• Work, work:
  Staging dislocation in artistic
  and non artistic labour

Blind panel Data Biographical Analysis, Oslo, 13 October 2016 (transcript)

Lecture 1 part 1

Tom:
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 Jeremy, 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 Jeremy, 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 Jeremy last week, or last month actually, and what he now thinks about what happened when he was twenty years old is what he now thinks. We’re trying to find out what he 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, he 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 Jeremy’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 Jeremy 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, Jeremy 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 he 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.
Jeremy was born in 1973. He had a Norwegian father and a Swedish mother, who met in Tunis in Tunisia, and he was born in Constantinople – sorry, he was born in Copenhagen. In 1976, when he was three, the family moved to Oslo. They moved as a family, and then after the parents got divorced, then he went backwards and forwards between the parents. In Christmas, and the summer holidays, he moved between his 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 he was between the ages of fourteen to nineteen, he had a variety of clerical jobs. He 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 he have experienced that period of his 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 his life be experienced?
New speaker (female):
Moving here and there as a child is stressful.
Tom:
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 he have thought, or what might be your thoughts about being stressed in that way?
New speaker (female):
Uncertainty about the future?
Tom:
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. He would have experienced it as stressful, and he 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 he was (?? 17:33), I guess it shouldn’t be that stressful for him, 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.
Tom:
Okay, so the other one would be, confused, but not stressful.
New speaker (female):
Maybe he got very spoilt.
Tom:
He got spoilt, okay. So, as the parents competed to …
New speaker (female):
And the grandparents as well.
Tom:
So spoilt, so he might have experienced it as being rather privileged. Any other ideas as to how he 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 he was dragging from different places, and with different people and with different au pairs, I guess it built some kind of curiosity in him, to meet new people, to see new places. Maybe it’s still even accurate, I guess it’s still …
Tom:
So curiosity – I’m going to slightly add some words. This is what the facilitator does. He 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 his experiencing is correct? So the idea was, it’s stressful, he 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):
He settled down in Oslo.
Tom:
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?
Tom:
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 him to build close relationships with someone.
Tom:
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. He 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 he 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):
He might vote for the EU, because he has a broader perspective, of an international perspective?
Tom:
So he would be an internationalist!
New speaker (male):
If I can throw in politics!
Tom:
No, no, I think something like that is very important, so he would be an EU, or an EU plus internationalist?
New speaker (male):
He might be.
Tom:
He 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.
Tom:
Internationalist, open-minded, but if he’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):
He’s taken higher education?
Tom:
He’s taking higher … well, he’s started that in a way. He’s started the history of ideas, so that’s true, so he does do that. In that sense, higher education. The internationalist, I think, sort of follows. Any other things, if he’s very privileged?
New speaker (female):
Self-confident.
Tom:
And if he’s self-confident, what will he do that will come up in this data? This is the point, I don’t know if anybody knows Karl Popper? – he was a scientific philosopher in England and he 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 he 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 he might be pretty self-confident and brave, to travel to Asia, for instance.
Tom:
Okay, so if that’s true, what would happen later on in his life? What further data would you … more travels?
New speaker (female):
More travels.
Tom:
Okay, I mean, there’s nothing very complicated ….
New speaker (female):
He could go to a totally different culture, and still feel pretty self-confident.
Tom:
More exotic travels, ie, not to very similar places, but to very different places, because he feels privileged, and he 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, he might travel enormously. Supposing he didn’t travel at all, what would his curiosity about difference, what might show up in the data which would suggest that he was curious about differences?
New speaker (female):
He chose the history of ideas as his major, so this shows that he’s pretty open-minded, and he accepts ideas, and he’s able to stay aside, and not to be too subjective. I mean, he’s open-minded.
Tom:
Right, open-minded, and what would happen later on in his life, if he were? What would prove your thesis?
New speaker (female):
He chose (?? 28:08)
Tom:
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 he’s nineteen or twenty, which would prove your thing about his open-mindedness and everything else?
New speaker (male):
His curiosity.
New speaker (male):
More self-confident.
Tom:
Right, and if he was more self-confident, what would he do as a self-confident person, in his life?
New speaker (male):
His curiosity can drive him to become a journalist, or something like that?
Tom:
A journalist, okay.
New speaker (male):
To get to know more different people, and their opinions?
Tom:
Okay, journalists – any other profession?
New speaker (female):
Artist, or anything dealing with creativity?
Tom:
Okay. It’s cheating a bit, because I’ve already said this person becomes an arch professional, but yes, okay.
New speaker (male):
He could become an author.
Tom:
He could become an author. What sort of author do you think he might be?
New speaker (male):
It’s difficult to say, but based on this history of ideas, he could be something within that area?
Tom:
Okay, so one would be the history of ideas, so he might become a historian of idea or something, and the other, I suppose he might become a travel writer. One way is to travel in time, and the other way is to travel across, so we’ll call him a historian, or traveller.
So what we’ve done is, we’ve thought about how he 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 his curiosity, he met a person or different persons, also changed his life? – because (?? 30:17) he was a child.
Tom:
Can you hold onto that side, Isabella, just for a second? – so, because of that, if so …
Isabella:
He might be open-minded, getting to know people, and somebody.
