person will go and say something else. So later on, we look at what she actually does say and it confirms one or the other, or neither of them and something quite different. So, there’s experiencing hypothesis and for each experiencing hypothesis there might be several following hypotheses.
What follows, what is set up later on in the chunk that we don’t know. Okay, and the principle just to explain why it is like that is that, it’s about that people are always improvising what they do. People are always what they say in an interview or how they respond to a question and you’re trying to understand the subjectivity that is doing the improvising. They’re inventing as the go along, so we’re trying to understand how the person invents their response by saying something, and going on to say something else or whatever it is. So, we’re trying to reconstruct that and we can only do it freely by not knowing what they actually did say next. So, at any given moment, they say something, just imagine them stopping and then there are lots of possibilities that they might go on to say and they choose one of them, or they do one of them. It’s not necessarily a question of choice. So, we’re trying to understand why they did or chose the particular thing they went on to say as opposed to something else, and that helps us understand why the person did in fact say what they ended up saying, because of the alternatives that they didn’t say.
I’m sorry that sounds a bit abstract but it’s to set why you’re doing what you’re doing and why I’m not putting all the bit of verbatim text at the same time and putting it chunk by chunk in a way that is, it’s future blind. You don’t what the person goes on to say next and therefore you can imagine this person themselves not knowing what they’re going to say next. So, it enables you to get better deeper into the experiencing the person that says.
Any difficult questions, awkward questions, simple questions, anything else questions? We can talk about it afterwards. I think the easiest thing is just to get going, and important thing is, oh yes, is two devices, which is what we do is we take an initial hypothesis, whatever anyone says first and then we think I will probably ask you, or you can think to yourselves, what would be a counter hypothesis. I think the person, well I think they’re very happy when they said that and she will go on to say something about their happiness. Even if I think it’s true I think no, I think they’re very sad. You go for counter hypothesis to open up the field. We don’t know what this person is experiencing. We never do know what they’re experiencing, we’re hypothesising about it and they trick is to keep the hypothesising open to realise we don’t actually know and the same thing could be said by somebody feeling very different feelings, and we’re trying to guess what they are. So, there’s always an initial hypothesis and then a counter hypothesis, not always, not straight away necessarily. Now I don’t know whether this is legible from where you are, maybe this is… you’ll have to tell me whether it is, if not we might have to move this board. Is that legible or not legible? Not legible, invisible, you can see the board. Okay well that’s a good start. Maybe we better put it there then I think, can you read it from… you can. Can you read it? Can you read it?
New speaker (male):
I can read it.
Moderator:
Okay, but it’s very bad for your eyes to squint, so I think we’ll move it anyway.
New speaker (male):
Just one question, are you recording this?
Moderator:
Yes, I am recording this. Is this a problem?
Male speaker (continued):
No I was just wondering why.
Moderator:
Well it’s partly to have a record, I can lead this but I can’t make notes on it at the same time, a for me, I’m a social research methodologist, specialising in biographic narratives, using this particular, quite a complicated series of methods, and for me it’s very important, in order to improve the methodology to have records of what actually happens in any panel for example, how that works, because sometimes I say silly things and guide people in the wrong way, whatever. So, to understand a methodology at work, whatever it is. It’s like having a video of some technical thing you want to know, how to make a particular dish in, in cuisine or something.
Male speaker (continued):
So, you’re just going to use it for your own….
Moderator:
Yes,
Male speaker (continued):
It’s not spreading…
Moderator:
No, it’s not going to be widely spread, no, no. It’s for understanding, and in this particular case, but it’s particularly for me understanding how the method works and what goes right and what goes wrong. Okay? It’s like seeing a cook make a dish half well and seeing what they’re doing and saying, oh well actually next time put more eggs in or, next time don’t stir it for so long, or whatever it is. So, it’s a similar way of understanding the practice that you’re engaged in.
Is that okay now? Sort of. Well you could turn your chair around actually, I mean it must be difficult… Okay so this is the first chunk and it’s me speaking because what then happens is you’re going to hear the other person responding to my thing, so you need to know what the question is that they’re struggling, and this is. Okay let me just explain what’s happened. What has happened is that the, the interview method is in two sessions, two sub sessions. There’s sub session one and there’s sub session two. You don’t need to worry about the difference at the moment, and this is the end of sub session one, and the person has said well that’s all I’ve got to say, and this is what I say afterwards, it’s called a coder, and what I say to her is anything else you’d like to add. No rush, just I mean, I know it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said it, what you want to add or whatever.
So, it’s giving an opportunity for an addition after the now you’ve finished, etc. So, this is what I say, and we always do this in this type of interview. We let the person finish and then we say, okay anything else you’d like to add, is the simplest version of it. So, what I’d like you to imagine, and I’ll read it again in a minute, is how the person who’s done their interview would be experiencing my having just said that. They’ve finished, I think it’s about an hour and half of interview, they say well I’ve finished, and then I say to them, anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said, you want to add or whatever. Okay so what we now collect from anybody who has a thought or a feeling, how might that have been experienced by the interview okay. So, I’ve said that and how might it be experienced by the interview, you can’t, you can never know. So, these are always hypothesis they’re never guessing the truth, because we don’t have access to that. So, all hypothesis are good.
New Speaker (male):
Are we starting now?
Moderator:
We’re starting now. You’re on.
Male speaker (continued):
I guess she’s feeling that she has to say something else.
Moderator:
Right, okay.
Male speaker (continued):
Just to please you.
Moderator:
Okay, under pressure. I’m under pressure to make this thing work. Under pressure to say something else. What did you say, to please me?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, kind of, I don’t think she really wants to say something else, but once you’ve said that she…
Moderator:
Okay, that’s a very good hypothesis.
Male speaker (continued):
Just to be polite.
Moderator:
Terrible thing politeness but she might certainly be feeling that. It’s a bit early to ask this question, but if that’s true, and if I can find the other pens. What might follow will be evidenced later on, that that was true. That’s a difficult thing to say or thing about. Let’s leave that you might come back to that later, what would follow, how would you know whether that was true or not, by things she said later.
New speaker (female):
She would say something unimportant. Just to say something.
Moderator:
Okay, so following hypothesis, something unimportant, or trivial. Something of that order. Okay. So, that’s one experiencing hypothesis and I’m sure we’ll get muddled up with these. This is an experiencing hypothesis and that’s a following hypothesis. Okay So that’s the first one. She feels under pressure to say something to please me, well to please the interviewer. What might be a counter hypothesis, something completely the opposite, whatever that is.
New speaker (male):
A feeling of relief that you’re sort of confirming that she’s probably been there for an hour, probably feeling that it’s coming to a close and feeling of relief that that statement is basically confirming that this is at an end.
Moderator:
Okay, so relief. In 20 years’ time, they have developed a felt tip pen that doesn’t dry up when you hold it upside down. It hasn’t happened yet. Relief, lovely. Relief at closure, closure is coming or accepted, or something like that, and so that’s what she might be feeling. Anything else that she might be feeling as she hears this, and thinks about it.
New speaker (female):
Hesitation.
Moderator:
That’s what she might do.
Female speaker (continued):
Hesitation, and then no.
Moderator:
Oh, right so that will be, he’d be asking herself whether she has got something to say, discovering that she hasn’t and then saying the following hypothesis would be, no. Okay, so reflection. I’m going to call it reflection because that’s what would be happening inside him. Reflection leading to no. She hasn’t got anything she wants to add. she’s terribly relieved it’s all over, and so there’s a reflection. Thing is, the experiencing is reflecting and the following hypothesis, deciding that she hasn’t and then saying no. Yeah?
New speaker (male):
I’m thinking as well that she might feel annoyed a little bit because she’s been talking for one hour, and then she maybe feels that she has to repeat herself maybe once more. It connects of course with all these other points.
Moderator:
All these things, it isn’t that one is maybe true and the other not. In reality she may have a mixture of absolutely everything that everybody says in different proportions or she may just have one of them, we don’t know but that’s certainly a possible thing that she might be feeling. God I’ve been talking for an hour now and she’s saying anything you’d like to add. It’s a bit like the pressure to say something to please me thing, but this is, she’s feeling the pressure and she’s starting to feel an emotion or a feeling of irritation. So, it’s the same thing at two slightly different levels. Okay any other quite different hypothesis about what she might be feeling?
New speaker (male):
Maybe she does have something really important that she actually wanted to say that the questioning didn’t touch on, so it might be a sudden, yes, I’ve been waiting to say this.
Moderator:
Yes, so that would be, what would be a word that might cover that feeling.
New speaker (female):
Reflection that leads to something important.
Moderator:
Okay so it’s the pressure the unsaid and now she can say it. So, it might also be a sort of relief but a relief at now having a space to say what she’s been wanting to say. So, okay relief and opportunity. An opportunity is being given at last. I’ve been wanting to say it right from the beginning of the hour and at last there’s an opportunity for her to say what she wants to say. Okay, any other what she might be experiencing. I’ll read it again. Anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean, I know it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said it, you want to add or whatever, anything else other how that might be experienced by the interviewee.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe she would be confused, because if she feels that she said everything right, well and she don’t know what to expect.
Moderator:
So, it wouldn’t be so much irritation but it would be confusion like what’s going on, I thought we’d done the interview and now it’s not closing as I thought it would close, the person’s saying something else. Okay, so confusion at the non-end. She thought it would be ending, she has ended it and it isn’t and she’s just confused about that. Okay, right I think that will do for starters. We could go on for quite a long time exploring how somebody might respond to that. The general thing is we’ve got quite a lot of hypothesis here which don’t, the vary from feeling under pressure to say something to please the interview, relief that the closure is coming, relief that at last she can say what she wants to say, irritation, as someone says. We don’t know what they are but they could be quite a lot of different things and they may be lots of things that we haven’t written down at all. So, you can see why this micro analysis is looking in detail at something that looks fairly straight forward and thinking that the experience of it by the interviewee might be very, very different and of course actually the interviewer, me, wouldn’t know. She doesn’t know yet. Might never know how her question is experienced but maybe…
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
Okay and this is, the numbers reflect the number of seconds that there is a pause. So, the numbers in brackets represent pauses. So, there’s a 44 second pause before there’s a response. 44 seconds is a long time in an interview. Usually people, well anyway, I shan’t go in. She speaks slowly and reflectively, I think it’s difficult to because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on. So, that’s her first response, and the question is okay, there’s clearly a lot of stopping. Certainly, there’s a 44 second, usually people give about five seconds, or ten seconds before they respond. This is a 44 second response. When she does speak, she speaks slowly. I think it’s difficult to, five second pause, because I’ve been focusing on the project I need to be focusing on, and reflect on, seven second pause. So, let’s look at the hypothesis we put up there, and see if any of them are confirmed or disconfirmed by what’s just the next chunk. So, I’ll go through and if anybody things, particular disconfirmation at this stage disconfirmation, there’s usually things get crossed out and lots of things stay in play.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
I’ll go through it and just say if you think, oh I think that one is strengthened by this fact or it is weakened by this fact. The first one is under pressure to say something to please the interviewer. Relief at the closure coming. After reflection says no. Irritation. Relief that an opportunity has been given at last and confusion at the non-end, the fact that it isn’t ending when she thought it would end. So is that, it may be that all of them remain open after this chunk. I suppose the only thing, any thoughts about it. she’s certainly reflecting, 44 seconds is a long time, is quite a lot of reflecting. So, in a sense that’s strengthened. she’s not yet said no, she’s saying it’s difficult because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing and reflect on.
New Speaker (female):
She feels the pressure.
Moderator:
She feels the pressure okay. So, one would be feels the pressure. Right let’s thing of different ways. she’s feeling pressured, where does the pressure come from?
New Speaker (male):
Guilt., or the fear of being I guess in some way, she hasn’t done…
Moderator:
What she’s supposed to have done. Okay feels the pressure, so there’s a sense of let’s say, one, one, perhaps guilt or shame, or both at not doing well. Something like not doing the task or not doing what she’s supposed to do or not doing something. Any thoughts about, is she feeling the pressure from outside, is it like the interviewer saying you’re not doing something right, so say something more. Or is it a pressure from inside, or could it be a mixture of both. I mean pressure can come from inside or outside.
New Speaker (female):
I think it’s mainly from the inside.
Moderator:
Okay these are all hypothesis. You’re not going to get things right. It’s trying to guess what might be the case and later on we’ll see some things look a bit more likely than others. So, your guess is that it’s the pressure from inside. she’s been asked, is there anything that you would like to say and whether you did say it or not, and the pressure might be from inside, well no maybe I didn’t say I wanted to say and therefore I feel perhaps guilt towards myself but it’s not necessarily about the interviewer it’s about what she want to say or would have liked to have said better.
New Speaker (female):
I think I’m just saying the same as you are, the pressure firstly comes from you, so the interviewer, but it’s interesting that she’s not blaming you why you’re asking the same question again, it’s not some kind of irritation it’s more, it’s interesting that after this question she starts to blame herself, like oh what I did wrong and so on.
Moderator:
Okay so guilt or shame or self-blame maybe. Obviously if, these are all hypothesises and in a sense if that right she might go on to say yes, I don’t know why I focused on the projects, it’s difficult because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on and that’s why I didn’t do x. y, z which I wanted to say and therefore it’s my fault for not having said what I intended to say. Something along those lines, I mean that’s just one possibility. We’ve no idea what she’s going to say, but that would make some sense, and if she did say something like that, then it would say that this looks as though it might be right.
Female Speaker (continued):
Or maybe she’s saying this just for the sake of saying anything.
Moderator:
Okay that’s a quite different one. So, she feels the pressure, feeling the guilt, perhaps self-blame and one, three is waffling, I don’t know if there’s a Norwegian expression for waffling, it’s somebody saying something just to fill the gap and keep the wolves from eating them in the forest or something like that. Waffling to keep pressure away. Or to satisfy the insistent interviewer, throw them a bone. Okay, any other quite different hypothesis, other than the feeling the pressure ones, from inside or outside. Yeah.
New Speaker (male):
Well I get the feeling that she has said all she wants to say at this point and that’s the polite way of telling you that. Saying that there are certain projects I wanted to focus on during this interview and although I’ve thought for 44 seconds, there probably is more stuff coming to mind, but in this particular context I just wanted to focus on this.
Moderator:
So, this is, how would we say that. I can’t remember what you said at the beginning?
Male Speaker (continued):
I think it’s a sort of sense that she’s covered the ground she wants to…
Moderator:
She has covered the ground right.
Male Speaker (continued):
And she’s politely rejecting any further conversation.
Moderator:
Has covered what she wants and therefore thanks very much for the pressure but I actually have focused on the projects I need to focus on, so I haven’t got anything more to say, it’s done so how or other. Okay. Any other quite different hypothesis about… so this is sort of feeling the pressure, either feeling some sense that she hasn’t quite done something that either she wants or I want, or feeling that she has said that she wants and trying to just keep the interviewer away which could go with waffling to take the pressure away because she doesn’t have anything more to say but she doesn’t want to say no in a nasty fashion and hurt my very tender feelings.
New Speaker (female):
The pausing, the pausing is reflecting something other than the words, maybe some uncertainty. She had to think about it.
Moderator:
Right, pausing, I put it as a lot of reflection. So, that might be that a lot of reflection on what… Let’s think there’s a lot of reflection but what are the very different things she might be reflecting on. What would you think.
Female Speaker (continued):
If we had seen her face, we would probably…
Moderator:
Okay you can’t see her face. I weep, I sympathise, so this is this method.
Female Speaker (continued):
The importance of not just the words but the responses.
Moderator:
I know, but we don’t do that in this method. There is somebody who does do that and that has strengths and weaknesses too but let’s just stay with this.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, I didn’t mean to bring it in but the words if they were said without the pausing.
Moderator:
No, we’ve got the pausing. What I’m taking your saying is that the pausing shows there’s a lot of reflection. Either she’s very bad at speaking which is possible or she’s reflecting quite a lot, 44, five and seven. You know in the space of virtually one sentence. So, the question is what are the different things… so let’s assume on this hypothesis a lot of reflection is going on, so the question is, what are the different things she could be reflecting on.
New Speaker (male):
Well she might feel that you kind of put her like, you’re making her add something and then she’s thinking I should have thought of that when we were doing the interview but I don’t know what she’s trying to say so I’ll just throw it back to him. You were making me focus on all this projects during the interview that’s why I haven’t made up something else. So, it’s your fault.
Moderator:
Okay well that’s possible. I’ll just say that it’s perfectly reasonably for you to suggest. The essence which I haven’t told you and so you wouldn’t know. Is that the first part of the interview, I don’t ask, I ask one question, tell me the story of your life or your professional life or something like that and then I don’t say anything at all. So, anything she’s said or not said is entirely because she said or she hasn’t said it. So, the one thing she can’t blame me for is having intervened to push her in one direction or another, because this method, you don’t. You say your initial question and the person talks for five minutes or five hours and you don’t add at all, and you don’t. So, that wouldn’t be the case. It might work in another type of interview. A semi structured interview, that’s very, very likely but in this interview, that’s what doesn’t happen because the method is precisely to prevent the interviewee feeling pressured during their talk to go one way or the other. So…
New Speaker (male):
Just another thing I feel that in this, because of all these seconds of reflecting, as well she might want to open up another continuing question.
Moderator:
So, she’s thought, she’s reflecting and she thinking of a new line of things she would like to talk about.
Male Speaker (continued):
She wants to fulfil the question in this sense maybe and as well it’s…
Moderator:
Well bear in mind anything else you’d like to add, it doesn’t say do add something else. It asks a question, is there anything else you’d like to add. She isn’t saying you must say some more. Oh, god how can I do this, I’ll think about x. It’s is there anything else you’d like to add, and it’s as easy for the person to say yes as it is to say no in principle.
New Speaker (female):
She says it’s difficult.
Moderator:
She says it’s difficult.
Female Speaker (continued):
She doesn’t use the word…
Moderator:
So how do you interpret using that word? What is difficult.
Female Speaker (continued):
Kind of chaos, she doesn’t really know what to add, there is something maybe there isn’t.
Moderator:
Chaos, is there anything she’s asking herself, is there anything I want to add. So, that’s the question to herself, and her mind is going around different possible things that she might want to say, okay. Anything else, any other quite different reasons, thinking she might be reflecting about.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe she has something to say, as a result of this reflection. she’s hesitating whether she should say this.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
Something to say, whether to say it. I suppose you could say something to say but how to say it. It’s a bit of a different, another slight different variation, she’s got something to say but how can she say it. Any other hypothesis about what she might be experiencing as she responds in that particular way?
New Speaker (male):
Huge deal of discomfort because she spends 44 seconds before answering, so it’s obviously thinking a lot and seems like she’s very emotional.
