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

Blind panel Teller Flow Analysis, Oslo, 15 November 2016 (transcript)

part 1

Tom:
Good morning. Thanks very much for coming. If I speak too fast or use words you don’t understand, please tell me because I haven’t met you before and so I don’t know what my level of comprehensibility is.
So, let me just explain what we’re doing, because I don’t know how much you know. What this is, is a panel for interpreting a piece of interview text. So, an interview has happened and the material is going to be analysed in different sorts of ways but one of the ways which is what we’re doing today is to have a piece of text which is puzzling, it’s not quite clear what it’s saying. It seems to be saying different things, or is it saying anything at all. We don’t know. And therefore what happen is, in this particular method of research, we have a panel to discuss it and go through it bit by bit by bit, in order to see, okay, I don’t quite understand what’s happening in this text, so I’ve brought it here for you to help me put forward your hypothesis about what it might be, and the point about it is to take this particular method of interpretation is to imagine the person who is speaking. There’ll first be a question by me, then there’ll be a response by the interviewee, and I will put them up in chunks, and any given moment for any chunk, the question is, what is the interviewee experiencing at that moment. What are their thoughts and what are their feelings at this particular moment? I mean there’s a number of sheets of paper, each one has a chunk on it, so it’s almost like stopping the film and saying, okay he’s said that, what was he thinking for feeling. What might he be thinking or feeling now that he’s finished because he’s now going on to do something a bit different.
So what you’re doing is exploring in a sort of micro theme, the whole thing might have taken five minutes or something to say, I can’t remember how long it takes to say but we will be going through it very slowly and we might spend an hour, an hour and a half going through it trying to understand, trying to imagine, trying to hypothesise what the person said might be experiencing as they said it, and why they’re now going on to say something a bit different which may not fit with what they’ve just said.
So, there are two sorts of hypothesis, and one is okay this is what I think the person is experiencing at the moment, and if I’m right, you then ask for a following hypothesis, what might he say later. If I’m right, and say that his feeling is such and such, then I think he will go on to say this, but if the hypothesis is this, then he’ll go on to say that. So what you do is you have a hypothesis about the experiencing of the person who’s just said something, and you say well we could test it, because if I’m right I think he will go on to do such and such, and somebody else will say, well no I think quite differently from you, I think he’s feeling something else, and if I’m right, then the person will go and say something else. So later on, we look at what he actually does say and it confirms one or the other, or neither of them and something quite different. So, there’s experiencing hypothesis and for each experiencing hypothesis there might be several following hypotheses. What follows, what is set up later on in the chunk that we don’t know. Okay, and the principle just to explain why it is like that is that, it’s about that people are always improvising what they do. People are always what they say in an interview or how they respond to a question and you’re trying to understand the subjectivity that is doing the improvising. They’re inventing as the go along, so we’re trying to understand how the person invents their response by saying something, and going on to say something else or whatever it is. So, we’re trying to reconstruct that and we can only do it freely by not knowing what they actually did say next. So, at any given moment, they say something, just imagine them stopping and then there are lots of possibilities that they might go on to say and they choose one of them, or they do one of them. It’s not necessarily a question of choice. So, we’re trying to understand why they did or chose the particular thing they went on to say as opposed to something else, and that helps us understand why the person did in fact say what they ended up saying, because of the alternatives that they didn’t say.
I’m sorry that sounds a bit abstract but it’s to set why you’re doing what you’re doing and why I’m not putting all the bit of verbatim text at the same time and putting it chunk by chunk in a way that is, it’s future blind. You don’t what the person goes on to say next and therefore you can imagine this person themselves not knowing what they’re going to say next. So, it enables you to get better deeper into the experiencing the person that says.
Any difficult questions, awkward questions, simple questions, anything else questions? We can talk about it afterwards. I think the easiest thing is just to get going, and important thing is, oh yes, is two devices, which is what we do is we take an initial hypothesis, whatever anyone says first and then we think I will probably ask you, or you can think to yourselves, what would be a counter hypothesis. I think the person, well I think they’re very happy when they said that and he will go on to say something about their happiness. Even if I think it’s true I think no, I think they’re very sad. You go for counter hypothesis to open up the field. We don’t know what this person is experiencing. We never do know what they’re experiencing, we’re hypothesising about it and they trick is to keep the hypothesising open to realise we don’t actually know and the same thing could be said by somebody feeling very different feelings, and we’re trying to guess what they are. So, there’s always an initial hypothesis and then a counter hypothesis, not always, not straight away necessarily. Now I don’t know whether this is legible from where you are, maybe this is… you’ll have to tell me whether it is, if not we might have to move this board. Is that legible or not legible? Not legible, invisible, you can see the board. Okay well that’s a good start. Maybe we better put it there then I think, can you read it from… you can. Can you read it? Can you read it?
New speaker (male):
I can read it.
Tom:
Okay, but it’s very bad for your eyes to squint, so I think we’ll move it anyway.
New speaker (male):
Just one question, are you recording this?
Tom:
Yes, I am recording this. Is this a problem?
Male speaker (continued):
No I was just wondering why.
Tom:
Well it’s partly to have a record, I can lead this but I can’t make notes on it at the same time, a for me, I’m a social research methodologist, specialising in biographic narratives, using this particular, quite a complicated series of methods, and for me it’s very important, in order to improve the methodology to have records of what actually happens in any panel for example, how that works, because sometimes I say silly things and guide people in the wrong way, whatever. So, to understand a methodology at work, whatever it is. It’s like having a video of some technical thing you want to know, how to make a particular dish in, in cuisine or something.
Male speaker (continued):
So, you’re just going to use it for your own….
Tom:
Yes,
Male speaker (continued):
It’s not spreading…
Tom:
No, it’s not going to be widely spread, no, no. It’s for understanding, and in this particular case, but it’s particularly for me understanding how the method works and what goes right and what goes wrong. Okay? It’s like seeing a cook make a dish half well and seeing what they’re doing and saying, oh well actually next time put more eggs in or, next time don’t stir it for so long, or whatever it is. So, it’s a similar way of understanding the practice that you’re engaged in.
Is that okay now? Sort of. Well you could turn your chair around actually, I mean it must be difficult… Okay so this is the first chunk and it’s me speaking because what then happens is you’re going to hear the other person responding to my thing, so you need to know what the question is that they’re struggling, and this is. Okay let me just explain what’s happened. What has happened is that the, the interview method is in two sessions, two sub sessions. There’s sub session one and there’s sub session two. You don’t need to worry about the difference at the moment, and this is the end of sub session one, and the person has said well that’s all I’ve got to say, and this is what I say afterwards, it’s called a coder, and what I say to him is anything else you’d like to add. No rush, just I mean, I know it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said it, what you want to add or whatever. So, it’s giving an opportunity for an addition after the now you’ve finished, etc. So, this is what I say, and we always do this in this type of interview. We let the person finish and then we say, okay anything else you’d like to add, is the simplest version of it. So, what I’d like you to imagine, and I’ll read it again in a minute, is how the person who’s done their interview would be experiencing my having just said that. They’ve finished, I think it’s about an hour and half of interview, they say well I’ve finished, and then I say to them, anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said, you want to add or whatever. Okay so what we now collect from anybody who has a thought or a feeling, how might that have been experienced by the interview okay. So, I’ve said that and how might it be experienced by the interview, you can’t, you can never know. So, these are always hypothesis they’re never guessing the truth, because we don’t have access to that. So, all hypothesis are good.
New Speaker (male):
Are we starting now?
Tom:
We’re starting now. You’re on.
Male speaker (continued):
I guess he’s feeling that he has to say something else.
Tom:
Right, okay.
Male speaker (continued):
Just to please you.
Tom:
Okay, under pressure. I’m under pressure to make this thing work. Under pressure to say something else. What did you say, to please me?
Male speaker (continued):
Yes, kind of, I don’t think he really wants to say something else, but once you’ve said that he…
Tom:
Okay, that’s a very good hypothesis.