Tom:
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 his 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, he goes to Paris on his own, and he’s involved in a community theatre for six months, making dolls for figure theatre, but also doing acting training. He then goes to work with them in a small village in central France, a community theatre. Then, from there, 22 to 23, he 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, he enrols in the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, and he starts travelling to Vienna and Berlin and other places, maintaining his international contacts whilst studying. He works in the graphics department. He supports himself 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, he has an exchange with the, in New York, the Cooper Union School of Fine Art, of Art, sorry. He meets famous professors such as Hans Haacke and Kiki Smith, and he works as assistant first to artist Joshua Neustein, and then to Jeff Koons, and then, in 2002, at the age of 29/30, he 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 he 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 he’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. He didn’t settle in Oslo, so maybe it wasn’t so stressful, the idea that he would say in one place and never move again, because it’s all been so stressful, he never wants to move again – that does seem to be disconfirmed. It’s perfectly possible it didn’t happen. He 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 himself 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 he might have experienced this period?
New speaker (male):
This is practical life, now?
Tom:
This is his practical life, so what would you say about how he experiences – is he happy in his practical life? Is this a terrible fate he’s struggling to get away with? How is he experiencing it?
New speaker (male):
He’s experiencing different, than we discussed before, so not like, a stress thing.
Tom:
Right, okay, so he, how would you sum that up in a word?
New speaker (male):
He’s concentrating on the career.
Tom:
Okay, so career concentration – he’s found a career, and he’s concentrating on it. How does he feel about the career? – he feels good or bad?
New speaker (male):
This age, he’s energetic, so … yep.
Tom:
How is he feeling about it?
New speaker (male):
Feelings are good.
Tom:
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, his career concentrating, he feels good.
Let’s go, this is two points – we want two point two. Again, counter-hypothesis.
New speaker (female):
He’s very restless?
Tom:
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?
Tom:
Good. Restless, searching for something, and one might be a place that he’s searching for. Any alternatives, for what else he might be searching for?
New speaker (male):
The love of his life?
Tom:
Right, oh – the significant other, that’s right. We’ll put it down as, the love of his life. Anything else he might be searching for?
New speaker (female):
Himself.
Tom:
Himself, ah yes, now well … we can tell him, there’s no point, but what the hell, okay – himself.
New speaker (female):
He’s searching for his way of expressing his art.
Tom:
Right, so he’s searching for a way of expressing his art?
New speaker (female):
Yeah, because he’s been through very different types of art, or like, both theatre, fine arts, graphics assistant, sculpture.
Tom:
So, what we’ve got, not a medium, because it could be any medium … his own life, how would you say that again, sorry?
New speaker (female):
His way of expressing.
Tom:
His way of expressing.
New speaker (female):
But in art.
Tom:
His 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.
Tom:
Right, so more experiencing, and that would be a resource for his 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 his life might be, that is going on in his life at the moment?
New speaker (female):
Maybe he, about his feelings, maybe he wasn’t just feeling straight good, or straight bad. Maybe it was the way he was used to live, because he was moving a lot in his previous period of life, so it was not the normal for him.
Tom:
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 he will go on throughout his 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, he’s a research assistant in Prague on an EU programme. He sets up a Vietnamese exhibition or event in Prague. There’s a sort of Vietnamese quarter in Prague, and anyway, he sets up an exhibition around the Vietnamese. He takes, every week he takes some of the Prague Biennale audience members for screening and lunch. He then does a car travel round the outer rim of Europe, starting off roughly in Morocco, and then going round, I think he ends up in the Ukraine or somewhere like that. He does a really big circle round the outer rim of the EU, the EU rim countries, and then what he does is to mount an exhibition with North African artefacts, like shoes and things, from public and state art collections, and then in 2007, he arranges for five North Africans to be brought for four weeks as guests of the city of Brunno (? 43:59), so that’s what happens.
What do you think is going on, how is he experiencing this? And in a sense, why, are these the things he does, rather than anything else he might do?
New speaker (female):
I can see this thread from his experiencing with different kinds of art, and I can guess that, in the end, he ends up being an art curator, not an artist.
Tom:
Wow, that’s a big jump! – yes, okay, excellent.
New speaker (female):
But I mean, it’s there.
Tom:
Okay, so let’s try this, this is three, and he’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 he ends up doing in his life. How would you describe the experiencing of all of this?
New speaker (male):
Enjoying it, with his work?
Tom:
He’s enjoying his 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 he’s certainly, well, EH, enjoying, but he seems to be developing, in terms of, if you’re looking at the development of a professional, which is our main focus here, he 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, he’s experiencing this as developing his knowledge.
New speaker (male):
It still confirms a great restlessness?
Tom:
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 …
Tom:
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, he 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 he’s doing something. He’s not just travelling forever around the world on a bicycle, or wherever he happened to be. He’s actually doing things as he travels, so that would be sort of confirmed too, broadly speaking, it’s that type of direction.
Okay, so developing his 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 his experience, such that he 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, he took people out for lunch and talked about the Biennale, so maybe he wants the artist to talk about their art themselves?
New speaker (female):
And talking, networking, like connecting?
Tom:
Networking, okay, but you don’t …
New speaker (male):
But what brings my attention is that, he was in the States, he was in Japan and China, and south-east Asia, and he’s doing nothing with artists from these places, and where he’s never been in Africa, as I understand. That’s why he brought these people to the Czech Republic, because he was living in the Czech Republic at that moment, and he just couldn’t afford to get to Africa!
Tom:
(he laughs)
Male speaker (continued):
So he made the execution of the arts, and then ….
Tom:
Brought the people.
Male speaker (continued):
… to know, or know them for himself, and I guess for the whole vision.
Tom:
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, he couldn’t afford that, maybe not, because of the money. Maybe it’s because of work, or something.
Tom:
Yeah, but the question is, what would be the work, what would be the point? If you think of him 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 Brunno (? 50:15), it’s bringing people.
New speaker (female):
Did they live in his house?
Tom:
No, I think they lived in hotels.
New speaker (female):
I can join?