Moderator:
Discomfort, I think you said, and then you’re then having a general theory of feeling which is really good it’s the first one we’ve come across. There’s discomfort and perhaps very emotional, either at this particular moment or more generally. I’m not sure which you had in mind.
Male Speaker (continued):
It’s probably better being emotional during the whole interview because she’s just been talking about a lot of things and I guess what you’re talking at the end there. That’s what I’m thinking.
Moderator:
Sure, all one can do, what you’re doing is working with your imagining yourself into the shoes of the person who’s been asked that question and has said those things and what might be going on. And there’s no way of knowing, you just have to work out possibilities and then we look at what happens next.
Male Speaker (continued):
It’s like she knows what I’ve done is just trying to make me say it. I get the feeling of…
Moderator:
He being me the interviewer.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yes, she’s thinking that you know she’s done something and you’re trying to…
Moderator:
Omniscient interviewer.
Male Speaker (continued):
… make her tell you the one thing that she doesn’t want to talk about.
Moderator:
That’s a very (?? 35.04) hypothesis. Interviewer already knows the answer.
Male Speaker (continued):
Or… yes.
Moderator:
Knows, suspects the answer with a capital A. The Answer, and is putting pressure to say the thing that the interviewer already knows.
Male Speaker (continued):
Or maybe she doesn’t know but she’s thinking that she knows.
Moderator:
No, we don’t know, that’s what she’s think she knows and might be true or might be false. We’ll just spend a couple more things on this.
New Speaker (male):
There could be another branch to the discomfort where it’s not because she’s emotional but because in those 44 seconds she may have been thinking about their maybe some secrets that she doesn’t want reveal about either the project that she’s talked about or future projects and it’s come to her consciousness but she actually doesn’t want to reveal them.
Moderator:
It’s a bit like the sort of omniscient, or it might be either the omniscient interviewer who already knows, or it might be the totally ignorant interviewer, that she doesn’t know and she’s not going to be told. Secrets to…
Male Speaker (continued):
Doesn’t want to reveal.
Moderator:
… to be kept from the interviewer. So, the interviewer is far from omniscient, she’s very un-omniscient. Any last one to keep us, to fill up the last bit of the page and then we’ll go onto the next chunk. Any other way in which this might be being experienced. She feels the pressure and feels guilt and shame at not doing something perhaps pressure from inside. There’s a sense of self blame that seems to be presumably because there’s an implication that she should have something more to say although it is, is there anything more to say, she’s experiencing she should have more to say, therefore what you said isn’t adequate, and she has covered what she wants, so she doesn’t have anything more to say. She’s pausing for reflection, she’s asking herself is there anything more I want to add, or she’s pausing because she does have something to say but whether she should say it and how she should say it if she does say it, discomfort, I can’t even read my own writing after two minutes. God knows what that means. Then we have an interviewer who already knows what she hasn’t said and she’s trying to put pressure on her to say the thing she doesn’t want to say, or the interviewer doesn’t know but she does have secrets and she wants to keep them from the interviewer, so quite a lot could be going on underneath this particular chunk.
Okay so. Essential to this method, it’s lots of paper and sticky tape that gets round your fingers and you can’t handle it properly. If you don’t like lots of paper and sticky tape, then you avoid the method. So now we’re on chunk three. I’ll read it out. Now you’re further away and you’re round a corner. So, but it can also be interesting, I feel like… so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context, but it can also be interesting I feel like… so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context. Well, let’s continue what we do that having said that, we review our earlier hypothesising again to see if there’s anything that looks more probable or less probable as a result of knowing the next chunk. So, feel feels the pressure, guilt and shame, self-blame, waffling to take the pressure away. It doesn’t seem to be like that’s just waffle because she started to come up with something that she says, that it can also be interesting.
New Speaker (female):
She takes the opportunity.
Moderator:
It’s bit like taking the opportunity. So, I think this is, and all these things are provisional because anything we say now, the next chunk suggests this, the chunk after that might suggest the opposite again, but at the moment, the waffling to take the pressure away seems unlikely to be true because of chunk three. She has covered what she wants. she’s pausing for a lot of reflection, is there anything I want to add. She has something to say, whether to say or how to say it, discomfort, and I can’t read…
New Speaker (female):
Very emotional.
Moderator:
Very emotional right. Omniscient and is she omniscient being forced to say something she doesn’t want to say and the interviewer knows or secrets that only she knows but she wants to keep it from the interviewer. Any thoughts about whether this chunk does anything to any of those hypotheses?
New Speaker (male):
Yeah, I think it does show that she did come up with a new direction…
Moderator:
So, which one…
Male Speaker (continued):
Three, something to say and it’s more whether to say it and how to say, a choice of those.
Moderator:
Okay so that’s a bit confirmed by chunk three. Any other things. This are all highly provisional, just a sense of how what’s feeling a bit more likely and bit less likely. What you are feeling is a bit more likely and a bit less likely, and someone else might feel quite differently. You look as though you want to say something. No, ah well we all make mistakes. I feel full of self-blame and guilt. Okay, let’s carry on.
New Speaker (female):
It’s not about whether it’s coming out of this but I guess what she saying, she’s still reflecting and she’s not very sure.
Moderator:
Okay that’s fine that’s a good new hypothesis. Okay one, still reflecting.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
Still reflecting and hesitating. Still reflecting but hesitating. So, there is something that she has in mind but she’s hesitating about saying it for some reason or other. It’s sort of she’s starting to say it because she says, but there’s desire to be working in the institutional context, so presumably that’s what she’s starting to say or thing but she’s hesitating about saying for some reason or another. So, there is a new direction. There is something, she’s now adding. We don’t know whether she wanted to, she’s always wanted to talk about this, or whether she’s just starting to notice that there’s this desire and there is this desire to be working in the institutional context. Now to talk about desire is quite strong. That’s interesting, I have this interest to be working in an institutional context but this desire, I don’t know how desire works out in Norwegian but in English you wouldn’t say that very easily. There’s something stronger there than just, yeah, I could work in an institutional context, you know, why not. I’m very bored, I’ll do anything once, but a desire, to notice in yourself a desire to work in an institutional context. Maybe in Norwegian it all sounds very different. So, this is a Norwegian speaking English person I should say.
New Speaker (female):
Well it’s the translation or she was speaking…
Moderator:
It’s what she says in English but English isn’t her native language. Norwegian is her native language. So, this is one of the problems about inter cultural translations, but these are her words not my words. For all I know she is translating from Norwegian in her head, but I suspect she isn’t, because most of the time, in the interview she speaks very fluently and fast, as if she were English more or less, 95%. So anyway, I don’t know, I can’t answer the question.
Female Speaker (continued):
But the way she’s saying it it’s like, it can also be seen, I feel like, so there is this desire, she’s like going around the same thing, but not saying it straight.
Moderator:
So, if that’s true. What is she experiencing which makes her not say it straight but go round and round.
Female Speaker (continued):
It’s whether she’s not sure about this herself or she’s not sure whether she should it public.
Moderator:
So, hesitating and unsure in herself, this writing is wonderful, Norwegian pens are great. What was it, unsure in herself or unsure whether to say, whether to say in public and obviously, the very small public.
Female Speaker (continued):
Just to say it aloud.
Moderator:
Say aloud or admit. Perhaps there’s some taboo on a desire to be working in the institutional context of which she should be a bit ashamed. You mean working in an institution, your desire to work in an institutional context. How appalling or something. Anyway, I’ve no idea. Okay, any other.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe she’s tries to satisfy you or the interviewer by saying something and then see what happens.
Moderator:
So, exploring, so this is back to waffle or exploring random paths. To somehow, alright I’ll try and think of something to say, institutional context, yes, I’m thinking about the institutional context, okay, and that’s to satisfy the interviewer. Er stands for interviewer or me, can’t be bothered to write it out at great length. Okay. Any other quite different hypothesis, counter, something quite different is going on. One is that she’s still reflecting, she’s hesitating, she’s unsure in herself or she’s unsure whether to say it. she’s exploring random paths, phrases that come to mind to keep me happy or keep whatever it is. Anything else quite different from the above?
New Speaker (male):
Is this is the next sentence after…
Moderator:
Everything follows in exactly this way.
Male Speaker (continued):
It doesn’t make any sense really. I can’t.
Moderator:
You can’t quite make sense…that’s the characteristic of the text that would come from micro analysis because it’s very difficult to make sense of, it doesn’t quite seem to fit. So yeah absolutely.
Male Speaker (continued):
Like what can also be interesting that’s what I’m wondering.
New Speaker (male):
She could be meaning that this is also something that might be interesting, it may just be a strange way of explaining if English is not…
Moderator:
What is the this that might, I mean there’s lots of it could be interesting, this might be, what is the this? I mean if it was clear we wouldn’t have a problem so there may be different this’, interpretation of this or it or whatever that might be given so we have to try out different versions. What is it that, what is the it, that could also be interesting.
New Speaker (female):
Working in the institutional context.
Moderator:
Okay, so we’d have different its. The it might be working in the institutional context. So, that’s one way of reading it. Okay anybody got a quite different possibility to what she means by it.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe she’s trying to guess what you are trying to get out of her as an addition to her original answer.
Moderator:
This version of her seems very fixated of her on me, that’s quite interesting, but I mean it’s perfectly possible. I like to think of myself as not trying to get anything in particular out of anybody. It doesn’t stop her being very preoccupied by it.
Female Speaker (continued):
She feels uncertain then she would feel the pressure.
Moderator:
So, it is, this is the, in fact we got that earlier on, so I won’t write it again, because it seems to be a continual thing, everything so far could be her trying to work out what I want to get out of him.
Female Speaker (continued):
But it could be what she thinks you’re trying to drag of her.
Moderator:
It is the thing to be dragged out.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, what is it that I haven’t said.
Moderator:
So, she’s very preoccupied with what I think she hasn’t said and so that’s what the it is. The thing I haven’t said, the thing you are trying to drag out of me which she eithers knows or doesn’t know, could be interesting, and then she invents, sorry she doesn’t invent, she uses this phrase, desire to be working, desire to be working in the institutional context. This is isn’t a phrase I’ve used. It’s not a phrase that I’ve used. So, she’s brought this phrase of working the institutional context or desire to work in the institutional context out of her own resources, out of her own concerns.
Female Speaker (continued):
His own reflections.
Moderator:
His own reflections, her own thoughts, maybe she thinks I want. I think she should be thinking about the institutional context, but not because I’ve said that because I haven’t. I’ve just said please tell me the story of your life. Virtually nothing until the thing there and that’s all I’ve said. So, you’ve seen all, apart from the original question, you’ve seen all my words. So, when she says this desire to be working in the institutional context, this doesn’t come from me. She may attribute it to me but she’s improvised the phrase which she then attributes to me.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe this it word means your proposal, your offer to review what she would like to say.
Moderator:
Okay that’s nice. So, the proposal to review is interesting. It could be interesting. She’s not saying it is interesting, it’s could be interesting. Okay, any other hypothesis about it which is interesting.
New Speaker (male):
she’s very happy because finally she got the opportunity to tell you that her desire is to work in the institutional context. Instead of what she’s been doing for the last ten years.
Moderator:
she’s had all these projects. Okay so that’s…
New Speaker (female):
Is it she was allowed to say.
Moderator:
she’s being…
New Speaker (male):
That 44 seconds, is this the best time tell them anything to believe them.
Moderator:
So, this is a great opportunity for avowing her desire for the institutional context. Fantastic opportunity. At last it can be said after an hour and a quarter. Okay, we don’t know this is what we do is to try to imagine how somebody would come to say what’s there. So, this desire to be working in an institutional context is something, yes, I can now say I want to work, I have a desire to work in the institutional context which I’ve not said before or something, or not stressed before in the same way.
New Speaker (female):
Just as a, I’d like to add to the strength of this word desire. Maybe if because it’s not her mother tongue, English, she doesn’t feel like for instance, I don’t feel this huge strength of this word. I would use this word in this case even if I don’t mean it’s like the huge desire.
Moderator:
You might say I desire to have ham and eggs for breakfast.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, in this case, it would be huge. If I’m talking about some important things, like for instance, I went to change my work or something, I can use I want to change, but I can use desire as well. I know the best example.
Moderator:
No but it’s interesting, so we don’t quite know how because it’s not her native… for native English people to say it is a desire to do something is quite a strong statement…
New Speaker (female):
But there is no need…
Moderator:
It’s a need it’s a desire it’s something quite rooted, it’s not just I would do it for fun, it’s actually something quite important, but it’s quite possible that for a Norwegian to say that, use that English expression might mean something considerably less, it might be yeah…
New Speaker (female):
He might be fluent in English but still not fluent in…
Moderator:
Sure, I think it’s a really important point. So, this is not so much about what the it is, this is about what she means by, what do you say, there’s this desire, might just feel I feel like doing it, or it could be everything I’ve always wanted to do but I’ve at last been able to do say it, and we can’t really know. It’s very important to know that we can’t really know things. Not knowing is called negative capability but it doesn’t mean that we can’t imagine what it might mean but we need to know that it is our imagining what it might mean not our knowledge of what it does mean to that person.
New Speaker (male):
It’s quite a strange way of expressing it to say there is this desire, instead of I really desire to do this, it’s very distant.
Moderator:
Okay, so it’s very distancing, so that’s very interesting. So, we could…
Male Speaker (continued):
It undercuts the passionate nature…
Moderator:
Okay so one is that it’s distancing.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
Distancing so she’s similarly avowing and distancing. she’s avowing this desire to work in an institutional context which is something that comes up in her head but by calling, there’s this desire, there is this desire. Somebody’s desire, not saying my desire, just desire is also both avowing it in one sense, distancing and what did you say, under cutting.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yeah, undermines the strength of the passion in the word desire.
Moderator:
Undermining, so there’s a sort of… there may be two things in it. One for herself, she may be avowing and disavowing and distancing or she may know that she does have a strong, a desire to work in an institutional context but in the public of me there, she’s distancing herself from it, so I can’t say, ah so that’s very important to you is it. Very important. i.e., that it’s the sense of the persecuting interviewer. The interviewer is potentially persecuting something. If she admits to desiring something very much, then actually she’s making herself vulnerable, so the important thing is you sort of admit it, there’s this desire but you’re not saying it’s my desire. Oh, I noticed there’s this desire out there somewhere. She hasn’t even said it’s his. Okay. Any other hypothesising like the experiencing behind the saying this.
New Speaker (male):
So, in relation to the previous comments that she spoke only about her project, by now speaking about the context, she used the 40 seconds or 44 seconds, to kind of zoom out from the kind of place she was in during the whole one and a half hour to comment on another perspective.
Moderator:
That’s interesting she’s taking a wider view.
Male Speaker (continued):
Zooming out.
Moderator:
So, that’s a very nice structure, zooming out from SS1 and its narrow focus, because she talks about I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and now she’s no longer focusing on the projects she needs to be focusing on. She’s zooming out and thinking about something bigger or something different, and she phrase she uses for it, this desire to be working in the institutional context, whatever that means. Okay that’s a very interesting. We call this a structural hypothesis because it’s trying to look at the whole of what we’ve done so far to see if we can see a shape to all this. Can we see a shape to all this? So, okay. Right. Anybody want to add a comment on this before we take it off and hang it on our exhibition wall.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
That’s chunk four, so I’ll read this out. So, from what we’ve just heard there’s this desire da, da, da. There’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it. So, I can add that four second pause, of course the private is all the time on the why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there, or so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s, you can see why I needed a micro analysis panel to help me understand this. I’ll read it again. So, there’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it, so I can also add, of course the private Nadja, it’s all the time on the why we want to be part of this. What’s interesting of working there, so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s… Okay. Well let’s look at our previous hypothesising. So she’s hesitating, unsure in herself, unsure whether to say, exploring random paths to satisfy the interviewing, the it is working in the institutional context, the thought has to be dragged out, the thing to be dragged out, proposed to research, don’t understand what that means, avowing her desire for an institutional context, but may be simultaneously distancing herself from it, and the whole thing is about zooming out from the narrow focus of sub session one into some more general self-understanding. Anything seem more or less probable of the previous hypothesising before we go on.
New Speaker (female):
She’s distancing herself more and more. In here we could maybe even guess that it’s not 100% sure, that there she was talking about herself, I mean it looks like she’s thinking about this whole desire, why people want to work in this institutional context. Why they want to switch from there on projects for instance. It’s as if she’s just thinking about this idea and actually I don’t think that she’s sure about herself working in this context. she’s just thinking about the possibility but not taking this responsibility at all, like her obligation.
Moderator:
So, this is what she says or this is her experiencing? So, it’s always… it sounds as though what you’re saying is that she’s doing this to herself and that is to say she herself doesn’t know for herself whether she’s talking about herself or whether she’s talking people in general, and therefore when it comes across that’s what comes across or she does know what she’s experiencing but she’s talking about in a way that isn’t true to that and is therefore confusing. She wants to confuse what she says.
Female Speaker (continued):
I think it’s a different story.
Moderator:
The first one is where she doesn’t know.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, she’s just thinking again like there is this desire to be working and here she says like, just a second. Why we want to be a part of this, like we, who we, she’s not talking her about herself again. Like we people in general why we want to switch to these…
Moderator:
So, it’s a people in general.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, but I don’t think she’s making it conscientiously. I think distancing herself like because she wants to do it. she’s just doing it thinking about it.
Moderator:
she’s in it…
Female Speaker (continued):
And maybe there is this slight probability that she can do the institutional context.
Moderator:
People, the we. Okay, the people, the we are wondering about the…
Female Speaker (continued):
she’s reflecting about this whole idea of working in the institutional context.
Moderator:
Okay, people like we, and the working in institutional context and it’s general, like a collective, why do we want to work.
Female Speaker (continued):
It’s like I should work there or I shouldn’t work there. Why in general, why people want to do this.
Moderator:
General question to a general category of which she’s a part because she says we. Okay that’s one thing that she’s moving to a, in terms of the distancing, I’ve been focusing, it can be interesting and she’s now moving away from the I into people in general, this is your hypothesis, from the I to people like me, why do we want to work in institutional context, not particularly I. So, in a sense, the having got, if you take the structural hypothesis from moving towards the I she’s now going back away from the personal, she’s distancing herself so that the distance, she becomes a general reflector on we, rather than distancing from self.
New Speaker (female):
I think she’s getting desperate. She doesn’t really know what to do say.
Moderator:
But why doesn’t she know what to do say.
Female Speaker (continued):
She doesn’t know what she-it is.
Moderator:
So even if she doesn’t know what she means by the it. Okay. So, that’s an interesting hypothesis. So, the it, she doesn’t know what the it is and is getting desperate.