Male speaker (continued):
Just to be polite.
Tom:
Terrible thing politeness but he might certainly be feeling that. It’s a bit early to ask this question, but if that’s true, and if I can find the other pens. What might follow will be evidenced later on, that that was true. That’s a difficult thing to say or thing about. Let’s leave that you might come back to that later, what would follow, how would you know whether that was true or not, by things he said later.
New speaker (female):
He would say something unimportant. Just to say something.
Tom:
Okay, so following hypothesis, something unimportant, or trivial. Something of that order. Okay. So, that’s one experiencing hypothesis and I’m sure we’ll get muddled up with these. This is an experiencing hypothesis and that’s a following hypothesis. Okay So that’s the first one. He feels under pressure to say something to please me, well to please the interviewer. What might be a counter hypothesis, something completely the opposite, whatever that is.
New speaker (male):
A feeling of relief that you’re sort of confirming that he’s probably been there for an hour, probably feeling that it’s coming to a close and feeling of relief that that statement is basically confirming that this is at an end.
Tom:
Okay, so relief. In 20 years’ time, they have developed a felt tip pen that doesn’t dry up when you hold it upside down. It hasn’t happened yet. Relief, lovely. Relief at closure, closure is coming or accepted, or something like that, and so that’s what he might be feeling. Anything else that he might be feeling as he hears this, and thinks about it.
New speaker (female):
Hesitation.
Tom:
That’s what he might do.
Female speaker (continued):
Hesitation, and then no.
Tom:
Oh, right so that will be, he’d be asking himself whether he has got something to say, discovering that he hasn’t and then saying the following hypothesis would be, no. Okay, so reflection. I’m going to call it reflection because that’s what would be happening inside him. Reflection leading to no. He hasn’t got anything he wants to add. He’s terribly relieved it’s all over, and so there’s a reflection. Thing is, the experiencing is reflecting and the following hypothesis, deciding that he hasn’t and then saying no. Yeah?
New speaker (male):
I’m thinking as well that he might feel annoyed a little bit because he’s been talking for one hour, and then he maybe feels that he has to repeat himself maybe once more. It connects of course with all these other points.
Tom:
All these things, it isn’t that one is maybe true and the other not. In reality he may have a mixture of absolutely everything that everybody says in different proportions or he may just have one of them, we don’t know but that’s certainly a possible thing that he might be feeling. God I’ve been talking for an hour now and he’s saying anything you’d like to add. It’s a bit like the pressure to say something to please me thing, but this is, he’s feeling the pressure and he’s starting to feel an emotion or a feeling of irritation. So, it’s the same thing at two slightly different levels. Okay any other quite different hypothesis about what he might be feeling?
New speaker (male):
Maybe he does have something really important that he actually wanted to say that the questioning didn’t touch on, so it might be a sudden, yes, I’ve been waiting to say this.
Tom:
Yes, so that would be, what would be a word that might cover that feeling.
New speaker (female):
Reflection that leads to something important.
Tom:
Okay so it’s the pressure the unsaid and now he can say it. So, it might also be a sort of relief but a relief at now having a space to say what he’s been wanting to say. So, okay relief and opportunity. An opportunity is being given at last. I’ve been wanting to say it right from the beginning of the hour and at last there’s an opportunity for him to say what he wants to say. Okay, any other what he might be experiencing. I’ll read it again. Anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean, I know it’s a question of reviewing what you would like to say and whether you said it, you want to add or whatever, anything else other how that might be experienced by the interviewee.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe he would be confused, because if he feels that he said everything right, well and he don’t know what to expect.
Tom:
So, it wouldn’t be so much irritation but it would be confusion like what’s going on, I thought we’d done the interview and now it’s not closing as I thought it would close, the person’s saying something else. Okay, so confusion at the non-end. He thought it would be ending, he has ended it and it isn’t and he’s just confused about that. Okay, right I think that will do for starters. We could go on for quite a long time exploring how somebody might respond to that. The general thing is we’ve got quite a lot of hypothesis here which don’t, the vary from feeling under pressure to say something to please the interview, relief that the closure is coming, relief that at last he can say what he wants to say, irritation, as someone says. We don’t know what they are but they could be quite a lot of different things and they may be lots of things that we haven’t written down at all. So, you can see why this micro analysis is looking in detail at something that looks fairly straight forward and thinking that the experience of it by the interviewee might be very, very different and of course actually the interviewer, me, wouldn’t know. He doesn’t know yet. Might never know how his question is experienced but maybe…
[Talking aside]
Tom:
Okay and this is, the numbers reflect the number of seconds that there is a pause. So, the numbers in brackets represent pauses. So, there’s a 44 second pause before there’s a response. 44 seconds is a long time in an interview. Usually people, well anyway, I shan’t go in. He speaks slowly and reflectively, I think it’s difficult to because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on. So, that’s his first response, and the question is okay, there’s clearly a lot of stopping. Certainly, there’s a 44 second, usually people give about five seconds, or ten seconds before they respond. This is a 44 second response. When he does speak, he speaks slowly. I think it’s difficult to, five second pause, because I’ve been focusing on the project I need to be focusing on, and reflect on, seven second pause. So, let’s look at the hypothesis we put up there, and see if any of them are confirmed or disconfirmed by what’s just the next chunk. So, I’ll go through and if anybody things, particular disconfirmation at this stage disconfirmation, there’s usually things get crossed out and lots of things stay in play.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
I’ll go through it and just say if you think, oh I think that one is strengthened by this fact or it is weakened by this fact. The first one is under pressure to say something to please the interviewer. Relief at the closure coming. After reflection says no. Irritation. Relief that an opportunity has been given at last and confusion at the non-end, the fact that it isn’t ending when he thought it would end. So is that, it may be that all of them remain open after this chunk. I suppose the only thing, any thoughts about it. He’s certainly reflecting, 44 seconds is a long time, is quite a lot of reflecting. So, in a sense that’s strengthened. He’s not yet said no, he’s saying it’s difficult because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing and reflect on.
New Speaker (female):
He feels the pressure.
Tom:
He feels the pressure okay. So, one would be feels the pressure. Right let’s thing of different ways. He’s feeling pressured, where does the pressure come from?
New Speaker (male):
Guilt., or the fear of being I guess in some way, he hasn’t done…
Tom:
What he’s supposed to have done. Okay feels the pressure, so there’s a sense of let’s say, one, one, perhaps guilt or shame, or both at not doing well. Something like not doing the task or not doing what he’s supposed to do or not doing something. Any thoughts about, is he feeling the pressure from outside, is it like the interviewer saying you’re not doing something right, so say something more. Or is it a pressure from inside, or could it be a mixture of both. I mean pressure can come from inside or outside.
New Speaker (female):
I think it’s mainly from the inside.
Tom:
Okay these are all hypothesis. You’re not going to get things right. It’s trying to guess what might be the case and later on we’ll see some things look a bit more likely than others. So, your guess is that it’s the pressure from inside. He’s been asked, is there anything that you would like to say and whether you did say it or not, and the pressure might be from inside, well no maybe I didn’t say I wanted to say and therefore I feel perhaps guilt towards myself but it’s not necessarily about the interviewer it’s about what he want to say or would have liked to have said better.
New Speaker (female):
I think I’m just saying the same as you are, the pressure firstly comes from you, so the interviewer, but it’s interesting that he’s not blaming you why you’re asking the same question again, it’s not some kind of irritation it’s more, it’s interesting that after this question he starts to blame himself, like oh what I did wrong and so on.
Tom:
Okay so guilt or shame or self-blame maybe. Obviously if, these are all hypothesises and in a sense if that right he might go on to say yes, I don’t know why I focused on the projects, it’s difficult because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on and that’s why I didn’t do x. y, z which I wanted to say and therefore it’s my fault for not having said what I intended to say. Something along those lines, I mean that’s just one possibility. We’ve no idea what he’s going to say, but that would make some sense, and if he did say something like that, then it would say that this looks as though it might be right.