Tom:
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 he is observing how different cultures connect to certain art pieces?
Tom:
Okay, so that would be his … 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 his a rich, inter-cultural experience of his childhood, and his young years, because he had au pairs from all over the world, and his family was living everywhere, not everywhere, but in different ….
Tom:
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):
He studied in Prague, and was familiar with that area, and then, well, he had also been in the Far East and these exotic places, and then he had travelled around Europe, in the rims of Europe, maybe North Africa, and got to know the African part, so maybe he saw just a niche for something to bring into Prague.
Tom:
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 he searching for, we had, the love of his life, searching for himself, his way of expressing himself, and I can’t read the other one?
Male speaker (continued):
Searching for something?
Tom:
Searching for something, but anyway, so let’s say this is, something about, niche for himself, and future work.
New speaker (female):
But you said he ended up in Morocco? – after his far travel?
Tom:
No, his travel started in Morocco, and then went through North Africa, and Egypt certainly.
Female speaker (continued):
But then he’d been there, maybe he knows?
Tom:
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 he may have met people, but that isn’t necessarily …
New speaker (female):
It sounds like, it’s an experiment?
Tom:
It sounds like an experiment?
New speaker (male):
A proxemical (? 53:46) experiment, how people act in totally different …
Tom:
So this one, the cross-cultural contact experiment?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes.
Tom:
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 – he 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, he seems to be experiencing his travels as rewarding and worth repeating.
There’s one thing which I’ve forgotten to tell you, which seems very apposite, is that his parents run a travel agency, so he gets very cheap travel, so maybe that’s one of the reasons why it’s different. Not only does he want to travel, but actually he 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 he does, he does an interview tour of 28 museum directors round the Czech Republic, and he interviews the 28 on their mission and vision, and what they want for their museums and whatever, and what he does, he replaces the content of all the transcripts. He has transcripts of the interviews that he does, and he 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 he just takes, he gets rid of what they actually said, and he replaces it with some interesting stuff that people said in the 1960s, which he 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, he publishes an erratum version, which gives them access to the original interview transcripts, the real interview transcripts, and he admits, for example, in the publication in, call it 2008, he 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 he invent, or he invents a lot of foundation support and so on, which he doesn’t have, and puts it in the catalogue, but he 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 he experienced that?
New speaker (male):
Well.
Tom:
Well! – okay, can you spell that out?
Male speaker (continued):
I really think I need a second.
Tom:
Okay, right. Any other thoughts? I mean, the thing is, it’s partly, why did he do that? – like, what’s the experiencing of doing that? How did that come to happen, and how did he experience what he did?
New speaker (female):
Aggression?
Tom:
Aggression, okay, so he’s feeling aggressive. What’s he feeling aggressive about?
Female speaker (continued):
He’s experienced so much, and so many cultures, so maybe he’s got like an aggression of, or maybe he knows something, like the scene behind the art scene?
Tom:
Okay, so he’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 his aggression, but he does it ironically.
Tom:
Right, aggressive, and in a sense, ironic aggression, right. So let’s say with the aggression – what else might he 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, he brought his 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?
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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 he was very brave to do that, and I think it was because he 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.
Tom:
So it’s sort of freed by foreign experience. These are just hypotheses, but it gives a flavour of trying to understand what he wants to break, he wants to break something. He 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 he did what he did? Let’s go back to what he did, which is, he 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, he publishes everything with the real interviews. It’s like, well guys, if you didn’t understand what I was talking about … ?
Tom:
Okay, so the erratum version underlines his 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 his 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.
Tom:
So in a sense, it’s adding to the reproach?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah.
Tom:
Okay. Any quite different thoughts about why he might have done it, or how he might have experienced the doing of it? One is, why did he do it, which we’ve been talking about; the other is, how might he 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 him, is replaced by something from the 1960s, and he’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 he is trying to change, he’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.
Tom:
Right. When you say it’s a wrong impression, what would be the point of the wrongness? I mean, he’s obviously trying to, he’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 he is …
Tom:
What does he want to have happen?
Female speaker (continued):
He 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 he’s trying to break people’s resistance to change also, because maybe these people are kind of [over-talking] …
Tom:
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?
Tom:
Yeah, they are the directors of each of the regional museums. They are notables.
Female speaker (continued):
So, he can change what people, who have seen …
Tom:
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 he might have experienced … we’re talking about his intentions, what he intended, but how might have he 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.
Tom:
Absolutely, right.
Female speaker (continued):
And he regrets it?
Tom:
He 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 he regrets it, and then he publishes the real interviews.
Tom:
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 he actually gets a lot of bad responses from 27 of the 28 museum directors, all write to him protesting, so one is a counter-aggression, and so, in order to placate them, he 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 he’s regretting it.
Tom:
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 he’s regretting it, but not because of counter-aggression – what might he regret?
New speaker (female):
Maybe he thought that he was too straight, like the public was unprepared for this? It was too much, for his culture.
Tom:
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 he starts to travel again.
Tom:
And he starts to travel again (he laughs).
Female speaker (continued):
Then he settles back in Oslo!
Tom:
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?
Tom:
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. He might think that that it actually had damaged his own … it was a good joke, or it was a good something or other, but actually it’s not professionally very, it professionally destroys his reputation, I mean that’s the exaggerated version, so there might be a thought about that.
New speaker (female):
Maybe it destroys his, as a curator, maybe it does the opposite of destroying his …
Tom:
Reputation?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, as an artist.
Tom:
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 …
Tom:
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 …
Tom:
Diplomat?
Female speaker (continued):
Diplomatic, yeah.
Tom:
Okay, so he regrets not having been diplomatic enough, so his career as an artist will leap up, as a bold artist, and his 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?