Female Speaker (continued):
I don’t remember the sentence but is there some blaming here, why don’t you, at the end of…
Moderator:
I’ll read it again. There’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it, so I can also add that the private Nadja, it’s all the time on the why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there. So, it’s kind of why didn’t you continue there if, so that sounds a bit like what you’re saying that there’s sort of a self blaming or self not understanding, something like that okay. Self blaming or possibly self not understanding. Why didn’t you… so the you might then be back to her again, it’s like a question. If that was the case, I’m saying to myself, why Tom didn’t you, in case it’s Nadja, but why did I Nadja talk about…
New Speaker (female):
Generalise it.
Moderator:
Or it could be the general thing we don’t know if it’s a general you or a particular you, but somebody didn’t continue, why didn’t you continue there, is referring to a past thing that happened, somebody who was doing something and she didn’t continue there and so I think that’s more specific, that wouldn’t be to a category probably, more speaking to herself because there’s no other you. she’s not talking to me as you yeah. So here we have a you which is equalling Nadja in this particular case. Okay. Any other thoughts about.
New Speaker (female):
It seems to me that she has so many doubts about the project and she wants to debate or I don’t know maybe with herself, she wants to debate and discuss about whole project, as she is doubtful or something like that.
Moderator:
So, it’s self-doubt, needs a debate. It’s a self debate between different bits of herself when somebody says, why didn’t you continue there if, that’s one part of the self talking to the other part of the self. Needs a debate between parts of the self. So, it’s quite interesting because on the one hand one can see that there’s the motivation. She talks about the private Nadja, Nadja that’s her name. That’s the sort of complicated, the motivation so I can also add of course that the private Nadja, so it’s as though there’s been a public Nadja and somehow, we’ve now got to a private Nadja but she goes into why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting in working there, then it’s back to the more private, why didn’t you, I Nadja saying to Nadja why didn’t you continue there wherever that was. So, it’s pretty, it’s pretty opaque. It’s pretty unclear to sort out and there’s a quite a lot of complicated movements between talking to the interviewer, there this motivation behind it and I can also add, she’s sort of declaring to the interviewer something or other about the private Nadja and then it starts to move away from the private Nadja to why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there and then it comes back to a self debate which I become invisible and she’s saying why didn’t you Nadja, why didn’t you Nadja continue there or something or other.
So, it’s quite a sort of complicated movement of subjectivity in it and sometimes she’s talking about a general category and sometimes she’s having a bit of an argument with herself at the end, and sometimes she’s talking to the interviewer. I can also add that the something or other, so okay so that’s what it is. This is not saying, I mean what I find interesting about this thing and what you’ve said has been very helpful in clarifying what might be going on, what might be going on. Is that there’s the movement of the subjectivity, even within phrases and half sentences and bits and pieces, you can see something working away. I think of it sometimes as you look for a piece in the text in which it’s a bit like somebody who’s had, the working of the knee suddenly becomes obvious. Normally people are in charge of their talk and their interview and it flows quite nicely and all makes sense and may be lies, but it doesn’t matter, it’s flowing nicely, and the micro analysis is where somebody is struggling with quite different impulses and the desire to talk to themselves, a desire to talk to you, to tell you something or to not tell you something and all this shows itself and it is very difficult to sort out what’s happening, but if you can sort out what’s happening then you get an insight into that very jerky moving subjectivity that is sort of starting and stopping doing different things more or less at the same time. This must have taken all of, well it took four seconds pause there. Anyway.
[Talking aside]
So, there’s been that, there’s all this the motivation behind it. So, I can also add of course the private Nadja is all the time on why do we want to be part of this, what’s interesting, working there, so it’s kind of 12 second pause, very long. So why don’t you continue there if it’s… I mean there’s lots of 11 second pause, there’s lot of but what’s there a lot of, you have to wait 11 seconds while she works out what to do say. There’s lot of, 11 second pause, ambiguity in all this. Even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 second pause, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being. I’ll read that again, I mean there’s lots of 11 second pause, there’s lot of but what’s there a lot of, you have to wait 11 seconds while she works out what to do say. There’s lot of, 11 second pause, ambiguity in all this. Even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 second pause, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
So is anything that we’ve said before proved or disproved, weakened or strengthened. Actually, what I’ll do is read it all through as it was said, because all really said in one stream with all the pauses and I’ll just add the numbers for the pauses. I say, anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean I know it’s a question of reviewing what you’d like to say and whether you said it, do you want to add or whatever, and she speaks, slowly and reflectively. I think it’s difficult to, five, because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on, seven second pause, but it can also be interesting, I feel like, so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context, there’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it. So I can also add, four second pause, of cause the private Nadja, it’s all the time on the, why do we want to be part of this, what’s interesting working there, so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s, I mean there’s lot of ambiguity in all this, even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this, and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 seconds, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being. Any thoughts, the lived experience of the person who’s been saying all this to this point.
New Speaker (male):
I’m still thinking pressure, there seems to be sort of a huge importance to what she’s saying, so she doesn’t find the ways or the words to say it.
Moderator:
So, she’s got something hugely important there, but she’s not finding the words to say it, is that what you’re saying.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yes, or maybe the interviewing itself is something important, like she’s mentioning that it might be part of her CV or something like that and then she’s just not… difficult to find the right words because they’re so important.
Moderator:
The interviewing is very important. She can’t find the words, is that what you said, because it’s so important.
Male Speaker (continued):
she’s stressed.
Moderator:
Okay stress. The second one was that there’s something she wants to say that’s very, a notion she said that, some huge thing to be said, but can’t find the words to say it. Notices that these are sort of internal, the interviewing is a thing from the outside, which is something, she’s agreed to do or wants to have done, but it’s, that’s the huge source of pressure, we started off with a lot of sources of pressure thing, or there is something she very definitely wants to say and it’s so huge she can’t find the words to say it. At least she can’t find the words to say it in interview. So, both of those things might be true or only one of them, but all of these are hypothesis, we’re not trying to decide which is true.
New Speaker (female):
I have this feeling that all the interview was about her professional life, what she said before that I was talking about all those projects of mine, something, and then she starts to speak about this private Nadja, digging deeper a bit maybe and she has these doubts about whether she should speak about these private things and she makes this conclusion that if we talk about me as the emotional human being then I would say this but she said that it’s so difficult, I mean she was talking about her professional life and now starts to talk a bit about her private life but she still doubts whether she should do it. The switch from the professional life story to some personal feelings.
Moderator:
The private Nadja. Should she, or shouldn’t she?
Female Speaker (continued):
May be this whole concept of switching to something else like to start working in the institutional context maybe all this thing is a bit private, bit too personal for her.
Moderator:
So being private and wanting to talk about the institutional context.
Female Speaker (continued):
Somehow, she continues talking about her professional life, it’s already too personal and maybe she’s in doubt whether she should do.
[Talking aside]
Moderator:
Oh, yes zooming out from the sub session one focus on projects, so this zooming out from the projects, the projects are very professional what do you ask professional about, you ask them about their projects because their projects are interest and therefor you ask about the projects. Then it’s sort of moving out to the idea of the institutional context which you’re saying well it’s her institutional context. The projects are out in an abstract space of what public artists do is to create projects here there and everywhere and you look at the projects and you don’t know anything about the person who did them. You just look at the projects of you work with the projects of something. Then she’s talking about the institutional context which might be her one or it might be the general institutional context of people like us. Namely, let’s call it project artists. Okay, but it’s getting slightly personal and then actually she moves the motivation behind it, the private Nadja. Why do we want to be part of this, and it could be a we of the category of why do we artists want to do these sorts of things, it could be what is my motivation? she means the private Nadja and here she goes straight into a personal thing, it’s like a reflection, this is almost like the first part of what she said which is sort of what’s interesting and why don’t you continue there, and she’s having a debate with herself, and then there’s lots of ambiguity in all this, and all this is what she maybe, all her life or all of what she said or anything, we don’t know. I feel I’ve been talking here, becomes quite personal, I’ve been talking here and then this, then that. It becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, and I mean it could also be a story about like an emotional human being, or even about the emotional private Nadja. Okay. So this is very sustained personal. It’s the first sustained personal reflection that we’ve had, whereas early on it’s not been quite like that, and its sort of a more fluent, it’s more fluent talk, it actually holds together in a way that some of it doesn’t.
New Speaker (female):
Not just personal but emotional.
Moderator:
Not just personal but emotional, exactly. So, what this is, is a sort of working, nobody’s commented on, which I think is really interesting, that this take off, this CVish thing. A CV is a curriculum vitae which is what you submit you’re applying for a job or anything whatsoever. So, you take off this CVish thing, it’s like some clothes. It’s like a role that she’s been doing her CVish thing by talking about his, when she talks about the projects, I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on. I’ve been focusing on it, means my talk has been focused on it. The whole of the sub session one has included has been focusing on my projects and I’ve been doing it clad in my CVish clothes and now I’m starting to feel them uncomfortable, it’s cold afterwards, and there’s this zooming out institutional context, but actually it’s me in the institutional context. It’s my situation, or a bit of is my, it’s our institutional context, but maybe it’s me and then it’s the private Nadja and then… So, it’s also zooming towards the emotional human being, who’s been pretty hidden so far because the story has been about her and her projects and her life as a public artist, or an artist sort of working in public.
So, that’s very interesting sort of developed… it may not be true, it may be something quite different, we’ve yet to see the next chunk, but that is a possible line which explains what’s been happening. That all her stuttering uncertainty is because I’ve been stuck in… it’s difficult to take off this CVish thing. One bit of me is absolutely insistent on keeping it on. With sort of interviewing, you said the interviewing was very important and therefore she had to be careful what she said, as a public figure doing an interview, and on the other hand she does want to take off this CVish thing and talk as if like something like an emotional human being, and I think somebody said, I think you said to me, she’s very emotional, somebody did, I can’t remember who. So, there’s something about dealing with emotions as a public intellectual or a public artist or something or other, and in the interview, is struggling with being that and the private person who’s doing the talking and how does she deal with all that, and that’s why we have such a difficult sort of jumping about type stuff here, which is… anyway it’s a hypothesis.
New Speaker (male):
It’s also curious that it has this distancing effect, she said it could be a story about, she doesn’t say I am an emotional human being, this could be in a story about an emotional human being, which is quite an odd way of expressing.
Moderator:
There’s distancing going on there. It could be in a story, not that’s part of my life, but it could be in a story.
Male Speaker (continued):
He sees the emotional side of herself also in fiction.
Moderator:
Well that’s another thing. A story in the sense of it could be a made-up story about an emotional human being. It’s not me who is an emotional human being but there’s a made-up story about some emotional human being, looking rather like me. May be an avatar.
Okay I’ll think we’ll stop there, not quite sure what the time is but I find it very interesting, we’ll talk some more, go on with this after lunch, but I think what I think has been really interesting is dealing with what is really quite a difficult thing to get a hold on, what is going on here and we’ve ended up, I mean we haven’t ended up, at this point we’ve broken off where there is some sense of how you could make sense of why it is the way it is, and that’s what micro analysis is meant to do, and sometimes it succeeded and sometimes you say, having done micro analysis, I’m even more confused about what it was all about from where I started off. At the moment, I’m personally feeling that I can make more sense of it. I hope you are too and if you’re not that’s even better because you can say all this makes no sense at all, I think it’s quite different.
[Talking aside]
part 2
Moderator:
Okay, let’s start again. It’s a relief that it’s a small group once more. So, I think what would be quite fun is just to spend five minutes, you remember at the end of the session, I said, please write down something, your sense of Nadja and her story-telling so far. So if anybody would like to share any of that, anything you’ve written, or perhaps what you think now about that, to get a sense of the variety or the lack of variety in the room. It’ll be obviously inconclusive, but it will just be interesting, what different people have made of it.
New speaker (male):
First of all, one question – there was this, in the Seventies, this television series, where you have to figure out who that person is, is her name really German?
Moderator:
Sorry?
Male speaker (continued):
Is her name really German? Isn’t that not maybe …
Moderator:
I have no comment to make. So anybody want to share any of their sense of Nadja and her history?
New speaker (female):
I have something, it’s just spontaneous, it’s not worth any more than this. Optimistic, hard-working, goal-achieving, then confused – what is it all about? Mid-life, if not crisis, at least questioning, and then I go into literary quoting, Dante, (?? 1:43). I am taking the first phrase of La Divina Comedia, and I’m taking it in Italian, and then I’ll translate it:
(speaks Italian)
“In the middle of the road that is our life, I found myself in a big, dark forest, because the true road was crushed”… and so this is a bit, it’s from being young and optimistic, and going into maturity, so this is like, a description of her …
Moderator:
Okay, that’s what it feels like to you. Anybody got a different perception, or a different imagination? – a counter-hypothesis.
New speaker (female):
I wrote something, but I don’t want to read it.
Moderator:
No, that’s fine.
Female speaker (continued):
I think this Nadja is, or what is if, my perception is that she’s a rational and emotional person at the same time, and she values a lot to be connected with creativity and in relation, but also to build a career, and it seems like she struggles a bit with these two sides, but so far, it seems that she also has been able to play along with both of them.
Moderator:
Okay, that’s interesting. Anybody else?
New speaker (female):
I think lots of things, but I’ve written one sentence, that I don’t know if … but I still believe in it. I said that she hardly, never dances on the table, but she doesn’t leave the party before it’s over.
Moderator:
(he laughs) Okay, right. Anybody else?
New speaker (male):
Just an observing person.
Moderator:
An observing person? – okay.
New speaker (female):
Yes, there’s something there. Maybe she has a notion for details and sensitivity to others around him? – without pushing it? – maybe.
Moderator:
Okay, anybody else?
New speaker (male):
I think she might be a little bit optimistic, that she is sort of, like a doll that you have in the spring, and she will turn it again, and then make a new direction and start walking, and then, not being afraid for new challenges, but she must also be a little bit programmatic.
Moderator:
A bit what, sorry?
Male speaker (continued):
Programmatic, so she might even programme herself, but we could also see that there is something in her world that is also programming, because her logic towards his, say, her profession. There’s some logic that she’s tapping into, and she’s understanding, so it seems, it could be programmatic, when she’s being self-reflecting, or something.
Moderator:
Okay, thanks.
New speaker (male):
Okay, first of all, my questions, already before, were like, I was doubtful about the whole sort of setting and addressment. First of all, I want to know, we are filmed here, in what way, like is Nadja, in what way is it, the interview, you said she knew that she was being interviewed. Did she also request at that interview, did she also, how to say … did she commission this interview? Did Nadja commission that interview?
Moderator:
Yes.
Male speaker (continued):
So I guess, this is what I thought, like to interpret, like now, Nadja, thinking like, okay, she commissioned that interview. In that way, I would say we have to interpret it in a completely different way. Also, I would say that I had a setting, like in mind, that’s also how you conveyed it to us, that you made an interview with a person that tells the story to you, but now that it’s clear that actually the person itself is some sort of, the protagonist behind this whole event here, I would say we have to interpret it, of course, completely different.
Moderator:
Okay, could you say what the difference would be?
Male speaker (continued):
I think of course, like, sure, then it’s like, when we now … like okay, when we now know that it’s like, probably Jesper itself who is like …
Moderator:
Let’s call her Nadja.
Male speaker (continued):
Oh, let’s call her Nadja.
Moderator:
Because she’s a figment of our imagination!
Male speaker (continued):
Okay, but this is already … I don’t know. I think first of all, I think, okay, obviously I’m not any more like, wondering about the credibility – I’m obviously tricked into a situation.
Moderator:
You’re obviously tricked into a situation?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, you are tricked in a situation, you are kind of, you have …
Moderator:
Is the “you” me, or the “you”, you?
Male speaker (continued):
No, I think the whole set is a sort of like, okay, then it would make sense, like, to come up with Godfrey (? 7:30) and say, there’s a certain kind of team, you are part of a team, together with Nadja? – and you are kind of like, pretending something to make us part of like, an artistic plan.
Moderator:
What am I pretending?
Male speaker (continued):
I would say, first of all, like you pretended that this was a sort of study of yours?
Moderator:
It is a study of mine.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, but at the same time, you are also a collaborator?
Moderator:
That’s always true.
Male speaker (continued):
This is not always true. This is a different situation.
Moderator:
Maybe it depends what you mean by “collaborator.”
Male speaker (continued):
I think the way …
Moderator:
Nearly all my work, well, all my work actually, with one or two exceptions, has been because somebody has commissioned me, because they are doing a study of something, and they want me to carry out certain interviews, and do certain interpretations as part of their project.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, okay, but for me, I don’t know if it works for you, like, from the very beginning, I also, okay, I didn’t, saw the witnessing. I came in, I don’t know. It’s, the first question for me would be, okay, I walked in here. I just thought of, like, a study group, and I thought, it’s about, like, that we are … learning kind of about something. I didn’t know that it’s a sort of like, that you are … that it’s about, like, that you were, like you said in the beginning, brainstorming? – that your brainstorming is later kind of being objectified, to be part of a work? I think this is like exploitative – yeah, I think so. I don’t know, is that like, part of what … is this recording going to be hard work, for example?
Moderator:
Can we stay with the particular problem that you have with it, rather than …
Male speaker (continued):
I think that would be also my analysis of the artist, and of like, what about Nadja? I think that would be like, kind of, and I would, seeing this kind of practice, I’m not interested in, because out of those reasons, I also think what we also, okay now, we had this discussion it the cafeteria, I think that whole, I think the philosophy behind this kind of work, or this kind of ideal, like, kind of, of this sort of, a theatrical kind of performance frame, with like several players, like you as a player. Nadja, with a kind of information-led arts course. I think it builds on a certain kind of paradigm, which I think is the paradigm of like, well I think, okay, you can have it both on, like on ideas to master interviews of passing of a certain kind of, it comes as a theory, and I think… yes, like of course, like this thing she writes, it’s questionable that we interpret it in the first place as a sort of like set up.
New speaker (female):
I didn’t understand what kind of paradigm you referred to?
Moderator:
Can I just say something? I’m a bit worried at what you do, I’m not sure about that, but anyway, is entirely what you collectively decide to do.
Male speaker (continued):
I didn’t decide about this.
Moderator:
I know you didn’t, I’m talking about what I decide to do, and what I decided to do was to do what I always do, which is to run an interpretive panel, putting up segments like this and discussing it, and doing that for three hours. Now, we could decide, and I don’t think it has to be just you that decides – we could decide that we’re going stop that, and we will now have a discussion along the grounds that you would obviously … I agree that’s what you think we should have, and I think people just have to decide collectively, not just individually, as to what to do.
I would like to finish what I’m saying (firmly). You’ve said very clearly that you feel uneasy with it, you feel it’s a set up. You’ve changed your interpretation of what’s going on, and I assume that you would like to stop putting up the segments on the thing, and have a discussion about something or other.
Male speaker (continued):
And I’m filmed in that very moment, in that sort of situation – I’m being used.