Female Speaker (continued):
Or maybe he’s saying this just for the sake of saying anything.
Tom:
Okay that’s a quite different one. So, he feels the pressure, feeling the guilt, perhaps self-blame and one, three is waffling, I don’t know if there’s a Norwegian expression for waffling, it’s somebody saying something just to fill the gap and keep the wolves from eating them in the forest or something like that. Waffling to keep pressure away. Or to satisfy the insistent interviewer, throw them a bone. Okay, any other quite different hypothesis, other than the feeling the pressure ones, from inside or outside. Yeah.
New Speaker (male):
Well I get the feeling that he has said all he wants to say at this point and that’s the polite way of telling you that. Saying that there are certain projects I wanted to focus on during this interview and although I’ve thought for 44 seconds, there probably is more stuff coming to mind, but in this particular context I just wanted to focus on this.
Tom:
So, this is, how would we say that. I can’t remember what you said at the beginning?
Male Speaker (continued):
I think it’s a sort of sense that he’s covered the ground he wants to…
Tom:
He has covered the ground right.
Male Speaker (continued):
And he’s politely rejecting any further conversation.
Tom:
Has covered what he wants and therefore thanks very much for the pressure but I actually have focused on the projects I need to focus on, so I haven’t got anything more to say, it’s done so how or other. Okay. Any other quite different hypothesis about… so this is sort of feeling the pressure, either feeling some sense that he hasn’t quite done something that either he wants or I want, or feeling that he has said that he wants and trying to just keep the interviewer away which could go with waffling to take the pressure away because he doesn’t have anything more to say but he doesn’t want to say no in a nasty fashion and hurt my very tender feelings.
New Speaker (female):
The pausing, the pausing is reflecting something other than the words, maybe some uncertainty. He had to think about it.
Tom:
Right, pausing, I put it as a lot of reflection. So, that might be that a lot of reflection on what… Let’s think there’s a lot of reflection but what are the very different things he might be reflecting on. What would you think.
Female Speaker (continued):
If we had seen his face, we would probably…
Tom:
Okay you can’t see his face. I weep, I sympathise, so this is this method.
Female Speaker (continued):
The importance of not just the words but the responses.
Tom:
I know, but we don’t do that in this method. There is somebody who does do that and that has strengths and weaknesses too but let’s just stay with this.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, I didn’t mean to bring it in but the words if they were said without the pausing.
Tom:
No, we’ve got the pausing. What I’m taking your saying is that the pausing shows there’s a lot of reflection. Either he’s very bad at speaking which is possible or he’s reflecting quite a lot, 44, five and seven. You know in the space of virtually one sentence. So, the question is what are the different things… so let’s assume on this hypothesis a lot of reflection is going on, so the question is, what are the different things he could be reflecting on.
New Speaker (male):
Well he might feel that you kind of put him like, you’re making him add something and then he’s thinking I should have thought of that when we were doing the interview but I don’t know what he’s trying to say so I’ll just throw it back to him. You were making me focus on all this projects during the interview that’s why I haven’t made up something else. So, it’s your fault.
Tom:
Okay well that’s possible. I’ll just say that it’s perfectly reasonably for you to suggest. The essence which I haven’t told you and so you wouldn’t know. Is that the first part of the interview, I don’t ask, I ask one question, tell me the story of your life or your professional life or something like that and then I don’t say anything at all. So, anything he’s said or not said is entirely because he said or he hasn’t said it. So, the one thing he can’t blame me for is having intervened to push him in one direction or another, because this method, you don’t. You say your initial question and the person talks for five minutes or five hours and you don’t add at all, and you don’t. So, that wouldn’t be the case. It might work in another type of interview. A semi structured interview, that’s very, very likely but in this interview, that’s what doesn’t happen because the method is precisely to prevent the interviewee feeling pressured during their talk to go one way or the other. So
New Speaker (male):
Just another thing I feel that in this, because of all these seconds of reflecting, as well he might want to open up another continuing question.
Tom:
So, he’s thought, he’s reflecting and he thinking of a new line of things he would like to talk about.
Male Speaker (continued):
He wants to fulfil the question in this sense maybe and as well it’s…
Tom:
Well bear in mind anything else you’d like to add, it doesn’t say do add something else. It asks a question, is there anything else you’d like to add. He isn’t saying you must say some more. Oh, god how can I do this, I’ll think about x. It’s is there anything else you’d like to add, and it’s as easy for the person to say yes as it is to say no in principle.
New Speaker (female):
He says it’s difficult.
Tom:
He says it’s difficult.
Female Speaker (continued):
He doesn’t use the word…
Tom:
So how do you interpret using that word? What is difficult.
Female Speaker (continued):
Kind of chaos, he doesn’t really know what to add, there is something maybe there isn’t.
Tom:
Chaos, is there anything he’s asking himself, is there anything I want to add. So, that’s the question to himself, and his mind is going around different possible things that he might want to say, okay. Anything else, any other quite different reasons, thinking he might be reflecting about.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe he has something to say, as a result of this reflection. He’s hesitating whether he should say this.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
Something to say, whether to say it. I suppose you could say something to say but how to say it. It’s a bit of a different, another slight different variation, he’s got something to say but how can he say it. Any other hypothesis about what he might be experiencing as he responds in that particular way?
New Speaker (male):
Huge deal of discomfort because he spends 44 seconds before answering, so it’s obviously thinking a lot and seems like he’s very emotional.
Tom:
Discomfort, I think you said, and then you’re then having a general theory of feeling which is really good it’s the first one we’ve come across. There’s discomfort and perhaps very emotional, either at this particular moment or more generally. I’m not sure which you had in mind.
Male Speaker (continued):
It’s probably better being emotional during the whole interview because he’s just been talking about a lot of things and I guess what you’re talking at the end there. That’s what I’m thinking.
Tom:
Sure, all one can do, what you’re doing is working with your imagining yourself into the shoes of the person who’s been asked that question and has said those things and what might be going on. And there’s no way of knowing, you just have to work out possibilities and then we look at what happens next.
Male Speaker (continued):
It’s like he knows what I’ve done is just trying to make me say it. I get the feeling of…
Tom:
He being me the interviewer.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yes, he’s thinking that you know he’s done something and you’re trying to…
Tom:
Omniscient interviewer.
Male Speaker (continued):
… make him tell you the one thing that he doesn’t want to talk about.
Tom:
That’s a very (?? 35.04) hypothesis. Interviewer already knows the answer.
Male Speaker (continued):
Or… yes.
Tom:
Knows, suspects the answer with a capital A. The Answer, and is putting pressure to say the thing that the interviewer already knows.
Male Speaker (continued):
Or maybe he doesn’t know but he’s thinking that he knows.
Tom:
No, we don’t know, that’s what he’s think he knows and might be true or might be false. We’ll just spend a couple more things on this.
New Speaker (male):
There could be another branch to the discomfort where it’s not because he’s emotional but because in those 44 seconds he may have been thinking about their maybe some secrets that he doesn’t want reveal about either the project that he’s talked about or future projects and it’s come to his consciousness but he actually doesn’t want to reveal them.
Tom:
It’s a bit like the sort of omniscient, or it might be either the omniscient interviewer who already knows, or it might be the totally ignorant interviewer, that he doesn’t know and he’s not going to be told. Secrets to…
Male Speaker (continued):
Doesn’t want to reveal.
Tom:
… to be kept from the interviewer. So, the interviewer is far from omniscient, he’s very un-omniscient. Any last one to keep us, to fill up the last bit of the page and then we’ll go onto the next chunk. Any other way in which this might be being experienced. He feels the pressure and feels guilt and shame at not doing something perhaps pressure from inside. There’s a sense of self blame that seems to be presumably because there’s an implication that he should have something more to say although it is, is there anything more to say, he’s experiencing he should have more to say, therefore what you said isn’t adequate, and he has covered what he wants, so he doesn’t have anything more to say. He’s pausing for reflection, he’s asking himself is there anything more I want to add, or he’s pausing because he does have something to say but whether he should say it and how he should say it if he does say it, discomfort, I can’t even read my own writing after two minutes. God knows what that means. Then we have an interviewer who already knows what he hasn’t said and he’s trying to put pressure on him to say the thing he doesn’t want to say, or the interviewer doesn’t know but he does have secrets and he wants to keep them from the interviewer, so quite a lot could be going on underneath this particular chunk.