Tom:
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 his unstable childhood lead to him 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 he tells his 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 he calls himself. We know he does these things, and what he calls himself when he does these things is open, is not known.
So, in 2009, when he’s one year older than he was, about 30, I think, but I haven’t put it in, so this is information block five, he gets a one-year professorship in Brunnos (? 1:13:31), which might be or might not be with a colleague, and he 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 he 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 his professional career, how is he experiencing that, what might follow, etcetera?
New speaker (male):
How was this project received by the public?
Tom:
I don’t have any information on that.
New speaker (male):
And do we have the information about what was the film about?
Tom:
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?
Tom:
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 he might be experiencing this, what he’s doing as he does this? What’s his experience of this? What’s he trying to do? And bear in mind, we’re trying to explore his professional life. This isn’t his 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 he does.
New speaker (male):
He’s just proceeding further.
Tom:
He’s just proceeding, but where’s he … if you looked at where he’s proceeding further, where would you say he’s proceeding further to? What’s the direction of this professional, in terms of the choices he makes and the things he does? Have you any thoughts about that?
New speaker (female):
He continues experimenting?
Tom:
He continues experimenting, okay. Right, well let’s push that further. What’s the direction of change, or focus of his experiments? If we look back, and this is where it’s important to look at the early things, what does he do? That’s where he travels. In here, he’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, he goes to Prague, and he’s starting, he’s shifting from doing his own fine art, which probably stops …
New speaker (male):
But what was his basic education? Was that graphic design?
Tom:
The basic education was graphic design, yes. Here, he’s setting up exhibitions, so he’s no longer focusing on producing his own paintings or whatever, or sculptures or objects to hang on a wall. You could say, he leaves the studio, round about this period, and so he’s now a bit like a travelling opportunist curator. He’s setting up exhibitions, so that’s what his art professionalism is moving towards, and it starts with these, collecting the artefacts, but also bringing the North Africans. Then here, he’s interviewing the museum directors, but actually changing what they say to something they never said, and here, what’s he doing now? He’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 he’s switching more and more to psychology? – not then to art itself, and art becomes like the instrument.
Tom:
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 him 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, he uses the help of therapists here. It’s something new.
New speaker (male):
But since, from the beginning of his life, he was always with people, with different people, and I guess the fact that he was working with different people made him more social, and in every piece of his exhibition that we discussed before, he used other people’s to make something, or just to say something, so I guess he used people as an instrument to make his art. It’s like, (?? 1:21:35) but he is acting stupid, to, we are bringing some knowledge from different people, so I guess he’s using people as an instrument to make his art.
Tom:
Right, but what is his art at this point? We know what his art was, let’s say, in the year 2000, where he was, let’s say, doing painting. I don’t really have much information.
New speaker (female):
He’s filming.
Tom:
He’s filming, or he’s getting other people … one of the things, he’s getting other people to do films, and he’s doing the exhibition involving their filming and their movement, re-constellation of the objects in the room.
New speaker (female):
Maybe he’s the director of the film?
Tom:
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 his 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.
Tom:
Okay, so what is it? So let’s say, his art is the exhibition?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, he is experimenting, of course, and he is doing it in the concept of psychology, obviously.
Tom:
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, he is not the one who is doing the films, but he is the one who is telling others to make the films, and maybe he’s like, telling them what to do, and giving them tasks, and bringing them together? – so it’s still, it’s a collaboration.
Tom:
It’s still his his 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 him, or is it him and the others who’ve done the films, or what is … to whom, is it still an art exhibition by Jeremy? Is it still Jeremy’s art? – the exhibition is his art, even though it’s like a combination of other people’s work, and his own work in promoting that other work and everything else. I’m not asking for questions, I’m just saying.
Female speaker (continued):
He will be curating like this.
Tom:
He 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 he sees himself 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 he’s an artist, his art work is the creation of temporary happenings, of an artistic sort, but his 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?
Tom:
About our work today, and particularly about Jeremy and what sense you make of his life so far, how you would describe it, or something.
New speaker (male):
Can I go for a cigarette?
Tom:
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 Jeremy’s life so far? – and also you can make notes about your experience … [over-talking]
Tom:
If you had to sum up, what issues are coming up, or what thoughts you have, about Jeremy’s life so far? – and also you can make notes about your experience of it, but the main thing is, how would you think Jeremy’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)

Tom:
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 he was, the last item we had on this was, he had a one-year professorship in Grynov (? 2:31), and did those films, which were collectively authored, and after that, he became head, or co-ordinator, of the Masters’ programme in the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, and he took small study trips for students, to Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, Beirut, the Netherlands and Madrid, so he keeps on travelling.
Again, keep in mind, I suppose two things which point in different directions. One is, his previous experience that we’ve been going through, and what this does to it, how might he experience this particular function, this particular activity, so again, as always, hypotheses about his experiencing, and then about, if he was experiencing it that way, then what might happen later on in his life in the next chunks, so any thoughts about how he 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 he 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 he was doing before he 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 he continues working with students?
Tom:
Right, yes, okay, well that’s one thing, so he experiences, so working with students … okay, anything else? Yeah?
New speaker (female):
If he was the head co-ordinator, it was much more administration work than he …
Tom:
Had before, yeah, so it’s a bigger administration responsibility. So how might he 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 he didn’t like it!
Tom:
(he laughs) Okay, so the experience …
Female speaker (continued):
It’s for people who have that role for only two years, I think.
Tom:
Not too good.
New speaker (female):
Or maybe people didn’t like him? Maybe he was fired?
Tom:
Maybe he was fired, not too good, so maybe fired.