Moderator:
Okay, so you want to have a method discussion about the whole situation. Okay, fine, thank you – so could you wait for a minute, and let us find out whether other people want to have that discussion, rather than insist on it by going on talking yourself, so would anybody else like to say whether they would like to have a meta-discussion, which is fine, a different thing, or whether they would like to go on with the sections being put up, or something else? I myself am happy with either thing, so anybody would like to comment on what you would like to have happened for the next, it’s now 45 minutes?
New speaker (female):
At least I’m very comfortable with, being filming, because I thought we knew that, all the time I saw the camera, so I thought that I had it by sitting down here, entering this room, entering this table, and directly opposite a camera. I thought that we also were creating for material for some use.
Moderator:
Okay, can you not respond at the moment. We’ll just go round the room, and have everybody say what they think.
New speaker (female):
For me, the filming is okay.
New speaker (female):
I think you could tell what he has to do.
Moderator:
No, because I’d like you to be equal among all the people in the panel, and he’s spoken for ten minutes, which is fine, and he now needs to stay quiet for ten minutes, and hear what other people have to say.
New speaker (female):
But I also find her, being a part of this, and having different feelings than you, participating in this, I find your reaction very interesting, why you feel betrayed, and I don’t, in a way?
New speaker (male):
Can I answer?
Female speaker (continued):
So the method is interesting to discuss, but I’m also a bit curious about the puzzle, how we end. I would like to have the end of this story, in a way.
Moderator:
That was the past thing, so is that here as well?
Male speaker (continued):
Okay, I said, then for me, I’m leaving the room. I can explain why I also, now even my interpretation is being used as a sort of like, kind of, in a sort of device, which I set up. Even if I’m now responding, like kind of conveying, what the artwork is, it’s still in a sort of idea of reflection. It’s a sort of artistic production device, which I say, like you have kind of, you have a traditional, that sort of artworks, which uses like kind of, something within the art works which addresses the artwork itself, and I don’t think this is very interesting. I see like an artist do it as a certain kind of device, of reflection, and I also think that the way I have been brought in this artwork, without knowing it, and now also, that even my interpretation is some sort of like, serving this sort of position, I don’t like, and I have to think about it, if I want, allowed, like came to publish this, for example? Okay, that is not the question, like, which do we agree to have what is on the film to be published? I think because the camera is still running, I’m ending this, and I will think about it. I think that’s it … because I didn’t know, it had not been told to me in the beginning ..
New speaker (female):
So you had no idea to what you were coming here?
Male speaker (continued):
I didn’t know that it’s … did you know that Nadja is a sort of like, that we are talking about Jesper’s work, or Jesper’s ….
New speaker (female):
Life story?
Moderator:
I’m afraid I can’t have any comment on that, because I just came, and was told that there would be a panel for a discussion, and how you were briefed or how you were not briefed is not my responsibility.
Female speaker (continued):
I did not know that.
Male speaker (continued):
Did you know that? I think it was definitely here, about certain information, like, which you need to honestly engage in a discussion. If they are kind of, not provided to you, it’s kind of a thwarted game. Okay, some people find it interesting – I don’t find it so interesting, because maybe, if you come from film-making, and like more the theatre, well, theatre series, these are very common practices. I think like, artists need to use this in a more kind of, on a different basis, on a wider philosophical basis.
Moderator:
Thanks very much, okay, cheers.
Male speaker (continued):
Me leaving is not a part of the discussion. I have to leave because I have (?? 16:40) actually.
Moderator:
Okay, bye bye!
New speaker (female):
I’m a bit confused now!
Moderator:
Ah well, you’re not the only one!
Female speaker (continued):
Was this her own history? – or there is, and more information that we don’t know, and we are being used?
New speaker (female):
I can understand him. I disagree with her a little bit, but I understand him.
Previous speaker (female):
I knew about this yesterday, and for me it’s been a great exercise, and even if I’m being filmed, that doesn’t trigger like all my insecurities to develop all this kind of, and to build all this …
New speaker (female):
But it wasn’t necessarily her insecurities. You are making now, projecting into her what …
Previous speaker (female):
Because I don’t know, I don’t understand what happened.
Moderator:
I will put it up, in order to avoid you getting into a terrible wrangle, I’d suggest that you put it all up as hypotheses, so whether that’s the most useful thing to work on, I don’t know. What was your question? It was in the form of a question.
New speaker (female):
I formed a question about this?
Moderator:
It’s about the situation.
Female speaker (continued):
If there was any other information, if this is not only what we are doing, and there is like a background, or like a bigger frame, where this is set in, and this much here is going to be used for something – that is my question, and if there is, or you can’t talk about it, I can talk!
Moderator:
Okay, well I can say something about it, which is, just from my perspective, which is, will serve imperfect knowledge, which is, I was commissioned to do one of my standard, this type of interview, a biographic narrative interview, with Nadja, and I did, and she said she wanted me to have three of the panels which I normally have anyway, whenever I do these things, and this is one of them. There were two earlier ones in October, and these are panels which isn’t quite so usual, but understand it, in which I wouldn’t be choosing who was on the panel, it would be Nadja who would choose who was on the panel – that’s fine by me. It’s more interesting for me if I don’t know who’s on it. She would set up the panel, so I’m running the panel, and this is the panel that I’m running, and from my point of view, its value is to enable me to interpret the material of the interview better.
So I will, after this panel is over, there won’t be any more panels, as far as I know – well, no, there won’t be any more panels, unless I suddenly invent one just for fun. I shall continue with my interpretation of the material, and write it up for Nadja, who’s commissioned it, and that’s what will happen. What else happens, I don’t know. For me, it’s very useful actually, in terms of the method to have a good record of panels, because I never remember, I haven’t got time to make notes. I never remember what’s happened, so it’s very good to have an audio or a video record, which I can then look at, and see how the panel’s worked, because I’ve been running these panels, I think I said to somebody, about 20 years, and I still don’t really understand how they work, when they work well, when they work badly or whatever. So anything that provides me with information for improving my interpretation process of interviews like that is good. What Nadja wants to do with them is something to address, to her.
New speaker (female):
I think you did tell me that it was more of a personal use as well? – but maybe I didn’t quite know.
Moderator:
I think it would be very unusual if she was planning to use them in some sort of public context, without contacting the people on the panel.
New speaker (female):
Nadja, we’re now talking about Jesper, and not Nadja.
Moderator:
If you like, we can talk about Jesper.
Female speaker (continued):
No, no – it’s just, what would Nadja like to do with them.
Moderator:
Who knows who Nadja is.
Female speaker (continued):
Who’s Nadja?
Moderator:
Anyway, I suppose the reason why I’ve distinguished between the two was that, for me, the interpretation of the person who spoke in the transcript, we are constructing something like a fictitious person. We don’t know very much about that person – we only know what you get from an interview, which is always very very partial, however much you work at it, so the point of giving them a fake name, an imagined name, is to stress how hypothetical all this is, because it’s x as appears from an interview, as opposed to x as appears for observing them for ten years, or x as they appear from something else, so I find it useful to avoid confusion to refer to the subject of an interview by a pseudonym. If you walk to talk about the person behind, then I’m slightly uneasy about that, but I don’t mind very much.
New speaker (female):
No, me neither. Okay, it could sound very selfish? – but for me, it’s enough that I’m having this exercise, this practice, and that’s it.
Moderator:
Right, anybody else like to comment on how to use the next 35 minutes?
New speaker (female):
35 minutes, well, I’d like to, I think something happened during lunch, which was one hour. One hour is quite a considerable time. You were there, and this young man who left in anger was there, and you were there, I was there, and there was somebody else.
Moderator:
(he laughs) In fact, most of us were mostly there!
Female speaker (continued):
But you were not there, so you two were not there, and I think what happened during lunch is a lot of the reason why she reacted like she did, and for me, it became a very interesting discourse we had, and it opened with her being very interesting. I think she was the bearer of a new dimension of thought going into the conversation, which is, the conflict, so I think this is, so it’s not fair to the two of you who weren’t there, because we’re talking about another story now …
Moderator:
(he laughs)
Female speaker (continued):
And so I just would like to repeat, how we started the whole thing, if that’s okay with you, or try to recollect it together.
New speaker (female):
I wasn’t there at the beginning.
Previous speaker (female):
For me, nor was I, but the magic for me was her, entering in the discussion, and talking about, we were talking about …
Moderator:
This is the discussion at lunch, you’re talking about? – yeah, okay.
Previous speaker (female):
Yeah, the lunch discussion. She came in with an element of, that we were all talking about the conflict between telling a true story, and making a career, the conflict there, and so we’re talking about this person, and then it came to, aren’t we all in that situation? Isn’t the whole art world in that situation? I was very interested about that, and I say yeah, we lose anyway. Either you lose because you choose your career, and the little lies you have to tell to put yourself in a nice position, or you lose because you’re persecuting what think is the real thing, but nobody wants to listen to that, so you’re the social loser, and I was enthusiastic about ….
Moderator:
The insight?
Previous speaker (female):
Coming into the discussion. I had the insight from before, but that I’m not alone on the surface of the planet, thinking, looking at the situation like that, and this brought it up very, made the lunch very interesting, and then shit comes up!
Moderator:
(he laughs)
Previous speaker (female):
With her father, having interviewed grown-up children who have been put in children’s homes because they came from abusive families, and how, of course, every paedophile on the face of the planet took a job in those children’s homes, and how they had been subject to a lot of violence in the children’s homes, who were supposed to …
New speaker (female):
Protect them.
Previous speaker (female):
Yes, and so, this brings a huge dimension into the art of interviewing, that her father had done, with some dramatic …
New speaker (female):
The interview, yes.
Previous speaker (female):
And that became very dramatic, so this is, we came into the drama of the interview, so this is the background of her.
New speaker (female):
Telling a story.
New speaker (female):
I think, got very emotional, eh?
Previous speaker (female):
And somehow, at a certain stage, we all agreed that Nadja was the creator of the whole situation. Somehow, it wasn’t even mentioned, but everybody understood it at the same time or something.
New speaker (female):
Can I give a comment? – because I also, someone knew that it’s kind of a setting, and you are here, who is responsible for this setting, and then, when she has started to talk, that maybe she is also part of this setting, so she is also playing a role, so she’s the one who should start a discussion, and then you are insisting that it’s really a good exercise for you ….that’s totally fine, but I just started to doubt everything.
Moderator:
To doubt everything?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah. Maybe you are also playing, to have this, to extreme …
New speaker (female):
Maybe I’m the only one!
Previous speaker (female):
Because you had to, totally extreme, not extreme, but it was like, kind of exaggerated.
New speaker (female):
Not the opposite for what she thinks, it’s just that even if what she says is like that, if it’s real, I don’t mind. I don’t feel offended – why should I? That is something, a different attitude.
Moderator:
No, I think … there are still these two people who haven’t said anything very strongly. I don’t know whether either of you would like to say something at all?
New speaker (female):
I guess I came in here, and I thought we were going to discuss one interview, and I didn’t realise the interview was of the person behind this whole thing itself. I think it does change the situation.
Moderator:
Could you say how for you, it changes the situation?
Female speaker (continued):
Well, I know that she’s going to listen to it, and look into the material, so maybe what you say, you’re a bit more careful with what you say.
Moderator:
Okay, well that’s important, so that’s one thing. If Nadja’s going to listen to the tape, then if you have any special relationship with Nadja, as it were, then you need to think about that. No, no, I don’t mean especially in any other sense, but just, any relationship.
Female speaker (continued):
It becomes more a meta project than what maybe I thought it would be.
New speaker (male):
Well, I think I understood it was Jesper quite early, and I just think it’s interesting to be here and go through this, and it’s okay for me.
Moderator:
Okay, so I think we now have to decide, unless somebody else wants to say anything, what we do for the next 30 minutes.
New speaker (female):
We continue this project.
Moderator:
I’m happy to continue the project.
Female speaker (continued):
Let’s make Jesper happy!
Moderator:
Okay, make me happy actually.
New speaker (female):
Do you know what makes him happy by now? I don’t.
Moderator:
Okay, so … what are we going to do? I think what I’m going to do is to bolt these things together, because we’re now, we’ve got much less time than we had obviously, because of this interjection, so I’m going to put up a couple of chunks at a time, in order to make progress.
New speaker (female):
And I’m going to help you with that.
Moderator:
Okay, thanks very much.
(bit of chat about the set up of the board)
New speaker (female):
I’m getting very enthusiastic now. I’m just reading a phrase, “interviews with elders who trained for seven years, and didn’t use their training” – fantastic!
Moderator:
(he laughs)
Female speaker (continued):
It’s interesting, what she did.
Moderator:
I was being very careful there, and got it wrong – this way round. I’m so used to it being the wrong way round, that I adjusted for that, and it isn’t wrong.
Female speaker (continued):
You’re used to doing it the wrong way round.
Moderator:
Okay, I’ll read it out. I was already starting to work with non-professionals, inviting people, working with Vietnamese, “lots of people not familiar with the codes and language of contemporary art practice”; work also outside the art environment; invited untrained people to Paris to see some artwork, and reflect aesthetically. It is good to set up some working environments which could function as case studies later on.
Then, interviews with elders who trained for seven years as art professionals, and didn’t use their training, the artists who dropped out – any patterns? Did they use some aspect of their training? What are the mechanisms and the biographical stories? What differences of men and women, of those trained the Fifties, compared to the Sixties and Seventies? Awareness, she became aware of the importance of interviews, and different ways of doing them.
Finally, well finally on this sort of meta-chunk, two students, and the double ontology of experimental deception, of planted, non-artistic BAs. She employed an assistant with a BA, but not in art, to enter an MA arts programme. N provides the artistic portfolio, and re-writes their application. The assistant provides an ethnographic (I think there were two of them), provides ethnographic reports on their experiencing of this art MA, and gradually N gave interpretational tasks and more and more ownership to the assistant/student. There’s an ethical fine line in knowing/not knowing what colleagues are saying to the student, and to you, not clear (I don’t know what that means). You watch your roles, you don’t want to be unethical within your own principles of working.
So … I didn’t realise I was standing in your way.
New speaker (female):
This was the logical order?
Moderator:
Oh, the chronological order? I think these two are earlier, chronologically. This is later, this is a bit earlier, and this is earlier again. This is the earliest thing, which I think is earlier on. I’m sorry, I can’t be quite sure about that.
So what’s … we’re looking at both what she does, and in a sense, the “now” experiencing and the “then” experiencing. What is the line of her doing this sequence of things? What is she trying to do with it? Why did she go on and do this, as opposed to fifteen other things she could do, like working on the buses or something? And what might she be experiencing now, as opposed to experiencing then?
New speaker (female):
she’s definitely seeking contact outside the art world. she’s in the art world, and seeking out. There’s a sentence I don’t understand also?
Moderator:
Only one? …. extra art world contacts. And the sentence you don’t understand is?
Female speaker (continued):
Choose students, and the double ontology of experimental deception of planted non-artistic BAs?
Moderator:
I invented that sentence, and I’m terribly proud of it.
Female speaker (continued):
You invented that?
Moderator:
I did. It’s one of my greatest achievements, but it maybe should go in the waste paper basket. Experimental deception means this person doesn’t have an art BA, and has agreed to be entered for an art MA, Masters programme, for which they should have got an art BA undergraduate programme to be acceptable, and what happened was that Nadja provided the artistic portfolio and the application to enable this assistant to go and join the art MA, which they did. They successfully applied on the basis of doing that.
Female speaker (continued):
Without the BA?
Moderator:
Without the BA. They had a BA, but in some quite different subject, or each of them had their own BAs in quite different subjects. They then went on to write reports on how they experienced the art MA, and she (this is badly put) gave more interpretational tasks to them. As they proceeded through their art MA, they wrote up more and more and interpreted their own experience more and more, as being on the MA. So what do you see as a line here, of what’s being done? Why would somebody doing, well, okay … this is seeking extra art world contacts, that’s one thing, but if you’re a researcher, why might you be doing this? What is this all about?
New speaker (male):
Challenging the question, “what is art”?
Moderator:
Okay, so that, I think, it’s a, what is art question, or perhaps, what is art, or perhaps, what art can be or do? (this is me adding)
New speaker (female):
What is the art world?
New speaker (female):
How, it works? – the art, how the art world works?
Female speaker (continued):
As a system, the importance of the system to create art, because it’s breaking the rules of the system, and since claiming that it’s doing art.
Female speaker (continued):
It’s like she is creating some situations to analyse, to criticise, to understand how this art world works, how it functions? – so it’s like her whole investigation turns to herself.
Moderator:
To herself?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, because he, for what I recall, she was like in a pretty experimental area, pedagogically at the beginning, and then she went into the, she had a more formal job, and then probably she started to question this, maybe this hierarchy, how this system works, maybe how the power is divided inside the academy, so she wants to try it, to prove if it’s, like …
Moderator:
To prove what? What might she be trying to prove? Sorry, do you want to come forward? It must be rather difficult for you to hear anything at all back there. It’s a good place to sleep, though.
Female speaker (continued):
I don’t know, it’s like she’s testing the system.
Moderator:
Testing?
New speaker (female):
Yeah, almost like a scientific study, experiment.
New speaker (female):
she’s very questioning.
New speaker (female):
Testing the system, yeah.
Previous speaker (female):
Testing/questioning.
Moderator:
Well, I’ll put that for a question. We’ll all it the art system or practice.
New speaker (female):
Setting up an experiment.
New speaker (female):
Criticism, but not necessarily saying something is bad, but questioning, having a critical eye.
Moderator:
Yes, but on the other hand, it’s a critical eye applied to anomalies within the system. One way of studying a system is to look at it doing what it always does in a completely regular fashion. In this case, she’s introducing anomalies. She’s starting to work with Vietnamese who aren’t familiar with the codes, untrained people in Paris, elders who were trained but didn’t use their training, and now, at the age of 50 or 60, she’s saying, well what was all that about? – I haven’t seen it, why did you drop out? – and did you use any of your art … was the training you did any use for anything at all, or was it just a sheer waste of time? And then, the planted MAs were, how necessary is an undergraduate arts degree for doing a masters level degree, or do they do different or less interesting or more interesting work, if they come from outside the under … if they haven’t had undergraduate training, but do something interesting maybe, or totally boring, I’ve no idea, when they do get to masters level, so all these are actually doing things.
They’re like experimental disturbances of what ordinarily happens. Normally an ethnographer – well, not normally, but typically an ethnographer – will look at what happens, and remain as a pure observer outside, and say, this is what they do out there, and I’m in an invisible little box, and they don’t see me, and we just watch what they ordinarily do. This is much more experimental in doing things and producing situations that aren’t ordinary, or at least they may be ordinary to other people. They may not see the unordinariness of it, but for the normal art practitioner world, these are unordinary things, produced by Jesper’s intervention – sorry, Nadja – I keep forgetting her name, and she’s studying what difference that makes, so she’s not studying the routine – she’s studying the odd, or the contrived odd, and that’s why it’s experimental observation, not just observation of routine, and there is an important difference.