Okay so. Essential to this method, it’s lots of paper and sticky tape that gets round your fingers and you can’t handle it properly. If you don’t like lots of paper and sticky tape, then you avoid he method. So now we’re on chunk three. I’ll read it out. Now you’re further away and you’re round a corner. So, but it can also be interesting, I feel like… so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context, but it can also be interesting I feel like… so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context. Well, let’s continue what we do that having said that, we review our earlier hypothesising again to see if there’s anything that looks more probable or less probable as a result of knowing the next chunk. So, feel feels the pressure, guilt and shame, self-blame, waffling to take the pressure away. It doesn’t seem to be like that’s just waffle because he started to come up with something that he says, that it can also be interesting.
New Speaker (female):
He takes the opportunity.
Tom:
It’s bit like taking the opportunity. So, I think this is, and all these things are provisional because anything we say now, the next chunk suggests this, the chunk after that might suggest the opposite again, but at the moment, the waffling to take the pressure away seems unlikely to be true because of chunk three. He has covered what he wants. He’s pausing for a lot of reflection, is there anything I want to add. He has something to say, whether to say or how to say it, discomfort, and I can’t read…
New Speaker (female):
Very emotional.
Tom:
Very emotional right. Omniscient and is he omniscient being forced to say something he doesn’t want to say and the interviewer knows or secrets that only he knows but he wants to keep it from the interviewer. Any thoughts about whether this chunk does anything to any of those hypotheses?
New Speaker (male):
Yeah, I think it does show that he did come up with a new direction…
Tom:
So, which one…
Male Speaker (continued):
Three, something to say and it’s more whether to say it and how to say, a choice of those.
Tom:
Okay so that’s a bit confirmed by chunk three. Any other things. This are all highly provisional, just a sense of how what’s feeling a bit more likely and bit less likely. What you are feeling is a bit more likely and a bit less likely, and someone else might feel quite differently. You look as though you want to say something. No, ah well we all make mistakes. I feel full of self-blame and guilt. Okay, let’s carry on.
New Speaker (female):
It’s not about whether it’s coming out of this but I guess what he saying, he’s still reflecting and he’s not very sure.
Tom:
Okay that’s fine that’s a good new hypothesis. Okay one, still reflecting.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
Still reflecting and hesitating. Still reflecting but hesitating. So, there is something that he has in mind but he’s hesitating about saying it for some reason or other. It’s sort of he’s starting to say it because he says, but there’s desire to be working in the institutional context, so presumably that’s what he’s starting to say or thing but he’s hesitating about saying for some reason or another. So, there is a new direction. There is something, he’s now adding. We don’t know whether he wanted to, he’s always wanted to talk about this, or whether he’s just starting to notice that there’s this desire and there is this desire to be working in the institutional context. Now to talk about desire is quite strong. That’s interesting, I have this interest to be working in an institutional context but this desire, I don’t know how desire works out in Norwegian but in English you wouldn’t say that very easily. There’s something stronger there than just, yeah, I could work in an institutional context, you know, why not. I’m very bored, I’ll do anything once, but a desire, to notice in yourself a desire to work in an institutional context. Maybe in Norwegian it all sounds very different. So, this is a Norwegian speaking English person I should say.
New Speaker (female):
Well it’s the translation or he was speaking…
Tom:
It’s what he says in English but English isn’t his native language. Norwegian is his native language. So, this is one of the problems about inter cultural translations, but these are his words not my words. For all I know he is translating from Norwegian in his head, but I suspect he isn’t, because most of the time, in the interview he speaks very fluently and fast, as if he were English more or less, 95%. So anyway, I don’t know, I can’t answer the question.
Female Speaker (continued):
But the way he’s saying it it’s like, it can also be seen, I feel like, so there is this desire, he’s like going around the same thing, but not saying it straight.
Tom:
So, if that’s true. What is he experiencing which makes him not say it straight but go round and round.
Female Speaker (continued):
It’s whether he’s not sure about this himself or he’s not sure whether he should it public.
Tom:
So, hesitating and unsure in himself, this writing is wonderful, Norwegian pens are great. What was it, unsure in himself or unsure whether to say, whether to say in public and obviously, the very small public.
Female Speaker (continued):
Just to say it aloud.
Tom:
Say aloud or admit. Perhaps there’s some taboo on a desire to be working in the institutional context of which he should be a bit ashamed. You mean working in an institution, your desire to work in an institutional context. How appalling or something. Anyway, I’ve no idea. Okay, any other.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe he’s tries to satisfy you or the interviewer by saying something and then see what happens.
Tom:
So, exploring, so this is back to waffle or exploring random paths. To somehow, alright I’ll try and think of something to say, institutional context, yes, I’m thinking about the institutional context, okay, and that’s to satisfy the interviewer. Er stands for interviewer or me, can’t be bothered to write it out at great length. Okay. Any other quite different hypothesis, counter, something quite different is going on. One is that he’s still reflecting, he’s hesitating, he’s unsure in himself or he’s unsure whether to say it. He’s exploring random paths, phrases that come to mind to keep me happy or keep whatever it is. Anything else quite different from the above?
New Speaker (male):
Is this is the next sentence after…
Tom:
Everything follows in exactly this way.
Male Speaker (continued):
It doesn’t make any sense really. I can’t.
Tom:
You can’t quite make sense…that’s the characteristic of the text that would come from micro analysis because it’s very difficult to make sense of, it doesn’t quite seem to fit. So yeah absolutely.
Male Speaker (continued):
Like what can also be interesting that’s what I’m wondering.
New Speaker (male):
He could be meaning that this is also something that might be interesting, it may just be a strange way of explaining if English is not…
Tom:
What is the this that might, I mean there’s lots of it could be interesting, this might be, what is the this? I mean if it was clear we wouldn’t have a problem so there may be different this’, interpretation of this or it or whatever that might be given so we have to try out different versions. What is it that, what is the it, that could also be interesting.
New Speaker (female):
Working in the institutional context.
Tom:
Okay, so we’d have different its. The it might be working in the institutional context. So, that’s one way of reading it. Okay anybody got a quite different possibility to what he means by it.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe he’s trying to guess what you are trying to get out of him as an addition to his original answer.
Tom:
This version of him seems very fixated of him on me, that’s quite interesting, but I mean it’s perfectly possible. I like to think of myself as not trying to get anything in particular out of anybody. It doesn’t stop him being very preoccupied by it.
Female Speaker (continued):
He feels uncertain then he would feel the pressure.
Tom:
So, it is, this is the, in fact we got that earlier on, so I won’t write it again, because it seems to be a continual thing, everything so far could be him trying to work out what I want to get out of him.
Female Speaker (continued):
But it could be what he thinks you’re trying to drag of him.
Tom:
It is the thing to be dragged out.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, what is it that I haven’t said.
Tom:
So, he’s very preoccupied with what I think he hasn’t said and so that’s what the it is. The thing I haven’t said, the thing you are trying to drag out of me which he eithers knows or doesn’t know, could be interesting, and then he invents, sorry he doesn’t invent, he uses this phrase, desire to be working, desire to be working in the institutional context. This is isn’t a phrase I’ve used. It’s not a phrase that I’ve used. So, he’s brought this phrase of working the institutional context or desire to work in the institutional context out of his own resources, out of his own concerns.
Female Speaker (continued):
His own reflections.