New speaker (male):
He spent too much time on trips!
Tom:
Okay, fired for too many trips! We’re now predicting what we may find in future chunks. And how might he … 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 he 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.
Tom:
To handle the bureaucracy, yes. So this is the diplomatic side, handling bureaucracy? That’s the diplomatic side, then when he was dealing with the Czech National Gallery and the 28 museums, it may have not have been very good for his diplomatic side, and now maybe he 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 he now settling now?
Tom:
Okay, that’s very interesting, so settling down after early chaos. So if he 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 him, being this head co-ordinator of this MA programme, which involves a lot of bureaucracy.
Tom:
Okay, right, small trips, compensation for all the paperwork? He hates administration maybe, and I hate these pens! … the administrative side of what I’m doing.
New speaker (male):
Has he now got a family life?
Tom:
We don’t have any information.
Male speaker (continued):
We don’t, that’s what you said, okay.
Tom:
So, we’ve been working on the idea that, which is perfectly possible, that the administration is something he doesn’t like, and he’s getting compensation by the small trips, and it’s a compromise, or he’s fired at the end, all these things.
Let’s imagine a counter-hypothesis, which would be that actually, he enjoys the administration, that really all his 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 he felt like, and the counter-hypothesis may be …
New speaker (male):
It is possible, so when he was working with these different directors from the Czech Republic, it could be a rewarding experience for him to work with these people, and made up his mind to do more work like this, kind of stuff.
Tom:
Okay, so in a sense he’s … although, and the fact that he’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 him, 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 him 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 …
Tom:
Okay, so in which case, we might expect him to carry on, he’s not carrying on as a top administrator there, because we know it stopped after two years, or whatever he was, but he may go into an even higher administration after that.
New speaker (male):
Like, he takes these trips with students?
Tom:
With students, yes. He’s organising the trips. The trips aren’t for him, they are organised for students.
New speaker (male):
And I guess he’s doing this because he knows how much it gave him, when he was travelling, when he was younger, and now he’s doing the same for students, that couldn’t have made it by themselves.
Tom:
Right, so his 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 he’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.
Tom:
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 his own artistic practice again. So how do you think he experienced that? We don’t actually know whether he resigned, or whether he was fired. We know that, having been employed at quite a high level, he suddenly was not employed at all, and he made applications which, one failed, and one eventually turned out to have succeeded, so how might he have experienced that year?
New speaker (male):
Depression, and then, again …
Tom:
Feeling better?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes!
Tom:
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?
Tom:
As far as I know, yes – I think he was in Oslo. Any other thoughts about how he might, so one thing was, he was depressed. Maybe the depression led to making applications, 20 applications every week, so he didn’t want, he wanted to be funded basically. I’m not sure if he wanted to be employed, or he wanted to get a grant, or he wanted something, but he needed money, so that’s one thing about it. How would he have experienced that year? What’s the counter-hypothesis about the year?
New speaker (female):
He stopped working, for taking up his artistic practice again? – and that maybe wasn’t enough for him?
Tom:
Sorry, what wasn’t for him?
Female speaker (continued):
The artistic practice, so that’s why he applied for new jobs, if you read it from the … [over-talking]
Tom:
Okay, that’s an interesting double thing, isn’t it? So, how did he feel about the not having an artist … there’s two things. One is, he hadn’t had, his artistic practice had stopped, then he picks it up again, and then he 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, he goes back to artistic practice again.
Tom:
He does go back to artistic practice?
New speaker (female):
Maybe it’s not in the end?
Tom:
We don’t know that he stops it. It’d be interesting – the next chunk may tell us, and he never did any art again after that, or the next one said, he did only art … so we don’t know what’s happening next. At the moment, he picked up his artistic practice.
New speaker (female):
So maybe it’s inspiration he finds again?
Tom:
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!
Tom:
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?
Tom:
Yes.
Female speaker (continued):
Only two applications during the year?
Tom:
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 he may have done 42 applications, but he just tells us about two, so we can’t …
Female speaker (continued):
He’s not lying! If he’s telling the truth, there were only two of them. This could mean that he wasn’t that much interested in finding any employment. Maybe he was making applications for something much more interesting than he did before.
Tom:
So that’s one hypothesis – he’s being very selective about the application, about what he’s applying for, whatever it is, yeah.
New speaker (female):
Maybe it was some kind of grant, that could nourish his …
Tom:
Yes, his 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 his cv, the cv that he 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 he doesn’t want to mention them.
So, anything else about the experiencing of that slightly problematic, or maybe not problematic at all – his only reason for being an administrator for those two years was to have enough money not to have to work for a year, so he could stake up his artistic practice, and apply for the following years, or it could be that he 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, he failed, so it means that the first part where he was struggling, or something, and when he got success, so there is a second part where we said …
Tom:
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 he sent them both off in the same week – I don’t have information about that, and all I know is that, during that year, he picked up his 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?
Tom:
So that could be the next one, or he turned it down? It’s possible to turn down applications. If he was very selective about his employment, he was offered something he really didn’t like, and so he 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 he (?? 21:40) practice, after this time, maybe this year was some kind of silence before the storm. He was planning to do something big.
Tom:
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. He 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 he 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 he decided to do that, and having done that, what did that do to his 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 …
Tom:
He attended as a student, he wasn’t a teacher.
New speaker (male):
It was about using art in therapy?
Tom:
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 he’s still expanding his art universe, and looking for different possibilities to do it?
New speaker (female):
And actually, he did this before, he worked with therapists, but now, maybe he’s thinking about becoming …
Tom:
Sorry, can you say that again?