Right, I think I’m just going to move on, as it were, so that you can see where it is.
Alright, I think I’m going to have to put them all up at the same time. We’re just running short of time.
New speaker (female):
You could glue them up together?
Moderator:
Let’s think … they can overlap. The trouble is, it was all very carefully calculated, to speak about 13 minutes on each chunk, and we would get to the end of the chunks in the two-and-a-half hours, but this has now unfortunately been thrown, which is alright, but it does mean that we’re now doing something different. So that goes down properly – perhaps I’ll remember this time round.
New speaker (female):
Do the others in a line as well?
New speaker (female):
If she is going to use … I think she is making a pick on them.
Previous speaker (female):
You want us to make this also up, in pairs?
Moderator:
I’ll do that in a minute.
Previous speaker (female):
We can do that while you’re talking.
Moderator:
No, no – you should be focusing on this. Can you read it from where you are? Can anybody not read it? All those who can’t read it, tell me what they can’t see.
Previous speaker (female):
We’d love you to read it?
Moderator:
You’d love me to read it? – okay.
Feeling part of two worlds, none of this, except what’s in quotes, is what Nadja has aid. Feeling part of two worlds, not being able to discuss the project with people, the increasing importance of concealed identity truths. You need a bigger chapter on confidentiality. Work in the health sector also has “borders of what’s accessible and what’s closed”. Three exhibitions belonging to this topic, part of the same conceptual environment. One was being a member of all the political parties in Norway, when she came back to Norway, so this is going back a bit in time. Going to meetings and being involved in Christmas tables and topics, interviewing leaders of the key political parties, and an exhibition based on metaphors, of sharing and negotiating values from early Norway onwards, an a political (forget that bit) … discovering that political parties are not as powerful as they used to be, and there is a different system behind them.
Then there was an exhibition based on metaphors to address the audience in the public sphere, “a certain anachronism in the whole. We’re looking back, we’re dismantling, first aid or something like that, kind of, pointing to that exhibition, and that earlier project … “ Oh, perhaps I’ve got this in the wrong order – yes, sorry, this should have come earlier. Anyway, she joined all the political parties, or most of them, in Norway, and all of them, and implicitly shared values of each party community. She maintained a poker face in local meetings and elsewhere, but sometimes she admitted a watered-down version of the truth. I’m researching volunteering.
So in a sense, she started this process of apparently doing something, like being a member of a political party, while actually being a member of a number of contradictory political parties, but not revealing that in order to find out something about how political parties in Norway functioned at the local and regional and even national level, and then she produced an exhibition on the basis of that, with five exhibits, which I can’t at the moment remember. Sorry, that has got out of order, quite right. Okay, I’m going to just move on. I’m sorry, there just really is the problem of time. Let’s make sure we’ve got the right numbers – thirteen, fourteen.
New speaker (male):
She seems to be ambivalent about enter … ambivalence towards the situation, where she is an entrepreneur?
You get top prize as joint Sellotape warriors! I know we have a Sellotape warrior.
New speaker (female):
In three hours, they successfully managed to put the papers up!
Moderator:
Who says that new skills don’t develop in the course of any repetitive practice. I think I’ll put this on here. Right, the first one is about experimental pedagogy in Prague, around the drawing of your hand in conversation. This is the one that I like most, to be honest, but this is a personal statement. The first station, you put your hand in through a slot in enough detail. You have to draw it, and you put the drawing, you can’t enter the exhibition unless you put your hand through a slot, and give them a picture of your hand. Then you move into a room with three stories on headphones, about aspects of competence, building on the interviews with elders, whatever that was – it was on the previous page. Then, you have an unseen conversationalist.
You talk to somebody behind a screen, and the conversationalist, it’s sharing an imaginary play space, so they talk about, the conversationalist behind the screen will say, well, just imagine that your hand then moved across the room, and inviting them to play with the idea of the drawn hand that does its own thing. Then finally, in the last room, there’s a photograph of the original hand, and a photograph of the original hand drawing – is that right? I think that’s right, and then they leave the exhibition after these four stations, about the drawing of the hand, and the conversation. She said, it’s a four station experiment, discussed and imagined, variation and feedback. She found a child psychologist as one of the conversationalists, art with an environment, confusing the roles of producing art and experiencing art, because the people had to draw their hands to some extent in order to then have all that, and then receive as an art object in the last station, a photograph of their hand, and the photograph of the drawing that they took. “That could be interesting, could be for children of refugees”, and she said, “One could talk to the four people who sat behind the screen”, so there were the people sitting behind the screen and having the conversations with each person. As they came through, one could talk to them.
Then another experiment is the Warsaw Modern Museum, volunteers over four weekends, so they were volunteers who were working in the museum, as part of an exhibition, and then there was a sub-exhibition, which was a workshop within it, over four weekends, so they, I’m not sure what they did in these four workshops, but they never knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t very visible or very clear what it was all about – we do something, and the head of education afterwards, who sat in on those four weekends with the ten volunteers, said, it’s different now – our usual ways of being together were different, and then afterwards, Nadja did an interview with each of the ten people separately, what’s their story, to discover their motivation for being volunteers, and discovered that there are very different motivations for being volunteers, and the final thing is a secret current project, known only to my partner, to be observed by a committee sworn to silence. If I present it now, it can’t be done. The committee will have to sign a contract of no talking, to be allowed in the context, and see what is meant by this double ontology. They are quite the people I found which I’ve been running from. I expected they would get the point without explaining too much. Worth trying to see what it does in a real time setting.
Any thoughts? What’s her experience, what is she trying to do? Is she succeeding in what she’s trying to do, whatever that is? – etcetera.
New speaker (female):
I think the showing Prague took a very, very large part of this day, so I think she’d had enough. I’m more interested in the other parts.
Moderator:
And what would you say was their interest, or what might have been their interest … we’re trying to construct why somebody did the things they did, in this case, the things they do are putting up, doing some work, which I’ve just described out there. What do you infer about the subjectivity, who did those things? This is what our problem is. They did those things, and they’ve told the story of doing those things.
Female speaker (continued):
The Warsaw lady volunteer, she explained very precisely why she was a volunteer. Hers was the story that was very interesting to me. The other stories, I didn’t understand their motives. It didn’t impress me, the Prague story. Her story, she said, I’ll go along with anything as long as it is interesting. She had made her, she made her openness, made it an important thing for her. She discovered, she let herself go along without having control of the situation, and it became important for her, and she told about that, so I think it was a good idea. You’re not in charge of the context, but you can use the story in a meaningful way, so that’s what she did. The others, I didn’t understand them.
New speaker (female):
You’re not talking about what happened earlier today? – you’re referring to what happened?
Previous speaker (female):
Yeah, it’s the Warsaw, the volunteer.
Female speaker (continued):
But she explained that she was there, so she explained a little bit, so now I understand it. I wanted to make sure.
New speaker (female):
Because someone asked her, why do you think she doesn’t say anything about, you are going to do? – why she doesn’t explain, why she keeps some information she doesn’t reveal? She said, because if you know before, if you knew, maybe you will drop it, because you will know, what is this all about, and maybe you don’t want to commit, but then, all the people that stay, was open to whatever comes. I think that’s another kind of selection.
Moderator:
What do you mean by another kind of selection?
Female speaker (continued):
That the art is using people that is completely open, and that she’s trusted, and that can go with it, because they know, or they trust that it’s going to be an interesting experience, whatever comes, even if it turns out to be a bit disappointing, or if it’s going to feel maybe uncomfortable, or it’s going to push you out of your comfort zone, but it’s another kind of selection. What I think she’s doing there is going deeply in those motivations, when she interviews these ten people separately, after doing the (?? 55:25), to ask them, why did you stay? Why did you play along? Why are you so open? I have you so trusted.
Moderator:
Okay, any other thoughts on different aspects of all that? Bear in mind that not everybody, including me, was at the witness session, so I’ve no idea what, whoever it was, said about the Warsaw programme, because I wasn’t there. Any other thoughts about what is said here, shared data?
New speaker (female):
I was thinking about this, taking pictures of hands, and these pictures are some kind of pictures that you never see them, obviously, and you have no idea, and most of the time, when people take a picture of your hand, you don’t know what they want to do with that, and I really find it interesting that the workshop is also like, you’re doing something, but what for? – and you are doing it, and you do it without asking, why should do that.
Moderator:
So in a way, one of the lines of research, implicit lines of research, is, people either being able or not being able to participate in a process that they don’t fully understand, and some people can. I think you said that you were quite comfortable with it, and clearly, I don’t know her name, but whoever she was, she felt very uncomfortable and had to leave, because she couldn’t bear it, and that’s not a judgement on her – it’s just a statement that an experiment like this shows up that both those things can happen.
The question is, well, what does it – sorry, this is a bit of a different question, but for me, the interesting question is, what does one learn about artistic practice, the practice of being some sort of art practitioner, from these various experiments, and I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s the one that … okay, here are these various pedagogic experiments, or experiments in different sorts of installation and all the rest of it. What, if anything, has been learnt? I’m not sure what I would say about that, but that for me is the important question.
New speaker (female):
Could you repeat the important question?
Moderator:
No, I’ve forgotten it already. It’s so important … no, what it was is, what does one learn about art practitioner practice from these experiments, these perturbing experiments, or troubling experiments, they’re troubling routines. I don’t mean they’re bad, I’m a great believer in creative trouble, but I’m in a lot of creative trouble myself most of the time, but what does one learn? What would be the point of it? Assuming that Nadja is a research fellow in artistic practice, what are her contributions to art practitioner knowledge, or what might they be, or what might be the shape of what the contribution would be, as opposed to just producing some more still lives, 1995 style?
New speaker (female):
I think this is a lot, for me now, but I wish that we had more time, because now we just have the time to see, immediately pre-judges. I’m not caring about this presentation of Nadja. For me now, this has a lot to do about power, and I can also understand the person leaving, because when are you open and willingly, and when you have control? For me, it’s like the art world, having control, who are able to participate in certain exhibitions, who are able to do studies, all the control things, and she is destroying all the control things, but then again, in the end she is saying, but I have a secret. I have my comment, that are silent to me, where I’m totally not open at all, and the people have to sign that they’re not going to, my secret is not going to be told to anybody. In a way, that end in a way, provokes me, about her asking everybody to enter as an educated and powerful people playing a power game, and then in the end, not being that open herself at all, because she says here, I have sworn to silence. I can’t put all my words to this, but I’ve started thinking about it.
Moderator:
It’s an important point, and then the question is, to what extent, what do you do if you openly assert, in an interview which is going public, in the way that this has now gone public – I’ve put that segment on the board, that you are engaged in something which is too secret to tell anybody while it’s going on, is that a higher level of power game, or is it a way of taking, of not having the power game, because if you were really engaged in a power game, you wouldn’t tell anybody you were engaged in it, so there’s a contradictory or paradoxical nature of being engaged in a power game which says, I’m engaged in a power game, and please notice that I am, so that’s not an answer to your question, but this is an interview she gave, and this is, these are extracts from her interview which are being presented to you as people interested in art, and come to discuss it, so bear that in mind when you think about, what is the power for? I mean, I would say, following Foucault (? 1:01:05), that we are all unfortunately always engaged in a power game. There isn’t anybody who isn’t, and therefore the question is, what happens if you engage in a certain sort of power game, and draw attention to the fact that you are just in a power game, and this is going on, and I don’t know what the answer to that is, but that needs to be thought about.
New speaker (female):
I’m sitting here, and I’m struggling with, all the time, that people took a picture of my hand, and I cannot get away from that, and I was thinking, oh, my mobile is also taking a picture of my finger all the time!
Moderator:
(he laughs) Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh!
Female speaker (continued):
But I really, it makes kind of sense of this consciousness, it makes for me, in the things that you are not really conscious about maybe. It’s again, the situation that I am in, without knowing that I am in, and everybody is in. Everybody has it, and it becomes like, an everybody thing, that it’s okay, because everybody …
Moderator:
Okay, well somebody has said that there won’t be such a thing as privacy in twenty years’ time, because all the trans-national companies will have so much data from absolutely everything, that privacy is, oh so last century, but anyway, and this, in a sense, may be embodying that to some extent. On the other hand, it’s making it explicit, which is different, and the question is, what is being learnt for art, if anything, out of these experiments? What is it, being learnt about our type of situation, namely we are never in control of all our context, like Britain is going for Brexit because we wish to take back control of our borders, which is a totally ludicrous idea, because there’s no way it’s ever going to … that is not what’s going to happen, so similarly we aren’t going to get back privacy, and we aren’t going to get back total knowledge of all the games that we are part of.
The question is, in this particular thing, what can be learnt for art about this set of experiments in which people are not quite certain? – not always quite certain of what they are. I mean, the elders presumably, when they’re being interviewed about why they presumably, I don’t know, why they didn’t go on as art practitioners, would be one question, and did they get anything from having studied art, when they went on to do whatever else they want to do? They would know what they were saying. The hand, I’m not sure about, and other things are a bit uncertain, as to whether there’s any feedback to the people involved. I get the sense that there isn’t, but I might be wrong, but what does art, what do we learn about art practice and art practitioners, from this? – and I’m going to have to stop, seven minutes ago, but I’ll go on for one minute, and just pretend it’s one minute to three.
New speaker (female):
No, my answer to that takes more than one minute, and I have a story, and I think you will enjoy it, but it takes more than one minute.
Moderator:
Two minutes?
Female speaker (continued):
No, no. I’ll make it short, but the short version takes more than …
Moderator:
Okay, well I think what we’ll have to do is to stop, and if anybody wants to hear your story, then they should stay. I’m very happy to stay, but anybody who knows that they were leaving seven minutes ago, and it’s now three o’clock, then I just want to say thank you very much for coming along. I’ve certainly got lots for my research out of the panel, and I hope that you’ve got whatever you’ve got, even if it’s a feeling of creative or uncreative discomfort. Anyway, thanks very much, and if you wish to stay around for your story, then that’s fine.
You said, ‘irony’
You said, ‘I appreciate it when articles start with a quote, it kind of sets the tone, allowing the reader to tune in. I will use one as well.’ – Could you tell us what you had in mind?
Yes, some weeks back, while skimming some pages of a random book, a short entry on Art and Reality caught my attention. A collection of writings by the painter Robert Motherwell. Something particular in regard to this thing under discussion. It is from 1976. I quote:
An odd contradiction, if the layman were correct in his unconscious assumption: the artist begins with reality and ends with art: the converse is true – to the degree that this dichotomy has any truth – the artist begins with art, and then through it arrives at reality. If one were to ask such-and-such a painter what he felt about anything, his just response – though seldom he makes it – would be to paint it, and in painting it, to find out … It could be that, in trying to paint it, he finds that he cannot, that something else keeps appearing on the canvas; that is, in regard to this thing under discussion, he finds out that he has no feelings at all …(1)
You said, ‘Perhaps less romantic, in 2009, the research group Political Currency of Art (PoCA) addressed issues of irony and contemporary art’ – Could you tell us any more details?
Yes, they questioned if irony still could be used as a meaningful artistic and political device when its rhetoric is appropriated by the language of late capitalism. Further, if the ironic gap between a private and public voice, between what is said and what is generally understood, necessarily entails a position of passivity? Could we critique a system which relied on irony without ourselves being ironic? Last question, was if we could find a mode of irony which does not assume a double audience and hence a privileged sphere of knowledge?(2)
It would just be too interesting and too complicated to pursue PoCa’s enquiries here. I believe that exactly these kinds of questions serve well in approaching a possible thematic field where situated ironies in relevant proximity to artistic research could be found. For now, this will only serve as our introductory backdrop.
You said, ‘The challenge must be to address how (unconscious) irony is currently playing an operative role in artistic research’ – Could you clarify?
In this case, I am forced to narrow this down and elaborate from perspectives available to me, in short, the practice in which I am involved and work myself. In this regard, this text will look into two research exhibitions and attempt to locate how (unconscious) irony could possibly be playing an operative role as a meaningful artistic device, enabling an effective dissemination of artistic research.(3) This without irony itself being in explicit focus or even thematically addressed in either of these exhibitions. It is simply there (unconscious). This comparative set-up will allow for an approach to irony in a subjective situated sense.
This remains to be elaborated with the reader as well, or as we shall see, with our Case A and Case B visitors. We can begin to observe how its modi are being played out in a range of related situations. But first, a short introduction of the two respective research exhibitions. We have two cases. Case A: ‘Mother, Dear Mother’ at Kunstnernes Hus, in Oslo, and Case B: ‘Competence’ in Fotograf Gallery, Prague.

Sculpture by Ørnulf Bast, Breakthrough, front view detail. Still from
the film Mother, Dear Mother. (Cinematography by Cecilie Semec)
Case A: ‘Mother, Dear Mother’
Jesper Alvær’s art is based on a lengthy investigation of various cultural phenomena and exchanges. For the next month, Kunstnernes Hus will be exhibiting Alvær’s latest work, Mother, Dear Mother, an installation that combines soundscapes and staged lighting to comment on a few selected objects. The exhibition is the outcome of Alvær becoming a member of every major political party in Norway in conjunction with the general election in September 2013. He used these memberships to become involved in the political activities of the respective parties, both prior to and after the election, and the objects in the exhibition refer to his experiences during these activities.
The objects have been abstracted to four reductive, sculptural forms that serve as narrative bases. The exhibition’s lighting has an auxiliary function, indicating the visitor and listener’s movements in the room by way of a soundtrack – a series of brief statements that allude to political scenes both from present day and modern Norwegian history. The soundtrack comments in its entirety on a subject matter that can be encapsulated in terms such as change, transformation and restructuring in the context of contemporary Norwegian politics.
The exhibition features a handful of objects with a certain political resonance. The Breakthrough (Gjennombruddet) is a plaster cast of a sculpture by Ørnulf Bast, famous for the two bronze lions guarding the entrance to Kunstnernes Hus. The Breakthrough demarcates the entrance to the exhibition, while the original bronze sculpture is located at the headquarters of the Labour Party in Oslo. The exhibition also alludes to the sculpture The Pioneer (Pionéren), Per Palle Storm’s monumental homage to the working man, which is also to be found at Young’s Square, Oslo.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) bestows a miniature version of this sculpture to its members as a decoration for long and faithful service; at the exhibition, however, this miniature version is shown indirectly by way of its casting mould, similar to a cast-off shell that emphasises the transformative nature of Alvær’s exhibition.