Tom:
His own reflections, his own thoughts, maybe he thinks I want. I think he should be thinking about the institutional context, but not because I’ve said that because I haven’t. I’ve just said please tell me the story of your life. Virtually nothing until the thing there and that’s all I’ve said. So, you’ve seen all, apart from the original question, you’ve seen all my words. So, when he says this desire to be working in the institutional context, this doesn’t come from me. He may attribute it to me but he’s improvised the phrase which he then attributes to me.
New Speaker (female):
Maybe this it word means your proposal, your offer to review what he would like to say.
Tom:
Okay that’s nice. So, the proposal to review is interesting. It could be interesting. He’s not saying it is interesting, it’s could be interesting. Okay, any other hypothesis about it which is interesting.
New Speaker (male):
He’s very happy because finally he got the opportunity to tell you that his desire is to work in the institutional context. Instead of what he’s been doing for the last ten years.
Tom:
He’s had all these projects. Okay so that’s…
New Speaker (female):
Is it he was allowed to say.
Tom:
He’s being…
New Speaker (male):
That 44 seconds, is this the best time tell them anything to believe them.
Tom:
So, this is a great opportunity for avowing his desire for the instit context. Fantastic opportunity. At last it can be said after an hour and a quarter. Okay, we don’t know this is what we do is to try to imagine how somebody would come to say what’s there. So, this desire to be working in an institutional context is something, yes, I can now say I want to work, I have a desire to work in the institutional context which I’ve not said before or something, or not stressed before in the same way.
New Speaker (female):
Just as a, I’d like to add to the strength of this word desire. Maybe if because it’s not his mother tongue, English, he doesn’t feel like for instance, I don’t feel this huge strength of this word. I would use this word in this case even if I don’t mean it’s like the huge desire.
Tom:
You might say I desire to have ham and eggs for breakfast.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, in this case, it would be huge. If I’m talking about some important things, like for instance, I went to change my work or something, I can use I want to change, but I can use desire as well. I know the best example.
Tom:
No but it’s interesting, so we don’t quite know how because it’s not his native… for native English people to say it is a desire to do something is quite a strong statement…
New Speaker (female):
But there is no need…
Tom:
It’s a need it’s a desire it’s something quite rooted, it’s not just I would do it for fun, it’s actually something quite important, but it’s quite possible that for a Norwegian to say that, use that English expression might mean something considerably less, it might be yeah…
New Speaker (female):
He might be fluent in English but still not fluent in…
Tom:
Sure, I think it’s a really important point. So, this is not so much about what the it is, this is about what he means by, what do you say, there’s this desire, might just feel I feel like doing it, or it could be everything I’ve always wanted to do but I’ve at last been able to do say it, and we can’t really know. It’s very important to know that we can’t really know things. Not knowing is called negative capability but it doesn’t mean that we can’t imagine what it might mean but we need to know that it is our imagining what it might mean not our knowledge of what it does mean to that person.
New Speaker (male):
It’s quite a strange way of expressing it to say there is this desire, instead of I really desire to do this, it’s very distant.
Tom:
Okay, so it’s very distancing, so that’s very interesting. So, we could…
Male Speaker (continued):
It undercuts the passionate nature…
Tom:
Okay so one is that it’s distancing.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
Distancing so he’s similarly avowing and distancing. He’s avowing this desire to work in an institutional context which is something that comes up in his head but by calling, there’s this desire, there is this desire. Somebody’s desire, not saying my desire, just desire is also both avowing it in one sense, distancing and what did you say, under cutting.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yeah, undermines the strength of the passion in the word desire.
Tom:
Undermining, so there’s a sort of… there may be two things in it. One for himself, he may be avowing and disavowing and distancing or he may know that he does have a strong, a desire to work in an institutional context but in the public of me there, he’s distancing himself from it, so I can’t say, ah so that’s very important to you is it. Very important. i.e., that it’s the sense of the persecuting interviewer. The interviewer is potentially persecuting something. If he admits to desiring something very much, then actually he’s making himself vulnerable, so the important thing is you sort of admit it, there’s this desire but you’re not saying it’s my desire. Oh, I noticed there’s this desire out there somewhere. She hasn’t even said it’s his. Okay. Any other hypothesising like the experiencing behind the saying this.
New Speaker (male):
So, in relation to the previous comments that he spoke only about his project, by now speaking about the context, he used the 40 seconds or 44 seconds, to kind of zoom out from the kind of place he was in during the whole one and a half hour to comment on another perspective.
Tom:
That’s interesting he’s taking a wider view.
Male Speaker (continued):
Zooming out.
Tom:
So, that’s a very nice structure, zooming out from SS1 and its narrow focus, because he talks about I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and now he’s no longer focusing on the projects he needs to be focusing on. He’s zooming out and thinking about something bigger or something different, and he phrase he uses for it, this desire to be working in the institutional context, whatever that means. Okay that’s a very interesting. We call this a structural hypothesis because it’s trying to look at the whole of what we’ve done so far to see if we can see a shape to all this. Can we see a shape to all this? So, okay. Right. Anybody want to add a comment on this before we take it off and hang it on our exhibition wall.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
That’s chunk four, so I’ll read this out. So, from what we’ve just heard there’s this desire da, da, da. There’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it. So, I can add that four second pause, of course the private is all the time on the why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there, or so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s, you can see why I needed a micro analysis panel to help me understand this. I’ll read it again. So, there’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it, so I can also add, of course the private Jeremy, it’s all the time on the why we want to be part of this. What’s interesting of working there, so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s… Okay. Well let’s look at our previous hypothesising. So he’s hesitating, unsure in himself, unsure whether to say, exploring random paths to satisfy the interviewing, the it is working in the institutional context, the thought has to be dragged out, the thing to be dragged out, proposed to research, don’t understand what that means, avowing his desire for an institutional context, but may be simultaneously distancing himself from it, and the whole thing is about zooming out from the narrow focus of sub session one into some more general self-understanding. Anything seem more or less probable of the previous hypothesising before we go on.
New Speaker (female):
He’s distancing himself more and more. In here we could maybe even guess that it’s not 100% sure, that there he was talking about himself, I mean it looks like he’s thinking about this whole desire, why people want to work in this institutional context. Why they want to switch from there on projects for instance. It’s as if he’s just thinking about this idea and actually I don’t think that he’s sure about himself working in this context. He’s just thinking about the possibility but not taking this responsibility at all, like his obligation.
Tom:
So, this is what he says or this is his experiencing? So, it’s always… it sounds as though what you’re saying is that he’s doing this to himself and that is to say he himself doesn’t know for himself whether he’s talking about himself or whether he’s talking people in general, and therefore when it comes across that’s what comes across or he does know what he’s experiencing but he’s talking about in a way that isn’t true to that and is therefore confusing. He wants to confuse what he says.
Female Speaker (continued):
I think it’s a different story.
Tom:
The first one is where he doesn’t know.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, he’s just thinking again like there is this desire to be working and here he says like, just a second. Why we want to be a part of this, like we, who we, he’s not talking him about himself again. Like we people in general why we want to switch to these…
Tom:
So, it’s a people in general.
Female Speaker (continued):
Yes, but I don’t think he’s making it conscientiously. I think distancing himself like because he wants to do it. He’s just doing it thinking about it.
Tom:
He’s in it…
Female Speaker (continued):
And maybe there is this slight probability that he can do the institutional context.
Tom:
People, the we. Okay, the people, the we are wondering about the…
Female Speaker (continued):
He’s reflecting about this whole idea of working in the institutional context.
Tom:
Okay, people like we, and the working in instit context and it’s general, like a collective, why do we want to work.
Female Speaker (continued):
It’s like I should work there or I shouldn’t work there. Why in general, why people want to do this.
Tom:
General question to a general category of which he’s a part because he says we. Okay that’s one thing that he’s moving to a, in terms of the distancing, I’ve been focusing, it can be interesting and he’s now moving away from the I into people in general, this is your hypothesis, from the I to people like me, why do we want to work in institutional context, not particularly I. So, in a sense, the having got, if you take the structural hypothesis from moving towards the I he’s now going back away from the personal, he’s distancing himself so that the distance, he becomes a general reflector on we, rather than distancing from self.