Female speaker (continued):
We saw the word therapist before, so he 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 he’s trying to do it himself, like almost being a therapist. There is this art therapy school, actually where people use art, and that is maybe what he did before, but using art in making people think different ways and so on, and now maybe he’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 he comes, he said here that he could do it himself, like help people to feel better, with the help of art.
Tom:
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 Jeremy is, or of his life?
Female speaker (continued):
And he becomes a student again.
Tom:
(he laughs) Right, and what do you draw from that?
Female speaker (continued):
In his previous periods, like the last ones, he worked with students, mostly like, not tutoring, but being like the head.
Tom:
Administering them.
Female speaker (continued):
Administering like, student activities. Now he’s become a student again, so maybe again he’s looking … he just cannot concentrate on something, he’s always looking.
New speaker (female):
Expanding his vision?
Tom:
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 he would like to do some of, but if he does too much of one, he needs to go back and do the other. He can be a top-level administrator for a bit. Presumably if he stays for two years, he wasn’t got rid of straight away because he’s useless, and he decided to stay, but then stopped from administering students and became a student again, at this. He picked up his own practice, which, let’s say, whatever that means, is art-making, and then he 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 he’s interested in, and he’s constantly moving about between them. His objective life appears to have him moving about between them, and in a sense back to the restlessness, never being quite satisfied with doing just one thing. He’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, he has to focus on one of these things. He can’t focus on all of these things simultaneously. In a sense, he can’t have a full-time job and be a full-time student. He can’t organise other people’s work, but do his 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 him that he 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 his 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. He becomes employed as a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Art.
New speaker (male):
Political participation?
Tom:
Okay, no – I’ll come back to something else. That’s what his 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?
Tom:
That was after the summer – he’d applied before the summer course. He didn’t know whether he 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?
Tom:
Is Oslo, yeah. Right, and now we’re looking at his projects, so we’re shifting focus really down into a micro thing – what did he do while he was between the ages of 40 and 43? – in 2013 to 2016? This is the first thing he does. He joined, I should say, he wasn’t in Oslo until he got this job. He’d been away from Oslo, based in Prague for about fifteen years, and he came back to Oslo, this was, the summer school was in Switzerland, in Saas-Fee, and he came back to Oslo into this particular job, having applied from abroad, so what did he do? He joined as a member, all the political parties in Norway. I don’t know how many political parties there are in Norway, but he joined all of them as a member, and he attended meetings at local and Oslo city level, and some outside Oslo, and he interviewed leaders, he received the literature, he went to Christmas tables, whatever a Christmas table is, and at one of them, he was, as a member of, whatever the conservative party is, he 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.
Tom:
It was on the internet, I see, okay. So, that was the research he did, and because we haven’t got very much time, I’m going to compress a few things. He then made an exhibition, based on these experiences of political parties. He didn’t just do this, would have been interesting in itself, and it may be on the internet. What did he do? – there’s an exhibition building, and in front of the exhibition building, there are some playful lions. They’re there anyway, he didn’t put them there – they’ve been there since 1926, 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 he’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 he did was to find out, as far as he could, what the statuettes were given for, so he integrated that into his 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 he does the work of finding out these activities as far as he 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, he 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 he’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 “The Honoured 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):):
He has changed his mind from fine arts to political parties?
Tom:
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, he’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 him to be not personal, into politics, because we don’t know his view on politics, so somehow he keeps his curator role, just showing the audience.
Tom:
So he keeps his curator or distant role. It’s a certain distance from the experience that he’s had, which he’s conveying something of, but he’s a bit shadowy behind it. You aren’t quite sure what it means for him personally, but what he does is, something professional, which is quite complicated and unusual, quite a deliberate experience. It’s not something that happened to him. He 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 his resource? – so maybe it’s not art. Maybe he got, probably he got paid for it by the Academy of Arts?
Tom:
No, he didn’t get paid for it. He has got employment as a research fellow, and therefore he gets payment, presumably, I don’t know how research, wages as a research fellow, but he wasn’t paid for any particular thing that he does.
Female speaker (continued):
No, of course, but he gets an income.
Tom:
As a research fellow.
Female speaker (continued):
For doing that.
Tom:
Well, for doing something.
New speaker (male):
And this was the research?
Tom:
This was one of the pieces of research, this is my understanding – this is one of the pieces of research that he 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 he did with the museum directors from (?? 40:19).
Tom:
Okay, could you say what you see is the similarity?
Male speaker (continued):
Let’s say, from the beginning, he was, at the beginning, he was an artist. He 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):
He’s making a prank.
Tom:
It’s another prank, okay.
Female speaker (continued):
I mean, if, like what he did before, it’s very similar.
New speaker (male):
Exactly like a prank, but he (?? 41:07)
Female speaker (continued):
And also, not taking serious. For instance, not taking political parties serious.
Tom:
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, Jeremy stays both in and out of it. He keeps his distance, so it’s about the politics, maybe quite seriously, in some way or other, but he’s not in it, so you can’t guess what his 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, he 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 he might have experienced all this? Sorry, did you want to come in? – or are you just holding your chin thoughtfully?
New speaker (male):
Did he become a conservative?
Tom:
I have no idea. This is his professional life. I have no reason to believe he became a conservative.
Male speaker (continued):
That would have been very unexpected, I think, from his background, that he would become.