Mother, Dear Mother can be seen as an attempt to describe not only the contemporary emotional experiences of a nation undergoing a political shift, but also how value hierarchies are susceptible to continuous pressure and change. In order to develop this argument, the exhibition is accompanied by a series of events with invited guests, whose comments will be documented and incorporated into the exhibition.(4)
You said, ‘It was an attempt to undermine both spatial (space of exhibiting versus space of practice) and occupational (makers versus viewers) divisions still characteristic of the art world.’
– Can you tell us how this played out in the exhibition?
Yes, I will get to that in a moment, but it is first necessary to describe the second case study, in order to enable a comparison through locating us in-between these two casestudy displays.

Sculpture by Ørnulf Bast, Breakthrough, back view detail (Hole
in the wall) Still from the film Mother, Dear Mother.

Sculpture by Per Palle Storm, Pioneer, front view detail
of mould. Still from the film Mother, Dear Mother.

Sculpture by Per Palle Storm, Pioneer, back
view detail of mould. Still from the film Mother,
Dear Mother.
Case B: ‘Competence’
One exhibition in four successive interventions. The exhibition approached the question of art-related collaboration by transgressing and expanding the notion of artistic competence. It addressed the capacity to make and imagine while avoiding the typical regimes of objecthood and representation. Instead of simply replicating the division between an artist and an audience, either under the guise of relational aesthetics or in the form of traditional viewership, our intervention aimed at a radical critique of the difference in competences underpinning both of these positions.
We transformed rituals inherent in the traditional form of an exhibition in order to constitute a paradoxical space, where our visitors could shift between being a creative maker and a reflective viewer of artistic objects. We wanted the visitor to become neither producer nor consumer of an aesthetic experience. Instead, we invited our visitors to practically experience two fundamental stances – of creating and of contemplating – during the same visit.
We designed a situation which forced the visitor to experience his/her own resonance to the material reality and imaginary projections, both of which are characteristic of an aesthetic experience. We redirected the investment inherent in aesthetic attention – normally induced by an exhibition – to combine different modes of experience reflectively, inviting our visitors to contemplate the self-generated artistic contents, presented back to them through the aura of a discrete art object.
However, we were not interested in simply reiterating the notion of participation, which only seemingly activates viewers as participants but does not question more fundamental differences between an author and an executor of an artistic script.
We wanted the visitor to have experiences as neither viewer nor participant in some sort of art performance, in which our competence would be a primary object of consumption. Instead, we stepped back and created an opportunity for visitors to enter into active dialogues with their own competences as makers and viewers of art. In order to create conditions for this unusual experience to emerge we very carefully orchestrated the process of visiting the exhibition.(5)
You said: ‘This comparative set-up will allow for an approach to irony in a sense of situated subjectivity and will illustrate how its modi are played out’ – Could you give an example?
We will get there, do not worry. But first, let us assume the role of the visitor entering the exhibition. One visitor enters Case A: ‘Mother, Dear Mother’, while the other enters Case B: ‘Competence’. We will follow both slowly and compare the two cases, step by step. Both visitors (in other words the split reader) are now prepared to be exposed to these demonstrations of artistic research. They have both planned their visit carefully and put time aside for this experience; ready to take things in, understand, be touched, moved and perhaps transformed.
Entering as a visitor Case A and Case B
Case A visitor enters the exhibition. The building is famous in Oslo. Two playful bronze lions guard the modernist entrance. As she passes them on the way to the main entrance, she reminds herself to be like those lions: playful, spontaneous, open and explorative. She thinks to herself that those lions are there to guard the child in her, alert and playful. Inside, in the reception, she is given an earmuff radio headset and told that the radio is already tuned in. It is to be used just to listen and follow the shifting lights in the room, to match what you hear with what you see. She is listening. All outside noise is eliminated with the headset on. Inside, a voice is speaking at a slow pace. She is resting her gaze on a small kind of abstract lit-up sculpture in plaster, with a hole in it. It is mounted on the wall. She is up-close, and while she is looking through the hole, through the wall, into the other parts of the exhibition, this is what she hears in the earmuffs:
Someone had recognised the sculpture
Like a drill it had moved towards the torso
The breakthrough
Looking through the art had been insisted on
It wasn’t for sure that that was the main point,
even at the time when the lions had been shaped a few decades before …
An emotional breakthrough
And on the back only a hole
A peephole
Forces that had sought security in the establishment
After a short break, the calm voice continues, and she listens once more:
It is an anus, someone had mumbled
A starting point
Standpoint, stance, or viewpoint
A rose
Like a threshold
Two tunnels meet and form a union
Unity and flow
See others see, and be observed yourself
Be somehow in it, unseparated
The key to understanding resistance had been to understand it as uncertainty
Resistance could be explored, understood and faced
Meanwhile, our Case B visitor has a completely different experience. When he enters the exhibition in Prague, the gallery staff address him, talking to him from behind a screen. They tell him that, if he wants to see this exhibition, he has to make a drawing of his hand before entering. There is no other way. He sees another person sitting in the room, making a drawing of her hand. He accepts the premise and is handed a big sheet of white paper and a pencil, through a slot in the wall, like at the post office. There are a few special chairs with support for the paper at his disposal, so he sits down, positions the paper, looks at his hand, chooses from what angle to draw and starts.
As he is sitting there, drawing in quiet concentration, the other person finishes her drawing. She posts it through a slit in the wall. He observes her. She has to put her arm into a hole next to the slot, so the gallery attendant can verify that this is truly her hand and her attempt to draw it has been genuine. Her drawing is accepted and they keep it behind the screen. The gallery attendant slides open one of the separating screens to let the woman into the next room. When our Case B visitor is done with his drawing, after maybe 15 minutes, the same thing happens. He hands in his drawing and is then let into the next room.
He recognises this second room as more familiar, since it looks like an exhibition. He observes five kinds of abstract photographs mounted in frames on the walls around the room. He cannot recognise what is being depicted in the photos. It could be snowy landscapes viewed from the air, with dark areas of trees or forests. It reminds him of the abstract paintings of Franz Kline. He notices that three of the five images have had a small hole drilled into them, even through the glass. From these holes come headsets. He decides to listen to what might be on there. He rests his gaze on the image and puts on the headphones. There is a voice of a young woman speaking. This is what he hears:
My room-mate likes to fuck. She goes out every Friday night and it’s never happened that she came home without a man. They then shut themselves in her room and go at it. I listen to them through the wall. I lie in my bed and – based on the exhaling, the breathing, the laughter and the sounds of the furniture – I imagine what the guy she brought home looks like and what they are doing at that moment. Sometimes it’s really easy to guess. At other times it’s, on the contrary, very difficult. Then I imagine that she doesn’t have a normal guy there, but rather one with three arms, two dicks, or something else. I try to imagine whether they are naked or if they fuck with their clothes on; and if so, what they are actually wearing – mainly what he’s wearing, because I know what my room-mate is wearing. I even know all her underwear, because she walks around the flat in them during the day. When my room-mate has an orgasm, I wait to see if they will continue. When I imagine this, I feel that what’s happening behind the wall is more real than my own life. It is more present than my presence in my own room. The next day I try to meet the guys before they leave. I want to compare them with my imagination. But some of them slip out of the flat very quietly and extremely early.
You said, ‘One exhibition in four successive interventions’, about the Case B exhibition – Can you describe a particular way to understand these interventions?
The first intervention was asking him to make a drawing, with the aim of changing his mode of sensing, being in the space. The second intervention is to expose the visitor to the images viewed and stories told in the second room, where our visitor in Case B is now spending time. He did not discover that the images are molecular photographs of those kinds of drawings he just made in the first room. They are all close-up details of graphite on paper. Then there are two more rooms, or interventions, prepared for him as he moves along. He can choose not to continue and return where he came from, let us see what will happen, what he decides. As for the visitor in the Case A exhibition, she is resting on one of the benches in the exhibition room, still wearing the earmuffs. But for a little while longer let us continue with visitor B:
After listening, he picks up another of those headphones. He sits down on a chair provided in front of a lower hanging image. This time it is a male voice. This is what he hears:
K. sat down at the table and steeped a tea bag in a cup of hot water. He observed closely how the liquid slowly took on a brown colour. Then, with two fingers, he took the string with the label and bag and pulled it up and dropped it back (in the water) twice.
He observed how the surface of the water quivered and the stirred molecules of water began to colour the up-to-now clear spots in the liquid in a noticeably complex turbulence. He pulled the newspaper with classified ads closer to him and began to flip through them. He found a double page with job offers. He took a pencil in his hand and gradually marked three adverts. First, one after the other, he underlined them with a simple line and when he had read the entire two pages he drew a rectangle around the underlined ads. After a while he surrounded each rectangle with lines of semi-circles so that they looked like three square flowers in a field of letters. In the end he filled in the rectangles until they were black. Meanwhile, crumbs and grains of salt fell onto the page from the bread he was biting into as he held it in his right hand. Only after that did he put the pencil down and pick up his teacup and sip.
He is alone in this second room of the exhibition. The woman he saw entering the room earlier is not there, so he assumes that another wall will soon open and he will be allowed to continue to a third room. He senses a kind of duty on the behalf of himself as a visitor and decides to continue to listen to the third and last headphone installed. He puts on the headphones and hears another person talking, but in a different female voice:
Mr J. is an exceptional person. He knows how to talk to children and is able to engage people. They listen to him. He knows how to gain their respect. He exudes optimism. But when he speaks about young people and school, you can hear a certain bitterness in his voice. He gradually lost touch with his peers at the atelier. He watches culture programmes on TV, especially art programmes, and when he by chance sees a former schoolmate on a programme, he comments on their appearance out loud with sarcastic and usually accurate remarks. He also knows how to imitate them in a comedic way.
He doesn’t like to show the sketches he himself did in school. When you ask him about them, he guides the conversation to another topic, or he tells you he doesn’t wish to talk about himself. Almost immediately after the revolution, Mr J. started up one of the first IT companies here in the Czech Republic. But still today he claims that he knows nothing about computers. He could have allegedly started an advertising agency like many of his friends at the time, but he was impressed by computers and how it was not yet possible to imagine just what they would be capable of doing. During 20 years he allegedly did not have to bribe or corrupt anyone, and despite this his company became one of the 20 most successful in the industry. When you ask him how he has been able to become so successful when he knows nothing about computers, he answers that he doesn’t know how to explain it: he always contemplates everything ‘organically’. ‘I don’t think about the thing itself but about the background. Each problem lies on something or stands before something and is explained by something. So I don’t sort it out by devoting time to it (the problem) directly. I give all my attention to the surroundings – the light and the background.’ When M. J. speaks about his approach to work, he uses words that he learned as a student at the State Academy of Fine Art.

1:1 copy of volume of the refused work by Vanessa Baird, To Everything There is a Season, close up detail view from uninstalled work, storage position. Still from the film Mother, Dear Mother.
After listening to this, our visitor walks around a bit and wonders what is going to happen next. He is full of impressions and not sure if he normally spends this much time in exhibitions. While our Case B visitor in Prague is walking around, waiting for what will happen to him, we move swiftly to our Case A visitor in Oslo. She is still spending time by the sculpture. She starts to enjoy the slow pace of the voice, the subtle lighting. She walks to the other side of the sculpture, where she continues to listen to the voice. She hears the following:
A comparison had been made between the planned, the controlled and the spontaneous The guardians of change, on the one hand, which entailed preparatory work and rational deliberation
A reverse image, but characterised by sorrow, fear, anger and anxiety
The other side, conversely, was characterised by expectation, joy, confidence, excitement
and childlike surpriseA certain emotional intensity
Resistance as reaction and force, as a reply to change
It wasn’t the first time they heard about the difference between the lions in front of
Parliament and the lions holding guard outside this building
This ludic insistence, in contrast with the premises for creating the sculpture itself
After they had been informed about the design of the animals down there at Parliament,
things became more serious
Cross-pressure
The energy and power inherent in the opposition had been used in a constructive and
positive way
Measures that concerned each individual, but that they nonetheless were not emotionally
prepared for
She gives up trying to understand what this all means to her now. The lights shift and she moves along to another object in the exhibition. She observes the new object presented to her as the light in the room intensifies and the object appears almost with an aura.
She hears the following:
Change became improvement
Privatisation became diversity
Permanent position became new job
Individuals or citizens became people
Segregation became alienation
Weakening became softening
Private became free
Cuts became alleviations
The creative mind defused
This she easily relates to. It is all about framing language, she thinks to herself. She notices that the object being described is 20 Pioneer Figures in bronze, packed in two cardboard boxes on loan from the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions. The casting mould of the same miniature statue, with auxiliary parts is displayed next to the cardboard boxes. It is a 25cm-high copy of the large statue on the main square in Oslo, the famous statue of the worker with his tools on the way to the quarry, erected in the 50s. She learns that this miniature statue is a service decoration bestowed upon deserving individuals after at least 25 years of service with the union. A salute to outstanding effort in the movement. Now she listens carefully. The sound is simply a summary of what those respective candidates receiving this ‘Oscar of the Confederation of Trade Unions’ has actually worked on during their years in service. She is surprised by the instructive power of the imagination as she loses herself and emotionally drifts into those lives. She perceives these celebratory moments as pure poetry:
For outstanding efforts in the field of labour by promoting employment and improved working and living conditions, thereby enabling social equality at an ever higher level
Helped ensure adequate social protection, improve dialogue in the labour market, develop human resources and combat social exclusion
Co-founder and first leader of the Organisation of Fundamental Rights in the European Social Charter in 1961 and the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers in 1989
Finally, for efforts in Norwegian bargaining rights and the right to collective negotiations where workers and employers or their respective organisations had the right to negotiate and enter into collective agreements and, in the event of conflicting interests, the right to take collective action, including going on strike, to defend their interests
For a reason unknown to her, she almost starts to cry, but manages to hold tears back when the listing continues, covering several servicemen and women. She thinks about the relationship between life and work; do we live to work or do we work to live?
A champion of improving the work environment in order to protect workers’ health and safety; working conditions; information and hearing of workers; integration of those who were excluded from the labour market; the work for establishing equal opportunities for women and men in the labour market and equal treatment in the work place
Helped put Norway in the driver’s seat concerning rights in conjunction with mass layoffs, equal pay, transfer of ownership, bankruptcy
For efforts on the European Framework Directive on Safety and Health at Work, as well as requirements to work equipment, safety equipment, written contracts, security and protection for atypical and pregnant employees, and mutual approval of qualifications
Has been instrumental in developing many of the directives that are based on European inter-party agreements, such as the right to maternity and paternity leave, equal rights for part-time and temporary employees, protection from sharp objects in hospitals and the health sector, long-distance work, frameworks for lifelong learning and equality
Helped instigate and set the terms for the work on employees’ social insurance and social protection; protection of employees upon the termination of a contract; representation and collective defence of employees’ and employers’ interests; co-determination; working conditions for citizens from third-party countries with legal residence in the Community; combating social exclusion; modernising systems of social protection
For facilitating and helping develop a number of revised directives, such as protection of minors in the workplace; improving the Posting of Workers Directive; the burden of proof in cases related to gender discrimination; mass layoffs; a number of directives regarding working hours in transportation, participation in European companies and information and consultation in national companies; as well as for being the driving force behind the work on equal treatment and the anti-discrimination directives and the Temporary Agency Work Directive
Worked steadfastly to the very end to prevent work-related stress, prevent violence and bullying at work, and promote an inclusive work environment
You said, ‘The objects have been abstracted to four reductive, sculptural forms that serve as narrative bases.’ – Is it correct that our Case A visitor now has been through half of those four reductive forms: one being the sculpture looking like an anus and the other these miniature Oscar statues?
Yes, that is correct and if we think about our Case B visitor, he is also exactly half the way and getting a bit impatient to continue. We will go slowly and follow the exhibition carefully step by step. We return to Case B again.
One part of the wall allows him to proceed to the third room. He nds it empty, except from a chair standing in one corner. The screens are dividing the space in two, and as in the two other rooms, he can hear the gallery staff moving back and forth on the other side; sometimes he get a glimpse of them. He moves towards the chair and sits down. He doesn’t know it, but on the other side of the screen there is a person sitting, waiting for him to arrive.
The person behind the screen cannot see who is coming into the room, but is employed to engage in conversation with the visitors. The gallery attendant has already brought the drawing he made in the rst room to this conversationalist, so the person could choose to talk about the drawing, just to get started. The employed person is instructed to approach visitors in a friendly manner and lead the conversation to the point of a shared imagined space, then to keep the conversation open toward imagining together. He can decide how it should go. So, not knowing what to expect, visitor B sits down. Here is how it all unfold- ed:

Installation view from ‘Competence’ in Fotograf Gallery, Prague. Room 3. In collaboration with Isabela Grosseova and Jiri Ptacek
(Conversationalist:) Hello?
(Our visitor:) Hello
Are you excited?
I don’t know.
You don’t know.
More importantly, I can’t hear you properly.
I see, so I will articulate.
How did the drawing go?
Normally.
What does the hand that you drew look like?
Umm … I tried to make it look like my hand.
Tell me something more about it, describe it for me.
The hand is quite slim, with long ngers, with a distinctive ring with stones … There is a leather string wrapped around the wrist.
Imagine the leather string begins to strangle your hand … What will you do about it?
I’ll cut it.
So you’ll take a pair of scissors, cut it … What happens? Describe it to me.
You mean the whole process?
Yes.
The leather string is too tight, blood is rushing into my hand and it’s unpleasant … The string is beginning to cut into my skin; I take the scissors and cut it from the inside of my wrist. What happens to the string?
It falls to the ground.
Look carefully at the ground then, and describe it to me.
Well, it’s this oor, and it’s white and clean and there is the red, cut string … it is cut sort of in six parts.
Does it make up a shape?
Excuse me?
What does it look like? Does it make up a shape?
Well, now that you mention it, it does … It forms a half circle.
Does it remind you of something?
Yes, it reminds me of circles, when you throw a stone into water.
Yes … So, imagine the surface of water, imagine the circles spreading on the surface … What kind of water did you imagine? Where is it?
It is a pond, some kind of pond next to a forest park.
What else do you see there?
I see reeds, pines … pine cones … a doe.
A doe? What is drawing your attention in this scenery?
Everything altogether, everything that’s going on, the ripples, the smell of the pine cones and the forest and …
Describe the smell.
The smell?
Yes, that sounds interesting.
The smell is a beautiful smell, of soil, pine cones and moss …
Try to come up with a name for the smell.
A name?
Yes.
Like a human name?
Yeah, for instance, a female name.
Rachel.
Rachel. And colour?
Brown [laughs]. But a nice brown.
Nice brown. Good. What about the doe? Where did it disappear to?
It ran away somewhere.
What if you run after it?
I can do that; I can run after it.
Follow it then. Where are you running? Where is it?
We run to a meadow, to a small area.
Has the doe disappeared or is it still there?