New Speaker (female):
I think he’s getting desperate. He doesn’t really know what to do say.
Tom:
But why doesn’t he know what to do say.
Female Speaker (continued):
He doesn’t know what he it is.
Tom:
So even if he doesn’t know what he means by the it. Okay. So, that’s an interesting hypothesis. So, the it, he doesn’t know what the it is and is getting desperate.
Female Speaker (continued):
I don’t remember the sentence but is there some blaming here, why don’t you, at the end of…
Tom:
I’ll read it again. There’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it, so I can also add that the private Jeremy, it’s all the time on the why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there. So, it’s kind of why didn’t you continue there if, so that sounds a bit like what you’re saying that there’s sort of a self blaming or self not understanding, something like that okay. Self blaming or possibly self not understanding. Why didn’t you… so the you might then be back to him again, it’s like a question. If that was the case, I’m saying to myself, why Tom didn’t you, in case it’s Jeremy, but why did I Jeremy talk about…
New Speaker (female):
Generalise it.
Tom:
Or it could be the general thing we don’t know if it’s a general you or a particular you, but somebody didn’t continue, why didn’t you continue there, is referring to a past thing that happened, somebody who was doing something and he didn’t continue there and so I think that’s more specific, that wouldn’t be to a category probably, more speaking to himself because there’s no other you. He’s not talking to me as you yeah. So here we have a you which is equalling Jeremy in this particular case. Okay. Any other thoughts about.
New Speaker (female):
It seems to me that he has so many doubts about the project and he wants to debate or I don’t know maybe with himself, he wants to debate and discuss about whole project, as he is doubtful or something like that.
Tom:
So, it’s self-doubt, needs a debate. It’s a self debate between different bits of himself when somebody says, why didn’t you continue there if, that’s one part of the self talking to the other part of the self. Needs a debate between parts of the self. So, it’s quite interesting because on the one hand one can see that there’s the motivation. He talks about the private Jeremy, Jeremy that’s his name. That’s the sort of complicated, the motivation so I can also add of course that the private Jeremy, so it’s as though there’s been a public Jeremy and somehow, we’ve now got to a private Jeremy but he goes into why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting in working there, then it’s back to the more private, why didn’t you, I Jeremy saying to Jeremy why didn’t you continue there wherever that was. So, it’s pretty, it’s pretty opaque. It’s pretty unclear to sort out and there’s a quite a lot of complicated movements between talking to the interviewer, there this motivation behind it and I can also add, he’s sort of declaring to the interviewer something or other about the private Jeremy and then it starts to move away from the private Jeremy to why we want to be part of this, what’s interesting of working there and then it comes back to a self debate which I become invisible and he’s saying why didn’t you Jeremy, why didn’t you Jeremy continue there or something or other. So, it’s quite a sort of complicated movement of subjectivity in it and sometimes he’s talking about a general category and sometimes he’s having a bit of an argument with himself at the end, and sometimes he’s talking to the interviewer. I can also add that the something or other, so okay so that’s what it is. This is not saying, I mean what I find interesting about this thing and what you’ve said has been very helpful in clarifying what might be going on, what might be going on. Is that there’s the movement of the subjectivity, even within phrases and half sentences and bits and pieces, you can see something working away. I think of it sometimes as you look for a piece in the text in which it’s a bit like somebody who’s had, the working of the knee suddenly becomes obvious. Normally people are in charge of their talk and their interview and it flows quite nicely and all makes sense and may be lies, but it doesn’t matter, it’s flowing nicely, and the micro analysis is where somebody is struggling with quite different impulses and the desire to talk to themselves, a desire to talk to you, to tell you something or to not tell you something and all this shows itself and it is very difficult to sort out what’s happening, but if you can sort out what’s happening then you get an insight into that very jerky moving subjectivity that is sort of starting and stopping doing different things more or less at the same time. This must have taken all of, well it took four seconds pause there. Anyway.
[Talking aside]
So, there’s been that, there’s all this the motivation behind it. So, I can also add of course the private Jeremy is all the time on why do we want to be part of this, what’s interesting, working there, so it’s kind of 12 second pause, very long. So why don’t you continue there if it’s… I mean there’s lots of 11 second pause, there’s lot of but what’s there a lot of, you have to wait 11 seconds while he works out what to do say. There’s lot of, 11 second pause, ambiguity in all this. Even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 second pause, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being. I’ll read that again, I mean there’s lots of 11 second pause, there’s lot of but what’s there a lot of, you have to wait 11 seconds while he works out what to do say. There’s lot of, 11 second pause, ambiguity in all this. Even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 second pause, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
So is anything that we’ve said before proved or disproved, weakened or strengthened. Actually, what I’ll do is read it all through as it was said, because all really said in one stream with all the pauses and I’ll just add the numbers for the pauses. I say, anything else you’d like to add, no rush, just I mean I know it’s a question of reviewing what you’d like to say and whether you said it, do you want to add or whatever, and he speaks, slowly and reflectively. I think it’s difficult to, five, because I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on and reflect on, seven second pause, but it can also be interesting, I feel like, so there’s this desire to be working in the institutional context, there’s all this, there’s the motivation behind it. So I can also add, four second pause, of cause the private Jeremy, it’s all the time on the, why do we want to be part of this, what’s interesting working there, so it’s kind of, 12 second pause, or why didn’t you continue there if it’s, I mean there’s lot of ambiguity in all this, even if I feel like I’ve been talking here and then this, and then that, it becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, 11 seconds, and I mean I think it could also be in a story about like an emotional human being. Any thoughts, the lived experience of the person who’s been saying all this to this point.
New Speaker (male):
I’m still thinking pressure, there seems to be sort of a huge importance to what he’s saying, so he doesn’t find the ways or the words to say it.
Tom:
So, he’s got something hugely important there, but he’s not finding the words to say it, is that what you’re saying.
Male Speaker (continued):
Yes, or maybe the interviewing itself is something important, like he’s mentioning that it might be part of his CV or something like that and then he’s just not… difficult to find the right words because they’re so important.
Tom:
The interviewing is very important. He can’t find the words, is that what you said, because it’s so important.
Male Speaker (continued):
He’s stressed.
Tom:
Okay stress. The second one was that there’s something he wants to say that’s very, a notion he said that, some huge thing to be said, but can’t find the words to say it. Notices that these are sort of internal, the interviewing is a thing from the outside, which is something, he’s agreed to do or wants to have done, but it’s, that’s the huge source of pressure, we started off with a lot of sources of pressure thing, or there is something he very definitely wants to say and it’s so huge he can’t find the words to say it. At least he can’t find the words to say it in interview. So, both of those things might be true or only one of them, but all of these are hypothesis, we’re not trying to decide which is true.
New Speaker (female):
I have this feeling that all the interview was about his professional life, what he said before that I was talking about all those projects of mine, something, and then he starts to speak about this private Jeremy, digging deeper a bit maybe and he has these doubts about whether he should speak about these private things and he makes this conclusion that if we talk about me as the emotional human being then I would say this but he said that it’s so difficult, I mean he was talking about his professional life and now starts to talk a bit about his private life but he still doubts whether he should do it. The switch from the professional life story to some personal feelings.
Tom:
The private Jeremy. Should he, or shouldn’t he?
Female Speaker (continued):
May be this whole concept of switching to something else like to start working in the institutional context maybe all this thing is a bit private, bit too personal for him.
Tom:
So being private and wanting to talk about the institutional context.
Female Speaker (continued):
Somehow, he continues talking about his professional life, it’s already too personal and maybe he’s in doubt whether he should do.