Tom:
I don’t think he became a conservative, but at the moment, no, and I would say probably from the fact that he did all this research into who got the statuettes, that if he was going to join any political party, he’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, he interviewed the top leader, who at one point played this tune from the 1940s on his piano, and this was the tune that he 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 he an art professional still? What is he 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):
He’s becoming a researcher, and what he does, in that political party, all that activity, and this exhibition, he’s acting more like the observer, and like the researcher. He’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, he’s …
Tom:
So a number of transitions are being suggested. Earlier on, I think it was you who suggested he was becoming a psychologist, and now, it’s something to do with becoming a researcher, but researcher of what? Yes, we know what he was researching was by participating in the four political parties, etcetera, four, or however many there are, but he’s not producing a journalist’s report, and he’s not producing a social science report. He’s producing a recording of a song made in the 1940s, or he’s producing a radio broadcast that tells you about what the statuettes of labour were given for, so it’s a funny … yes, he’s doing research, but what is he doing with the research in his public thing? The research he does is what he does privately, and what’s he doing with the research that he does? So I think you’re right about, he’s doing research. He may have been doing research for earlier stuff as well, but what’s he doing with the research as a sort of public artist?
New speaker (female):
He’s still doing art?
Tom:
He’s still doing art.
New speaker (female):
And he is not giving the ready-made conclusions? He’s not seeing something there, like not making people to be like insulted (? 46:46). He just gives us political thoughts.
New speaker (male):
He gives the rod, not the fish.
Tom:
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 he’s just using politics. Maybe he’s hinting at something. My personal opinion, judging from every activity of his, he’s observing the people’s nature, from the different aspects, like cross-culturally, psychologically, like from the point of view as a personality. He looks at a person in the middle of society. He’s just looking at the human being, from different perspectives.
Tom:
He’s looking at them, but what is he conveying to his audience in the installations and the things that he 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 he’s trying to analyse political culture.
Tom:
Political culture, right, okay, and convey some understanding, or what is he 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 he’s kind of maybe also, again with what he did in the past, it’s a little bit like he’s trying to show the stupidity in things.
Tom:
The stupidity in things?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, like in this museum in the Czech Republic.
Tom:
What would be the stupidity in the things he’s, what is being shown as stupid? – or which stupidity is he showing?
Female speaker (continued):
Because he is an artist …
New speaker (male):
That’s the point!
Female speaker (continued):
That’s the main point. I think he is just, he’s using his observations to show, I mean … maybe because it’s also my personal opinion.
Tom:
I’m very glad to hear it.
Female speaker (continued):
But I don’t vote, I’m against voting, so maybe he 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.
Tom:
So you think he shares your opinion?
Female speaker (continued):
I think he shares my opinion.
Tom:
(he laughs) Okay, a couple of people – did you want to come in?
New speaker (female):
Yep, I think he would like to show the public something he knows, which he has, figuring or finding out during his 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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
It may be a prank, but it’s not just a prank, or it may not be a prank at all. He 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 he could join all parties, and try to find the culture of, political cultures at least.
Tom:
Okay, that’s true.
Male speaker (continued):
So there are no limitations on why the …
Tom:
Maybe that’s one of the key things about his 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 he didn’t pursue this therapist orientation that he had, because he had this course, and he had also been working with therapists in Czechoslovakia, so I would have thought that that would have been, and pursue that a bit more.
Tom:
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 he’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 he 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, he did some research before, which I’ve forgotten, I didn’t put it in, but anyway, he 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 he 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.
Tom:
Right, well, okay.
New speaker (male):
Is it his exhibition?
Tom:
He designs this installation. He designs the four stations. He hires the conversation partner, he hires the person who looks at your hand to see if you’re drawing it alright, or not alright, so that’s all his.
New speaker (female):
I have a thought about this, everything he does is very playful, and he 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, he’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 his inner child is very strong, and what he 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.
Tom:
Okay, that’s interesting. Any other thoughts about what this exhibition is doing? – his 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 …
Tom:
Taking the inner child out?
Female speaker (continued):
Yes, like you are literally going, and this thing, like imagine your hand going from this.
Tom:
From the page, and going to the other side?
Female speaker (continued):
It’s just genius.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
Your original drawing on the piece of paper.
New speaker (female):
Because as you said, some people could just scribble something.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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 he’s been this research fellow. Volunteers, so he’s using the pedagogical department of the Warsaw Museum, preparing new work for a group exhibition, strategies of usership in art, and the way he 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 Jeremy 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 he interviews them to see what they made of it. I’m not sure what he interview … I mean, I know they were interviews like the one that, like BNIM interviews, like the ones I normally teach, because Jeremy came on one of my training courses in London, and I think he then used that methodology for these volunteers here, but I don’t know what he interviewed them about. I suspect it was about the experience of volunteering in general, and including volunteering at his 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 he’s doing there, and is he doing anything differently from what he 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, he’s trying to share his view on art, like he sees art almost everywhere, and he makes art from different stuff, like political stuff, and these art directors. Now, what he’s doing, it’s like, when he interviewed the volunteers after this exercise, it’s made me think about the Zimbagwe, and his experiment with inner evil inside us, and I guess his point is to reveal the inner dark side of ourselves, with different people.
Tom:
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 he made it a fictional prison, and they divided the group, so five of them were prisoners, and five of them were …
Tom:
Jailers, guardians?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, something like that, and by their, how they act and stuff, he 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.
Tom:
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, he 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.
Tom:
So he’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.
Tom:
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 his artwork.
Tom:
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 Jeremy 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 his track record, we’ve actually gone through his 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 he is engaged in something else.
New speaker (female):
This one?
Tom:
This one, go on.
Female speaker (continued):
I see him as the director of these interviews. He wants strangers to … he wants to get the strangers’ point of view of his professional career.
Tom:
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 his project is, but yes, that might be. Any other ideas, what might be his current project?
New speaker (male):
It is unknown, so we can just guess. He’s again, some kind of exhibition, he’s thinking about.