Hmm, yes, it led me to the meadow and disappeared.
It disappeared? Why did you–?
I knew that I shouldn’t follow. It led me to the meadow …
What stopped you? How did you know you were not supposed to follow?
I don’t know, I felt I should run after it, that it was offering to lead me somewhere, but only for some time, up to a certain point, and I could not follow after that, and maybe I wouldn’t even want to.
I see. And what was the reason then? What led you there?
To the meadow?
Yes – why were you meant to go there? It seemed like the doe was leading you to something.
To a new world, to freedom, I am not limited by any trees, by any – there were some parts of the forest … some hills … the meadow was unlimited, open.
So … I will not limit you any more either by my suggestive remarks. I will let you go to the next room. Goodbye!
Bye!
The visitor is surprised. He did not expect any such thing. He is led to the next room a bit puzzled by what is happening to him. He imagined such a detailed picture and shared this with a person he did not even see or know. It is a positive experience, but how could that be? The whole story stayed with him, he really had a sensation of being there for real, and he recalls even the smell and all of the details. What does this all mean? He soon re- alises that this is the last room and he sees only one small framed photograph, hanging on the other side of the room. He walks over and recognises that it is his own drawing framed for him to see, but his hand is there as well. He compares the two. That must have been what the gallery attendant was doing, walking back and forth, he thought, changing photographs in this frame. They probably change it from the back, he contemplates.
When he had his drawing and arm ‘inspected’ through the wall in the rst room they must have printed out the image of his hand and his drawing. So he gets to see his own drawing, and the woman before him must have seen her own drawing. He is perplexed and understands that he himself was producing the exhibition all the time, in a way. He looks closely at the drawing and at his own hand. Then he leaves the room, he is in the back yard and now back on the street. The visitor in Case B is done, so we move to our Case A visitor. She is still in the exhibition and we will come to an end there as well, eventually.
You said, ‘The soundtrack (in Case A) comments in its entirety on a subject matter that can be encapsulated in terms such as change, transformation and restructuring in the context of contem- porary Norwegian politics.’ – That is all well and good, but could you please move on to the point of irony? This should be about irony. Are we talking about af rmative irony or a kind of neutral irony? Should we understand what you are saying as subversive irony or read the whole text as a post-rhetorical transformation of irony through aesthetic processes? Is there any irony at all? At this point, it would be good to get some assistance or at least an indication of where we are going with all this!(6)
Yes, I understand. Let us rst catch up with our visitor in Case A. We need to wrap up this other case study as well, in order to proceed to the discussion.
She is not alone in the exhibition. There are several other visitors. All are wearing their own earmuffs and listening to the same radio broadcast. They all move their atten- tion to the same elements, when the light shifts. Sometimes it seems like people are stand- ing around a camp re, individually, but kind of in a group. Nobody talks, since they are all wearing those earmuffs. It sometimes reminds her of a construction site, with those people with large earmuffs with antennae walking around. It has been quiet for a while, but the lights already indicate where to move next. It is a screen, looking like it is prepared for a cinema projection. Several people are gathered in that corner, as though waiting for the screening to start. She cannot see any projector. She hears a different voice now. It is someone singing. It is only vocal. She is surprised and listens carefully to the text. There is no cinema being screened, but she rests her gaze on the screen anyway and sits down on the bench in front of the screen. She likes the way this is being presented. A male voice. Only the voice singing loud and clear:
After many years away from home he’s nally arrived back
For he could not forget his childhood years and his home
He has many cherished memories about the happiness she gave him
But the only thing he nds now is an old, neglected grave
The voice changes and now there is a female voice continuing the song in the same melody. She immediately thinks of this as a duet and listens carefully. It is beautiful. Must be professional singers, she thinks, when she listens more:
Mother, dear mother, can you hear me now? Take these owers I’ve brought
In my mind’s eye I see you still, just as you once were
Always so tender and so loving – no, there was no one like you, mother dear
I want to thank you, you’ve deserved it, but I’ve arrived too late
She remembers the title of the exhibition. It must refer to this song.
Now the male and female voices sing together:
Mother, dear mother, can you hear me now? Take these owers I’ve brought
In my mind’s eye I see you still, just as you once were
Always so tender and so loving – no, there was no one like you, mother dear
I want to thank you, you’ve deserved it, but I’ve arrived too late
The song was not funny. It was not too serious either. Not ironic either. She thought it was awkward. What to make of it
? Quickly from memory she ran a semantic translation in her head to see if she missed out some obvious hidden message. She visualises and quickly reads through in her mind her translation of the song, as she remembers it. Her semantic translation of the same song looks like this:
The duration of absence comes to an end
Justi ed origin and source
Retroactive experience characterised by euphoria
Reduction disappointment unconsciousness individualisation Symbolic address o ering
Imaginary notion restoration
Emotional description comparative con rmation Gratitude evaluation guilt
Repetition transition ritual action
Constitutive continuity corresponding past
Isolated qualitative properties idiosyncrasy Dutiful virtue admirable capitulation
No, nothing special to notice, she tells herself … The light moves again and the last el- ement is now the point of attraction. She has been in the exhibition for quite a while now, more than 30 minutes already. Good that this is the last one, she thinks to herself, but at the same time she starts to get the pace and enjoy the movement. She likes the way the language resonates in her. She did not expect much from the rst visual impression on entering the room. It did not promise any aesthetic reward when she made the decision to stay listening to the entire soundtrack.
Now she understands that this internalisation of language, the shifts, the political and historical content is resonating in her as a political subject. In her as a visitor. She now realises that the exhibition actually takes place in her as well. It is made in a fashion in which she can complement the exhibition by bringing in her own thoughts and emotions. That must be why it is so slow, to allow that to happen. She feels her heart beating, as if she is touched by this small discovery … She remembers her philosophy classes and thinks es- pecially about the semester studying phenomenology. The voice in her earmuffs is back to spoken words now. The light points to a carefully constructed stack of wooden plates, as if they are just stored there. It reminds her of the sculptures of Donald Judd. Minimalist in a certain sense. She is again listening and full of expectation. This is what she hears:
The circulation of punctuality with regard to public life
Art that was emotive
Took into account that people were human and had emotions
Otherwise the strategy quickly became passive, incomplete and instrumentalTheoretical reflections on what kind of mandate art projects have when they encounter resistance
Often it was not the change in itself, or the result of the change, that led to people expressing resistanceKicked the problem further down the road
Recognised, responded to and managed the emotional swings in the wake of changeFortunately, art was power
If the new goals had been congruent with how people thought they ought to be, people’s attitudes would have been more positiveThe disquiet in society would show itself
Anger was linked to feeling offended, and this led to resistanceUpset about the art controversy
Mixed experiences gradually became either predominantly positive or predominantly ne- gativeArt in a public vacuum
The emotions led us to mobilising resourcesArt in public space was only as free as it was allowed to be
Presented with a clear vision of the future that made one’s personal inconveniences accep- table
Like a heading and not an archiveWho defined what was acceptable art?
There was little control in the initial stage
The consequences were not yet clearRemoved art that created anxiety
Emotional intensity corresponded directly with the perceived importance of what had ha- ppenedWanted to educate ministry employees to interpret art The lack of feeling in control increased the sense of uncertainty, but heightened the degree of emotional awareness
There was nothing to argue about here Another phase characterised by positive resistance
Called Norway the Third World of culture
The final phase characterised by active and ultimately aggressive resistance I couldn’t take responsibility for others’ associations
Changes at work represent a major intervention in a person’s life
A number of stable factors were thus under threatArt as discursive host – un nished piece
A hot-button issue in art politics
On the other hand, those who were dissatis ed with how things were being handled looked forward to changeThe anxiety for art
The ambivalence disappeared because we had begun the process of establishing the mea- ning of what the changes entailed for us personally
You said, ‘This comparative set-up of Case A and Case B will allow for an approach to irony in a sense of situated subjectivity and how its modi are being played out.’ – I know we are repeating ourselves here, but is it not time to look into this matter now? We have been through the case studies. What approach?
Yes, it is time now. Why not give this comparative discussion of Case A and Case B its own heading. I propose the following:
Parabasis
Through these two particular exhibitions, we have demonstrated a delineation of imaginary capacities. We may attempt to describe this through a few structural aspects in Case A and Case B, which served to produce a certain type of psychic or virtual event for our visitors.
Going after irony in such a situated sense may perhaps enable an interpretation of irony as modernist strategy, premised on a radical historical discontinuity. We may observe how irony recast itself constantly into new and unpredictable modes through our visitors’ situated subjectivities in Case A and especially in Case B. In this last sense, irony enables a mode of augmented sensibility, not unlike Kierkegaard’s all-encompassing irony as vision of life.(7)
Besides having a dominantly historical approach to archive material and an assumed capacity for individual interpretation in Case A, we nd in Case B a more direct engage- ment of the visitor’s imaginary self. In Case B, the exhibition is self directed, personal and carefully modi ed to suit a particular individual at the time, allowing the visitor to build competence for readership and engagement.(8) With these modes of operational irony foregrounded, we should start to wrap this up, summing-up both Case A and Case B.
You said, ‘This way of delineating imaginary capacities is an artistic demonstration’. – Is this a way of looking at limits: so far, but not further? Could you describe this in terms of ab- sence?
Yes, it is true; the focus has been more on limits and where things end.
What is not there, not mentioned, not inscribed. For example, we did not get into this too much, but underlying these hypothetical experiences of visitors in Case A and Case B, we implicitly address questions such as, who are we really when we experience a work of art? On what ontological terms are we taking part in an exhibition? What procedures or mechanisms manifest themselves? What underlying logic is it these particular exhibitions maintain or reproduce? But I would like to ask you, if you would allow me, how do you see it yourself?
Well, you are more interested in formal readings of this material, especially in Case A. You nd it constructive to consider the proposition to follow stylistic changes in the work of artist Arnulf Bast, who in 1929 designed the lions outside and also the 1953 plaster sculpture presented in the exhibition. The ludic lions were made to decorate the newly erected House of Artists, in Oslo, and the second sculpture, The Breakthrough, is from a competition for a workingman’s monument at Rjukan, an early industrial heritage site in Norway. The latter is a compromised abstraction with a classic gurative element added to legitimise an artistic expression towards abstraction in the post-war Norwegian con- text. In general, looking at the ‘art’ included in the exhibition from a political representation perspective, you notice the typical asymmetry, especially in the ‘Oscar of the Confed- eration of Trade Unions’, whose style remains until today a traditional realist gurative language. You might want to think that abstraction was reserved for nancialization, but not for political representation. This could be a possible entry point for me …
Further, if I may, you would like to point out the generational gap inserted through the song mentioned in Case A: Mother, Dear Mother. As far as you know, this song was pop- ular during the occupation of Norway in the 1940s. Without making this into a tool for ironic distancing, the song appeared during an interview with the conservative Christian party in a discussion on their live music repertoire for elders in nursing homes, during their national election campaign in 2013.
And one last thing: concerning Case A and the carefully constructed stack of wooden plates, the Donald Judd lookalike mentioned. You understand the ongoing issues related to censorship present in this particular public commission, which was partly refused due to its (more or less random) association with the 2011 Norway attacks.(9)
This resulted in disproportionate public debate, and the soundtrack entries that our visitor in Case A is listening to in the exhibition are a collection of headlines from the main newspapers in Norway, about this particular debate. If you understand this element of Case A correctly, these underlined headlines are read together with reports from major consulting companies typically dealing with fusion and privatisation of public institu- tions, for example educational structures or hospitals. The selected quotes are from re- search on employed workers’ emotional reactions in terms of resistance to change at the workplace, in other words the very same argument for censoring the public commission in question at the Department of Health in a government building. you nd that interest- ing, almost to the point of irony.
Yes, truly, truly, very good observations. Thank you. Any comments on Case B then, while you are at it?
You do have some comments actually. But rst, could you possibly tell us more about the obvious manipulation of the visitor in Case B? I understand that what takes place is a breaking down of the ‘going to see an exhibition modus’ – a step by step tuning of the visitor towards becoming the content of the exhibition as such. You think this is the case to a lesser degree in Case A as well.
Yes, perhaps, but you see it more as a generous prepared situation in which time in- vested enables sensitivities in the visitor and thus activates a certain set of immanent competencies. It is thus an attempt in both Case A and Case B to grasp the here and now in terms of somewhere else, and by doing so, expand the actual inventively. It may be useful here to round it all off with a last quote, by Stephen Wright, on notions of competence:
But competence is not to be confused here with artistic métier or skill in the ne arts tradition. In fact it is to be understood as virtually synonymous with incompetence, for usership-generated practice is founded on mutualising incompetence. On the face of it, that seems an odd thing to say; but, a compe- tence can only be de ned as such from the perspective of a corresponding incompetence. And in e ect, it is only because a given incompetence is somehow competence-de cient that it calls a competence to the fore. This is of fundamental importance in situations of collaboration, where art engages in skill sharing and competence crossing with other modes of activity whose domains of competence, and hence of incompetence, are very di erent. By mutualising (in)competence, this di erence is made fruitful and productive.(10)
OK, that is an interesting quote, which brings back issues mentioned earlier. To be more straightforward with you, do you see the irony used in Case A and Case B as a mean- ingful artistic and political device, even when its rhetoric is appropriated by the language of late capitalism?
Yes, you do, through, as we just discussed, the delineation of imaginary capacities – the limits of the social imaginary, in short.
If that is the case, then you do not understand the ironic gap between the private and public voice. Between what is said and what is generally understood necessarily to entail a position of passivity. You see in Case A, and particularly in Case B, the opposite, more a generating or producing of an active stance.
In addition to that, concerning the last question, namely if we could nd a mode of irony which does not assume a double audience and hence a privileged sphere of knowl- edge – you forgot to mention aspects of double ontology in the phase of researching and preparing, getting access to empirical data. You are thinking of membership and partici- pation in political parties, going to meetings etc. You see this re ected in the Case A and B as a way of enabling successive steps in the experience of the visitor, through portioning out or holding back information. In Case A through little information, slow pace, thus producing a kind of impatience. In Case B, though generous manipulation and control of information.
Yes, you might be right. Lets’s end this conversation here. Thank you for your obser- vations.

Installation view from ‘Competence’ in Fotograf Gallery, Prague. Room 4. In collaboration with Isabela Grosseova and Jiri Ptacek
Notes:
(1) Robert Motherwell, Art and Reality, exhibi- tion catalogue (Düsseldorf: Städtishe Kunsthalle, 1976), p. 5.
(2) http://www.thepoliticalcurrencyofart.org.uk/irony-and-overidentication-archive
(3) Clari cation: The approach with You
said, the various dialogues and questions are all rhetorical approaches, some based loosely on the Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM) developed from Tom Wengraf, especially from subsession II in the interview format.
(4) Extracts from press release; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, exhibition Mother, Dear Mother.
http://www.kunstnerneshus.no/kunst/jesper -alvaer-2/
(10.1. – 28.2 2014) (4) -Guests included Stephen Wright, Christopher Kulendroan Thomas and Kuba Szreder
(5) In collaboration with Isabela Grosseová and Jiří Ptáček (30.1. – 28. 2. 2015). Texts in room 3 in the text by Jiri Ptacek. Overall extracts from project description Competence, elaborated with Kuba Szreder.
(6) See Armen Avanessian, Andreas Töpfer, Speculative Drawing. Extracts from Chapter 13, Irony and the logic of Modernity
(7) Sindre Frøysaa, Et tveegget sverd, Ironi som en eksistensiell kategori hos Søren Kierke- gaard og Richard Rorty. Masteroppgave i loso ved Institutt for loso , ide- og kunsthistorie
og klassiske språk. Det humanistiske fakultet, UNIVERSITETET I OSLO, Høsten 2013
(8) Stephen Wright, Toward a lexicon of usership, section on Competence
http://museu-marteutil.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Towar-d-a-lexicon-of-usership.pdf
(9) The 2011 Norway attacks were two sequen- tial lone wolf terrorist attacks by Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers’ Youth League-run summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011. The at- tacks claimed a total of 77 lives. The commission in under discussion is a refused work by Vanessa Baird “To Everything There is a Season.”
(10) Stephen Wright, Toward a lexicon of user- ship, section on Competence
http://museumarteutil.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Toward-a-lexicon-of-usership.pdf
Abbing, Hans. 2002. Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts.
Amsterdam University Press.
Abbing, Hans. 2006. From High Art to New Art
Amsterdam University Press.
Alberro, Alexander and Stimson, Blake (Editors). 2009. Institutional Critique – An Anthology of Artists’ Writings. MIT Press
Alberro, Alexander and Stimson, Blake (Editors). 1999. conceptual art: a critical anthology. MIT Press
Alberro, Alexander and Stimson, Blake (Editors). 2006. Art After Conceptual Art
Generali Foundation, Vienna / MIT Press
Alberro, Alexander. 2017. Abstraction in Reverse – The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art. University of Chicago
Ambrožič, Mara & Vettese, Angela (Editors) 2013. Art as a Thinking Process – Visual Forms of Production Knowledge. Sternberg Press
Artist Placement Group – Context is Half the Work (Online)
http://en.contextishalfthework.net
Arvatov, Boris and Kiaer, Christina (Translator). 1997. Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing
(Toward the Formulation of the Question) October, Vol. 81 (Summer, 1997), pp. 119-128, MIT Press
Bader, Gloria E. and Rossi, Cathrine A. 2002. Focus Groups: A Step-By-Step Guide.
Bader Group
Batalion, Judith. 2010. Towards a ‘Depth Sociology’ School of Acting:
An Interview with Andrea Fraser. Contemporary Theatre Review
Barry, Judith; Green,Renée; Wilson, Fred; Philipp Müller, Christian and Fraser, Andrea. 1997. Serving Institutions. October, Vol. 80 (Spring, 1997), pp. 120-129
van den Berg, Karen. 2013. Fragile productivity: artistic activities beyond the exhibition system (Art production beyond the art market?) Sternberg Press
Bishop, Claire. 2004 ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’
October, Vol.110. (Fall 2004), pp.51-79.
Bishop, Claire (Editor). 2006. Participation
Whitechapel and MIT Press
Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells – Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship.
Verso
Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence – A Theory of Poetry.
Oxford University Press
de Boer, Wietse. 2001. The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan. Brill
Bolt Rasmussen, Mikkel. 2009. The Politics of Interventionist Art: The Situationist International, Artist Placement Group, and Art Workers’ Coalition, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 21:1, 34-49
Boltanski, Luc (Author), Chiapello, Eve (Author), Elliott, Gregory (Translator) 2007 [1999].
The New Spirit of Capitalism. Verso
Bourdieu, Pierre, Haacke, Hans. 1995. Free Exchange
Polity Press
Bottici, Chiara. 2014. Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary
Columbia University Press
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics.