[Talking aside]
Tom:
Oh, yes zooming out from the sub session one focus on projects, so this zooming out from the projects, the projects are very professional what do you ask professional about, you ask them about their projects because their projects are interest and therefor you ask about the projects. Then it’s sort of moving out to the idea of the institutional context which you’re saying well it’s his institutional context. The projects are out in an abstract space of what public artists do is to create projects here there and everywhere and you look at the projects and you don’t know anything about the person who did them. You just look at the projects of you work with the projects of something. Then he’s talking about the institutional context which might be his one or it might be the general institutional context of people like us. Namely, let’s call it project artists. Okay, but it’s getting slightly personal and then actually he moves the motivation behind it, the private Jeremy. Why do we want to be part of this, and it could be a we of the category of why do we artists want to do these sorts of things, it could be what is my motivation? He means the private Jeremy and here he goes straight into a personal thing, it’s like a reflection, this is almost like the first part of what he said which is sort of what’s interesting and why don’t you continue there, and he’s having a debate with himself, and then there’s lots of ambiguity in all this, and all this is what he maybe, all his life or all of what he said or anything, we don’t know. I feel I’ve been talking here, becomes quite personal, I’ve been talking here and then this, then that. It becomes partly difficult to take off this CVish thing, and I mean it could also be a story about like an emotional human being, or even about the emotional private Jeremy. Okay. So this is very sustained personal. It’s the first sustained personal reflection that we’ve had, whereas early on it’s not been quite like that, and its sort of a more fluent, it’s more fluent talk, it actually holds together in a way that some of it doesn’t.
New Speaker (female):
Not just personal but emotional.
Tom:
Not just personal but emotional, exactly. So, what this is, is a sort of working, nobody’s commented on, which I think is really interesting, that this take off, this CVish thing. A CV is a curriculum vitae which is what you submit you’re applying for a job or anything whatsoever. So, you take off this CVish thing, it’s like some clothes. It’s like a role that he’s been doing his CVish thing by talking about his, when he talks about the projects, I’ve been focusing on the projects I need to be focusing on. I’ve been focusing on it, means my talk has been focused on it. The whole of the sub session one has included has been focusing on my projects and I’ve been doing it clad in my CVish clothes and now I’m starting to feel them uncomfortable, it’s cold afterwards, and there’s this zooming out institutional context, but actually it’s me in the institutional context. It’s my situation, or a bit of is my, it’s our institutional context, but maybe it’s me and then it’s the private Jeremy and then… So, it’s also zooming towards the emotional human being, who’s been pretty hidden so far because the story has been about him and his projects and his life as a public artist, or an artist sort of working in public. So, that’s very interesting sort of developed… it may not be true, it may be something quite different, we’ve yet to see the next chunk, but that is a possible line which explains what’s been happening. That all his stuttering uncertainty is because I’ve been stuck in… it’s difficult to take off this CVish thing. One bit of me is absolutely insistent on keeping it on. With sort of interviewing, you said the interviewing was very important and therefore he had to be careful what he said, as a public figure doing an interview, and on the other hand he does want to take off this CVish thing and talk as if like something like an emotional human being, and I think somebody said, I think you said to me, he’s very emotional, somebody did, I can’t remember who. So, there’s something about dealing with emotions as a public intellectual or a public artist or something or other, and in the interview, is struggling with being that and the private person who’s doing the talking and how does he deal with all that, and that’s why we have such a difficult sort of jumping about type stuff here, which is… anyway it’s a hypothesis.
New Speaker (male):
It’s also curious that it has this distancing effect, he said it could be a story about, he doesn’t say I am an emotional human being, this could be in a story about an emotional human being, which is quite an odd way of expressing.
Tom:
There’s distancing going on there. It could be in a story, not that’s part of my life, but it could be in a story.
Male Speaker (continued):
He sees the emotional side of himself also in fiction.
Tom:
Well that’s another thing. A story in the sense of it could be a made-up story about an emotional human being. It’s not me who is an emotional human being but there’s a made-up story about some emotional human being, looking rather like me. May be an avatar.
Okay I’ll think we’ll stop there, not quite sure what the time is but I find it very interesting, we’ll talk some more, go on with this after lunch, but I think what I think has been really interesting is dealing with what is really quite a difficult thing to get a hold on, what is going on here and we’ve ended up, I mean we haven’t ended up, at this point we’ve broken off where there is some sense of how you could make sense of why it is the way it is, and that’s what micro analysis is meant to do, and sometimes it succeeded and sometimes you say, having done micro analysis, I’m even more confused about what it was all about from where I started off. At the moment, I’m personally feeling that I can make more sense of it. I hope you are too and if you’re not that’s even better because you can say all this makes no sense at all, I think it’s quite different.
[Talking aside]

part 2

Tom:
Okay, let’s start again. It’s a relief that it’s a small group once more. So, I think what would be quite fun is just to spend five minutes, you remember at the end of the session, I said, please write down something, your sense of Jesper and his story-telling so far. So if anybody would like to share any of that, anything you’ve written, or perhaps what you think now about that, to get a sense of the variety or the lack of variety in the room. It’ll be obviously inconclusive, but it will just be interesting, what different people have made of it.
New speaker (male):
First of all, one question – there was this, in the Seventies, this television series, where you have to figure out who that person is, is his name really German?
Tom:
Sorry?
Male speaker (continued):
Is his name really German? Isn’t that not maybe …
Tom:
I have no comment to make. So anybody want to share any of their sense of Jeremy and his history?
New speaker (female):
I have something, it’s just spontaneous, it’s not worth any more than this. Optimistic, hard-working, goal-achieving, then confused – what is it all about? Mid-life, if not crisis, at least questioning, and then I go into literary quoting, Dante, (?? 1:43). I am taking the first phrase of La Divina Comedia, and I’m taking it in Italian, and then I’ll translate it:
(speaks Italian)
“In the middle of the road that is our life, I found myself in a big, dark forest, because the true road was crushed”… and so this is a bit, it’s from being young and optimistic, and going into maturity, so this is like, a description of his …
Tom:
Okay, that’s what it feels like to you. Anybody got a different perception, or a different imagination? – a counter-hypothesis.
New speaker (female):
I wrote something, but I don’t want to read it.
Tom:
No, that’s fine.
Female speaker (continued):
I think this Jeremy is, or what is if, my perception is that he’s a rational and emotional person at the same time, and he values a lot to be connected with creativity and in relation, but also to build a career, and it seems like he struggles a bit with these two sides, but so far, it seems that he also has been able to play along with both of them.
Tom:
Okay, that’s interesting. Anybody else?
New speaker (female):
I think lots of things, but I’ve written one sentence, that I don’t know if … but I still believe in it. I said that he hardly, never dances on the table, but he doesn’t leave the party before it’s over.
Tom:
(he laughs) Okay, right. Anybody else?
New speaker (male):
Just an observing person.
Tom:
An observing person? – okay.
New speaker (female):
Yes, there’s something there. Maybe he has a notion for details and sensitivity to others around him? – without pushing it? – maybe.
Tom:
Okay, anybody else?
New speaker (male):
I think he might be a little bit optimistic, that he is sort of, like a doll that you have in the spring, and he will turn it again, and then make a new direction and start walking, and then, not being afraid for new challenges, but he must also be a little bit programmatic.
Tom:
A bit what, sorry?
Male speaker (continued):
Programmatic, so he might even programme himself, but we could also see that there is something in his world that is also programming, because his logic towards his, say, his profession. There’s some logic that he’s tapping into, and he’s understanding, so it seems, it could be programmatic, when he’s being self-reflecting, or something.
Tom:
Okay, thanks.
New speaker (male):
Okay, first of all, my questions, already before, were like, I was doubtful about the whole sort of setting and addressment. First of all, I want to know, we are filmed here, in what way, like is Jeremy, in what way is it, the interview, you said he knew that he was being interviewed. Did he also request at that interview, did he also, how to say … did he commission this interview? Did Jeremy commission that interview?
Tom:
Yes.
Male speaker (continued):
So I guess, this is what I thought, like to interpret, like now, Jeremy, thinking like, okay, he commissioned that interview. In that way, I would say we have to interpret it in a completely different way. Also, I would say that I had a setting, like in mind, that’s also how you conveyed it to us, that you made an interview with a person that tells the story to you, but now that it’s clear that actually the person itself is some sort of, the protagonist behind this whole event here, I would say we have to interpret it, of course, completely different.