Tom:
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 he did put on at this stage? I would not expect his exhibition to be …
New speaker (female):
People are just starting painting, and putting prints on the wall?
Tom:
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 he was bringing objects together that others made, maybe.
Tom:
Not his own art objects?
Female speaker (continued):
Not his own art. He is creating collaborative art and he’s just … I think he’s trying to make other people do art, and bring them together, and make one big artwork, under his ….
Tom:
Supervision, under his organisation.
New speaker (male):
This is a very open option, it could be anything.
Tom:
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, he’s always trying to put something behind, some thoughts behind, to make us think about something, and if he would do some exhibition, like only, say paintings, I would be surprised with that.
New speaker (female):
Yeah, he’s not interested.
New speaker (male):
Yeah, that’s not his driver, that’s the thing.
New speaker (female):
But if he 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.
Tom:
I was interested in what you said about trying to think, he’s interested in making people think. I think that’s quite interesting.
New speaker (male):
I think it was a point through all of his projects before, we’ve said that before, that he’s not giving the rod, he’s not giving the fish, he’s giving the rod, so through his exhibitions, he doesn’t give us his opinions, like he could, because he interviewed these people, these directors from Prague, and he, being in these parties, and listened to these guys, but he didn’t give us any opinion, I think.
Tom:
No, no, that’s fine, all you can do is work from …
Male speaker (continued):
He doesn’t give us any opinion, he just makes people think like that.
Tom:
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 him, and what you think the puzzles are about him, or what you think is clear about him, or what might be the case about him, 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 Jeremy, 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)
Tom:
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 Jeremy, 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.
Tom:
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).
Tom:
Yes, no, it is very systematic, that’s true.
Male speaker (continued):
But it’s positive.
Tom:
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 …
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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 himself, because like, we can guess, after some steps, which he can make in his life, and some decisions, that he made it his life, but I guess there are more things that terminate (? 1:27:58) what he’s doing, and how he’s acting, and what decision he’s making.
Tom:
Yes, you can’t explain very much without knowing much more, that’s true, but what did you predict his next project was going to be, since you know so much about his professional life?
Male speaker (continued):
No, I don’t know much about his intimate life, so it’s hard for me …
Tom:
But his professional life? – his next project is his professional life.
Male speaker (continued):
As social as ever before, I guess.
Tom:
Or he’s had enough of it, and goes into a project on his 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 his life to be able to say terribly much about his subjectivity. We work with what we’ve got, and even with what we’ve got, with the knowledge of all the exhibitions he’s done, we don’t know what his 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 he is pretty unpredictable. You can never guess.
Tom:
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 his 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.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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 stiabli” (? 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 his life, information data, I still kind of feel some, maybe it’s a big word, but intimate relationship with this guy, like I know quite a lot of his life right now, and what he has done, and what was his 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 guy, and I don’t know really why, because like, I don’t know him!
Tom:
(he laughs) Well, you know something of what he’s done. You’ve gone into details of how he, the different decisions, how he was formed and the different decisions he took, and by implication what he didn’t decide to do, what paths he 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 he 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 he’s set up, as with this particular operation, as part of his 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 his 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 he is somewhere there.
Tom:
(he laughs) Right, and that shows he’s in some sense living inside you?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, yeah.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
Ah, that’s possible. He could be a fictional construct.
New speaker (female):
I thought about what you said about his personal or private life. Maybe if he didn’t go into art, we would not, thought of it, or wouldn’t have been that interested in his personal life, if it was a diplomat or a politician or something. Then it maybe would have been enough to see his 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.
Tom:
I think that’s true, but Zafia, you’re not an artist, are you? You’re a chemist, by training, and did you find yourself able to be interested in this man’s life, even though he’s an artist, and not in the natural sciences?
Zafia:
It is interesting, we discussed in an open way, the positive and negative sides.
Tom:
Right, so, although being an artist like him (assuming he exists), being an artist like him 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 Zafia 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 he’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. He 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 Jeremy was a politician.
Tom:
One wouldn’t be interested in him?
Female speaker (continued):
Not in his personal life, as much as if he’s an artist.
Tom:
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 he was 66 – oh, what a boring life. It may not have been a boring life at all, and he 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 he’s so sadistic – maybe he had some problems in his 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 his 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?
Tom:
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. He 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.
Tom:
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 guy probably will continue to be restless, travelling about, and may have projects, maybe mostly abroad, and finding maybe, if he settles down in Norway, that he will buy a small farm up in the mountains and just disappear, I don’t know!
Tom:
(he laughs) Okay. Well, if he 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?
Tom:
Yeah, that would be lovely. Do you have my email address? Do I have my email address? – yes, I do. It’s tom.wengraf@gmail.com (I thought I’d be really unusual!)
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 guy?
Tom:
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 he …
Tom:
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 he 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 him. He 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 him is another matter, and you have to go carefully. If it’s such a strong reaction, he blew his nose and I thought, “What a bastard!”, then there’s something probably rather peculiar about me, rather than about him, so you note emotions, and you note your sudden feelings, that he 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 he’s an unsympathetic person – it just means that frankly, you can’t bear him, 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? He’s dealing with higher-level bureaucrats, and I thought what a bureaucratic shit he 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 his emotions, while he is …
Tom:
How do you see the emotions? – you think, a little emotion-ometer going on his head, as he does the interview?
Male speaker (continued):
You can see what he acts like.
Tom:
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.
Tom:
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?
Tom:
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, he’s telling me about the death of his dog. Why is he so happy about the death of this dog? Maybe he’s got a great misery, and he doesn’t want to look silly in front of me, so he 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?
Tom:
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?
Tom:
Let me just check. Isabella, am I giving my presentation today or tomorrow?