Les presses du réel
Braverman, Harry. 1998 [1974]. Labor and Monopoly Capital – The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
Monthly Review Press New York
Bryan-Wilson. Julia. 2009. Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era
University of California Press,
Bryan-Wilson, Julia. 2013. Occupational Realism. In Sholette, Gregory and Ressler, Oliver (Editors) 2013. It’s the Political Economy, Stupid – The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory.
Pluto Press
Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. 2003. Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry.
MIT Press
Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. 2007. Sculpture as recollection (Gabriel Orozco)
Bois, Yve Alain. Thames and Hudson
Burton, Johanna; Jackson, Shannon; Willsdon, Dominic. 2016. Public Servants – Art and the Crisis of the Common Good. MIT Press
Cabanne, Pierre.1971.London: Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp.
Thames and Hudson
Mörsch, Carmen, Sharpin, Miriam. 2003. Gallery education
The International Journal of Art and Design Education 208-214
Campbell, Jeremy. 2001. The Liars Tale A History of Falsehood
W.W. Norton
Cardullo, Bert. 2013. Theories of the Avant-Garde Theatre: A Casebook from Kleist to Camus.
The Scarecrow Press
Cederstrom, Carl, Felming, Peter. 2012. Dead Man Working
Zero Books
Casement, Ann. 1998. Post-Jungians Today: Key Papers in Contemporary Analytical Psychology
Routledge
Cheetham, Tom. 2003. The World Turned Inside Out – Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism
Spring Journal, Inc
Chodorow, Joan. 1997. Jung on Active Imagination (Encountering Jung).
Princeton University Press
Corbally M, O’Neill CS. 2014. An introduction to the biographical narrative interpretive
method. Nurse Researcher. 21, 5, 34-39.
Costa, Cristina and Murphy, Mark, (Editors). 2015. Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research – The Art of Application. Palgrave Macmillan
Crawford, Holly. (Editor) 2008. Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices. University Press of America
Derrida, Jacques. 2002 Without Alibi
Stanford University Press
Dewey, John. 1939. Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us
John Dewey. The Later Works, 1925–1953. Volume 14: 1939–1941
Doherty, Claire (Editor) 2009. Situation. Documents of Contemporary Art.
Whitechapel and MIT Press
Dumbadze, Alexander and Hudson, Suzanne. 2013. Contemporary Art – 1989 to the Present
Wiley-Blackwell
Escobar, Enrique, Gondicas, Myrto and Vernay, Pascal (Editors). 2010. A Society Adrift – Cornelius Castoriadis – Interviews and Debates, 1974–1997. Fordam University Press
Ferguson, Bruce W. (Editor) 1996. Thinking About Exhibitions
Routledge
Finkelpearl, Tom. 2000. Dialogues in Public Art
The MIT Press
Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There no Alternative?
Zero Books
Fore, Devin. 2006. Introduction* Soviet Factography
October, Vol. 118, (Fall, 2006), pp. 3-10
MIT Press
Foster, Victoria. (Editor). 2015. Collaborative Arts-based Research for Social Justice
Routledge Advances in the Medical Humanities
Fraser, Andrea.1997. What’s Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere? October, Vol. 80 (Spring), pp. 111-116, MIT Press
Gähde, Ulrich and Hartmann, Stephan (Editors). 2005. Coherence, Truth and Testimony
Springer
Geuens, Jean-Pierre, 2015. The Dismantling of the Fourth Wall
Quarterly Review of Film and Video Vol. 32 , Iss. 4,2015
Gielen, Pascal. The Art Scene. A Clever. Working Model for Economic. Exploitation?
Open 17 – A Precarious Existence, Vulnerability in the Public Domain
Cahier on Art & the Public Domain 2004–2012 (https://www.onlineopen.org)
Gill, Jo (Editor). 2006. Modern Confessional Writing – New critical essays.
Routledge
Goodlad, Sinclair and McIvor, Stephanie. 1998. Museum Volunteers – Good Practice in the Management of Volunteers. Routledge
Gorz, Andre. 1982. Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism.
Pluto Press.
Gorz, Andre. 1999. Reclaiming Work – Beyond the Wage-Based Society. Polity Press
Green, Charles. 2001. The Third Hand – Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism
University of Minnesota Press
Groys, Boris. 2008. Art Power
MIT Press
Guattari, Felix (Author), Bains, Paul and Pefanis, Julian (Translator)
1992. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Indiana University Press
Gudjonsson, Gisli H. 2003. The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions – A Handbook
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Habib Engqvist, Jonatan; Enqvist, Annika; Masucci, Michele; Rosendahl, Lisa; Widenheim, Cecilia (Editors). 2012. Work, Work, Work – A Reader on Art and Labour. Sternberg Press
Hammersley, Martyn and Traianou, Anna. 2012. Ethics in Qualitative Research. Controversies and Contexts. SAGE Publications
Haraway, Donna. 2008. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599.
Hellings, James. 2014. Adorno and Art – Aesthetic Theory Contra Critical Theory
Palgrave MacMillan
Herbst, Steirischer and Malzacher, Florian. 2014. TRUTH IS CONCRETE – A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics. Sternberg Press
Heywood, Ian. 1997. Social Theories of Art – A Critique
MacMillan Press
Hlavajova, Maria, Winder, Jill and Choi, Binna (Editors). 2008. On Knowledge Production –
A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art. BAK & Revolver
Hlavajova, Maria; Sheikh, Simon. 2017. Former West – Art and the Contemporary after 1989
MIT Press
Hibbert-Jones, Dee. 2011.Contemporary Art from Studio to Situation and Situation
(Documents of Contemporary Art series), Public Art Dialogue, 1:01, 139-141
Joselit, David 2009. Institutional Responsibility: The Short Life of Orchard Author(s):
Grey Room, No. 35 (Spring, 2009), pp. 108-115
Kester, Grant H. 2011. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Duke University Press
Kim, Soo Jin.1997) Interview with Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Parallax, 3:2, p. 215-221,
Kluge, Alexander and Negt, Oskar. 2014. History and Obstinacy.
MIT Press
Knill, Paolo J. 1994. Multiplicity as a tradition: Theories for interdisciplinary arts therapies—An overview. The Arts in Psychotherapy 21(5):319-328 · December 1994. Elsevier Science Ltd
Knill, Paolo J. 1995. Beauty in Therapy and the Arts. The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 1-7, 1995. Elsevier Science Ltd
Knill, Paolo, Levine, Ellen G. and Levine, Stephen K. 2005. Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy – Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. 1997. Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you).
Duke University Press
Krauss, Rosalind . 1979. Sculpture in the Expanded Field
October, Vol. 8. (Spring, 1979), pp. 30-44.
Kunst, Bojana. 2015. Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism Examining the recent changes in the labour of an artist and addressing them from the perspective of performance. Zero Books
Kwon, Miwon. 2008. One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity.
MIT Press
de Laine, Marlene. 2000.
Fieldwork, Participation and Practice – Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research
SAGE Publications
Løgstrup, Knud Ejler, Fink Hans (Editor).1997 [1956]. The Ethical Demand
University of Notre Dame Press
Mackenzie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie (Editors). 2000. Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self. Oxford University Press
McLean, George F. and Kromkowski, John (Editors) 2003. Moral Imagination and Character Development Volume I: The Imagination. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change / Series VII on Culture and Values, volume 4
Menger, Pierre-Michel. 2014. The Economics of Creativity – Art and Achievement under Uncertainty
Harvard University Press
Meyer, James. 2004. The Strong and the Weak: Andrea Fraser and the Conceptual Legacy. Grey Room Fall, No. 17, pp. 82–107, MIT Press
Miller, Tina, Birch, Maxine, Mauthner, Melanie and Jessop, Julie. 2002. Ethics in Qualitative Research. SAGE Publications
Molesworth, H. 2003. Work ethic. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art.
Penn State University Press
O’Doherty, Brian. 2008. Studio and Cube – On The Relationship Between Where Art is Made and Where Art is Displayed. Princeton Architectural Press
Price, David. H. 2016. Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology. Duke University Press
Puchta, Claudia and Potter, Jonathan. 2004. Focus Group Practice.
SAGE Publications
Radical Culture Research Collective (RCRC) 2007. A Very Short Critique of Relational Aesthetics
transform.eipcp.net
Ratner, Carl. 2000. Agency and Culture. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
Volume 30, Issue 4 – December.
Raunig, Gerald and Ray Gene (Editors). 2009. Art and Contemporary Critical Practice – Reinventing Institutional Critique. MayFlyBooks
Raunig, Gerald; Ray, Gene and Wuggenig, Ulf (Editors) 2011.Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and Resistance in the ‘Creative Industries’. MayFlyBooks
Roberts, John. 2004. ‘Collaboration as a problem of art’s cultural form’
Third Text, 18:6, 557 – 564
Roberts, John. 2007. The Intangibilities of Form – Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade.
Verso
Roberts, John. 2010. Art After Deskilling*
Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 77–96 brill.nl/hima
Skerker, Michael. 2010. An Ethics of Interrogation
University of Chicago Press
Sholette, Gregory. 2010. Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture.
Pluto Press
Smart, JK. 2003. Real Delegation – How to get people to do things for you – and do them well
Pearson Education Limited
Stadler, Bernhard and Dixon, Anthony F.G.. 2008. MUTUALISM – Ants and their Insect Partners. Cambridge University Press
Stewart, Susan. 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press
Stiles, Kristine, Selz, Peter. 2012. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art – A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. University of California Press
Taylor, James Stacey (Editor). 2005. Personal Autonomy – New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press
Thompson, Nato. 2012. Living as Form – Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011
MIT Press
Tovar-Restrepo, Marcela. 2012. Castoriadis, Foucault, and Autonomy – New Approaches to Subjectivity, Society, and Social Change. Continuum International Publishing Group
Tveito Johnsen, Elisabeth. 2014. PhD-thesis Religious learning in social practices. An ethnographic study of mediation, identification, and negotiation processes in religious education in the Church of Norway. Akademika publishing, Oslo
Vanderlinden,Barbara and Elena Filipovic (Editors). 2006. The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe. Roomade and MIT Press
Veltman, Andrea andPiper, Mark (Editors). 2014. Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender
Oxford University Press
Virno, Paolo. 2004. Grammar of the Multitude – For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life
Semiotext(e)
Voorhies, James. 2017. Beyond Objecthood – The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968
MIT Press
Warner, Michael, 2002. Publics and Counterpublics.
MIT Press
Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Duke University Press
Wengraf, Tom. 2001. Qualitative Research Interviewing: Biographic Narrative and Semi-Structured
Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Weiss, Peter. 2005. The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume 1: A Novel.
Duke University Press
Wiles, Rose. 2013. What are Qualitative Research Ethics?
Bloomsbury Academic
Wood, Stephan 1987. The Deskilling Debate, New Technology and Work Organization
Acta Sociologica 1987 30: 3
Sage Publications
Wright, Stephen. 2004 ‘The delicate essence of artistic collaboration’,
Third Text, 18:6, 533 – 545
Wright, Stephen. 2013. Toward a Lexicon of Usership
Van Abbemuseum
Wright, Stephen. 2013. An Art Without Qualities: Raivo Puusemp’s “Beyond Art — Dissolution of Rosendale, N.Y.” http://northeastwestsouth.net/art-without-qualities-raivo-puusemps-beyond-art-dissolution-rosendale-ny
- Mother, Dear Mother
Exhibition Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, 10 January – 9 February 2014 - Official press release exhibition, Mother, Dear Mother
- Images from preliminary model, Mother, Dear Mother
- Press images from exhibition Mother, Dear Mother
- Radio broadcast Mother, Dear Mother
- Radio broadcast Mother, Dear Mother (transcript)
- Remake duet of song Mother, Dear Mother (Mor, Kjære Mor)
- Unedited video translation, Mother, Dear Mother.
- Review of Mother, Dear Mother Kunstkritikk (Norwegian)
- Competence
Exhibition Fotograf gallery, Prague, 30 January — 28 February 2015 - Official press release exhibition, Competence
- Images from exhibition Room 1- 4, Competence
- Translation of audio files 1-3 (English) room 2, Competence
- Audio files 1-3 (Czech) room 2, Competence
- Audio example (remake) from transcribed conversations room 3, Competence
- Examples from transcribed conversations conversations room 3, Competence
- Example from individually mounted photographs room 4, Competence
- artycok.tv, Competence (interview)
- UMA Audioguide, Competence (interview)
- Aarhus Kunsthal_OPEN CALL_COLLECTIVE MAKING - The Competences
- Examples audio files from preliminary interviews with Czech emigrants to Brazil, Dismissed Competence
- Stretching The Imagination
Exhibition Making Use: Life in Postartistic Times, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 19 February – 1 May, 2016 - Official press release exhibition, Stretching the Imagination
- Preliminary proposal to volunteers, Stretching the Imagination
- Examples from exercises, video, images, Stretching the Imagination
- Interviews 1-10, audio, Stretching the Imagination
- Interviews 1-10, transcripts, Stretching the Imagination
- Unpublished case study: Anonymous Work Group
- Anonymous (preliminary) advertisement in 5 different newspapers
- Critical Reflections on Empty Objects as an Experience to Come
- Interviews with participants Anonymous Work Group 1-6
- Interviews with participants Anonymous Work Group 1-6 (transcript)
- Pedagogical approach: Contractual Relationships, and After
- Student announcement about the course
- Unedited film footage, integrating exercise elements and comments.
- Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM) + Future-Blind panels
- Subsession 1-2-3 London, 15-16 September 2016
- Subsession 1-2-3 London, 15-16 September 2016 (transcript)
- Sequentialisation of Subsession 1-2-3 London, example, draft
- Blind panel Data Biographical Analysis, Oslo, 13 October 2016
- Blind panel Data Biographical Analysis, Oslo, 13 October 2016 (transcript)
- Blind panel Microanalysis, Oslo, 14 October 2016
- Blind panel Microanalysis, Oslo, 14 October 2016 (transcript)
- Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016
- Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016 (transcript)
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column A) Work, work...20 January 2016
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column B) Work, work...20 January 2016
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column C) Work, work...20 January 2016
- BNIM Final interpretation, Work, work...12 February 2017
- Witness testimonies, Oslo 15 November 2016
- 1st. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 1st. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 2nd. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 2nd. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 3rd. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 3rd. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 4th. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 4th. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- Contracts, budget, reports, assessment
- Work contract Oslo National Academy of the Arts, research fellow 2013-2016
- General production budget, research fellow 2013
- Interim activity report, research fellow 2013-2014
- Interim activity report, research fellow, 2014-2015
- Interim assessment, protocol criteria December 2016
- Updated assessment, protocol criteria September 2017
- Review report, (in Norwegian)
- Official press release Viva Voce
- Viva Voce, October 2017 (video documentation)
- Viva Voce, October 2017 (transcript)
- Final assessment, November 2017
- Link
- Kunststipendiatforum
- Ministry of Education and Research
- Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP)
- Oslo National Academy of the Arts
- The Association of Doctoral Organisations in Norway (SIN)
- The Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions (UHR/NRKU)
- Tom Wengraf, Lecture Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM), Oslo, 13 October 2016
- Tom Wengraf, Lecture Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM), Oslo, 13 October 2016 (transcript)
- 1st. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 1st. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 2nd. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 2nd. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 3rd. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 3rd. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- 4th. Witness – approx. 30 min
- 4th. Witness – approx. 30 min (transcript)
- Aarhus Kunsthal_OPEN CALL_COLLECTIVE MAKING - The Competences
- Anonymous (preliminary) advertisement in 5 different newspapers
- artycok.tv, Competence (interview)
- Audio example (remake) from transcribed conversations room 3, Competence
- Audio files 1-3 (Czech) room 2, Competence
- Blind panel Data Biographical Analysis, Oslo, 13 October 2016
- Blind panel Data Biographical Analysis, Oslo, 13 October 2016 (transcript)
- Blind panel Microanalysis, Oslo, 14 October 2016
- Blind panel Microanalysis, Oslo, 14 October 2016 (transcript)
- Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016
- Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016 (transcript)
- BNIM Final interpretation, Work, work...12 February 2017
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column A) Work, work...20 January 2016
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column B) Work, work...20 January 2016
- BNIM Preliminary interpretation (Column C) Work, work...20 January 2016
- Critical Reflections on Empty Objects as an Experience to Come
- Example from individually mounted photographs room 4, Competence
- Examples audio files from preliminary interviews with Czech emigrants to Brazil, Dismissed Competence
- Examples from exercises, video, images, Stretching the Imagination
- Examples from transcribed conversations conversations room 3, Competence
- Final assessment, November 2017
- General production budget, research fellow 2013
- Images from exhibition Room 1- 4, Competence
- Images from preliminary model, Mother, Dear Mother
- Interim activity report, research fellow 2013-2014
- Interim activity report, research fellow, 2014-2015
- Interim assessment, protocol criteria December 2016
- Interviews 1-10, audio, Stretching the Imagination
- Interviews 1-10, transcripts, Stretching the Imagination
- Interviews with participants Anonymous Work Group 1-6
- Interviews with participants Anonymous Work Group 1-6 (transcript)
- Kunststipendiatforum
- Ministry of Education and Research
- Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP)
- Official press release exhibition, Competence
- Official press release exhibition, Mother, Dear Mother
- Official press release exhibition, Stretching the Imagination
- Official press release Viva Voce
- Oslo National Academy of the Arts
- Preliminary proposal to volunteers, Stretching the Imagination
- Press images from exhibition Mother, Dear Mother
- Radio broadcast Mother, Dear Mother
- Radio broadcast Mother, Dear Mother (transcript)
- Remake duet of song Mother, Dear Mother (Mor, Kjære Mor)
- Review of Mother, Dear Mother Kunstkritikk (Norwegian)
- Review report, (in Norwegian)
- Sequentialisation of Subsession 1-2-3 London, example, draft
- Staging Dislocation: Notes on Finished and Unfinished Work
- Student announcement about the course
- Subsession 1-2-3 London, 15-16 September 2016
- Subsession 1-2-3 London, 15-16 September 2016 (transcript)
- The Association of Doctoral Organisations in Norway (SIN)
- The Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions (UHR/NRKU)
- Tom Wengraf, Lecture Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM), Oslo, 13 October 2016
- Tom Wengraf, Lecture Biographical Narrative Interpretation Method (BNIM), Oslo, 13 October 2016 (transcript)
- Translation of audio files 1-3 (English) room 2, Competence
- UMA Audioguide, Competence (interview)
- Unedited film footage, integrating exercise elements and comments.
- Unedited video translation, Mother, Dear Mother.
- Updated assessment, protocol criteria September 2017
- Viva Voce, October 2017 (transcript)
- Viva Voce, October 2017 (video documentation)
- Work contract Oslo National Academy of the Arts, research fellow 2013-2016
- You said, ‘irony’