Tom:
Okay, could you say what the difference would be?
Male speaker (continued):
I think of course, like, sure, then it’s like, when we now … like okay, when we now know that it’s like, probably Jesper itself who is like …
Tom:
Let’s call him Jeremy.
Male speaker (continued):
Oh, let’s call him Jeremy.
Tom:
Because he’s a figment of our imagination!
Male speaker (continued):
Okay, but this is already … I don’t know. I think first of all, I think, okay, obviously I’m not any more like, wondering about the credibility – I’m obviously tricked into a situation.
Tom:
You’re obviously tricked into a situation?
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, you are tricked in a situation, you are kind of, you have …
Tom:
Is the “you” me, or the “you”, you?
Male speaker (continued):
No, I think the whole set is a sort of like, okay, then it would make sense, like, to come up with Godfrey (? 7:30) and say, there’s a certain kind of team, you are part of a team, together with Jeremy? – and you are kind of like, pretending something to make us part of like, an artistic plan.
Tom:
What am I pretending?
Male speaker (continued):
I would say, first of all, like you pretended that this was a sort of study of yours?
Tom:
It is a study of mine.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, but at the same time, you are also a collaborator?
Tom:
That’s always true.
Male speaker (continued):
This is not always true. This is a different situation.
Tom:
Maybe it depends what you mean by “collaborator.”
Male speaker (continued):
I think the way …
Tom:
Nearly all my work, well, all my work actually, with one or two exceptions, has been because somebody has commissioned me, because they are doing a study of something, and they want me to carry out certain interviews, and do certain interpretations as part of their project.
Male speaker (continued):
Yeah, okay, but for me, I don’t know if it works for you, like, from the very beginning, I also, okay, I didn’t, saw the witnessing. I came in, I don’t know. It’s, the first question for me would be, okay, I walked in here. I just thought of, like, a study group, and I thought, it’s about, like, that we are … learning kind of about something. I didn’t know that it’s a sort of like, that you are … that it’s about, like, that you were, like you said in the beginning, brainstorming? – that your brainstorming is later kind of being objectified, to be part of a work? I think this is like exploitative – yeah, I think so. I don’t know, is that like, part of what … is this recording going to be hard work, for example?
Tom:
Can we stay with the particular problem that you have with it, rather than …
Male speaker (continued):
I think that would be also my analysis of the artist, and of like, what about Jeremy? I think that would be like, kind of, and I would, seeing this kind of practice, I’m not interested in, because out of those reasons, I also think what we also, okay now, we had this discussion it the cafeteria, I think that whole, I think the philosophy behind this kind of work, or this kind of ideal, like, kind of, of this sort of, a theatrical kind of performance frame, with like several players, like you as a player. Jeremy, with a kind of information-led arts course. I think it builds on a certain kind of paradigm, which I think is the paradigm of like, well I think, okay, you can have it both on, like on ideas to master interviews of passing of a certain kind of, it comes as a theory, and I think… yes, like of course, like this thing he writes, it’s questionable that we interpret it in the first place as a sort of like set up.
New speaker (female):
I didn’t understand what kind of paradigm you referred to?
Tom:
Can I just say something? I’m a bit worried at what you do, I’m not sure about that, but anyway, is entirely what you collectively decide to do.
Male speaker (continued):
I didn’t decide about this.
Tom:
I know you didn’t, I’m talking about what I decide to do, and what I decided to do was to do what I always do, which is to run an interpretive panel, putting up segments like this and discussing it, and doing that for three hours. Now, we could decide, and I don’t think it has to be just you that decides – we could decide that we’re going stop that, and we will now have a discussion along the grounds that you would obviously … I agree that’s what you think we should have, and I think people just have to decide collectively, not just individually, as to what to do.
I would like to finish what I’m saying (firmly). You’ve said very clearly that you feel uneasy with it, you feel it’s a set up. You’ve changed your interpretation of what’s going on, and I assume that you would like to stop putting up the segments on the thing, and have a discussion about something or other.
Male speaker (continued):
And I’m filmed in that very moment, in that sort of situation – I’m being used.
Tom:
Okay, so you want to have a method discussion about the whole situation. Okay, fine, thank you – so could you wait for a minute, and let us find out whether other people want to have that discussion, rather than insist on it by going on talking yourself, so would anybody else like to say whether they would like to have a meta-discussion, which is fine, a different thing, or whether they would like to go on with the sections being put up, or something else? I myself am happy with either thing, so anybody would like to comment on what you would like to have happened for the next, it’s now 45 minutes?
New speaker (female):
At least I’m very comfortable with, being filming, because I thought we knew that, all the time I saw the camera, so I thought that I had it by sitting down here, entering this room, entering this table, and directly opposite a camera. I thought that we also were creating for material for some use.
Tom:
Okay, can you not respond at the moment. We’ll just go round the room, and have everybody say what they think.
New speaker (female):
For me, the filming is okay.
New speaker (female):
I think you could tell what he has to do.
Tom:
No, because I’d like you to be equal among all the people in the panel, and he’s spoken for ten minutes, which is fine, and he now needs to stay quiet for ten minutes, and hear what other people have to say.
New speaker (female):
But I also find him, being a part of this, and having different feelings than you, participating in this, I find your reaction very interesting, why you feel betrayed, and I don’t, in a way?
New speaker (male):
Can I answer?
Female speaker (continued):
So the method is interesting to discuss, but I’m also a bit curious about the puzzle, how we end. I would like to have the end of this story, in a way.
Tom:
That was the past thing, so is that here as well?
Male speaker (continued):
Okay, I said, then for me, I’m leaving the room. I can explain why I also, now even my interpretation is being used as a sort of like, kind of, in a sort of device, which I set up. Even if I’m now responding, like kind of conveying, what the artwork is, it’s still in a sort of idea of reflection. It’s a sort of artistic production device, which I say, like you have kind of, you have a traditional, that sort of artworks, which uses like kind of, something within the art works which addresses the artwork itself, and I don’t think this is very interesting. I see like an artist do it as a certain kind of device, of reflection, and I also think that the way I have been brought in this artwork, without knowing it, and now also, that even my interpretation is some sort of like, serving this sort of position, I don’t like, and I have to think about it, if I want, allowed, like came to publish this, for example? Okay, that is not the question, like, which do we agree to have what is on the film to be published? I think because the camera is still running, I’m ending this, and I will think about it. I think that’s it … because I didn’t know, it had not been told to me in the beginning ..
New speaker (female):
So you had no idea to what you were coming here?
Male speaker (continued):
I didn’t know that it’s … did you know that Jeremy is a sort of like, that we are talking about Jesper’s work, or Jesper’s ….
New speaker (female):
Life story?
Tom:
I’m afraid I can’t have any comment on that, because I just came, and was told that there would be a panel for a discussion, and how you were briefed or how you were not briefed is not my responsibility.
Female speaker (continued):
I did not know that.
Male speaker (continued):
Did you know that? I think it was definitely here, about certain information, like, which you need to honestly engage in a discussion. If they are kind of, not provided to you, it’s kind of a thwarted game. Okay, some people find it interesting – I don’t find it so interesting, because maybe, if you come from film-making, and like more the theatre, well, theatre series, these are very common practices. I think like, artists need to use this in a more kind of, on a different basis, on a wider philosophical basis.
Tom:
Thanks very much, okay, cheers.
Male speaker (continued):
Me leaving is not a part of the discussion. I have to leave because I have (?? 16:40) actually.
Tom:
Okay, bye bye!
New speaker (female):
I’m a bit confused now!
Tom:
Ah well, you’re not the only one!
Female speaker (continued):
Was this his own history? – or there is, and more information that we don’t know, and we are being used?
New speaker (female):
I can understand him. I disagree with him a little bit, but I understand him.
Previous speaker (female):
I knew about this yesterday, and for me it’s been a great exercise, and even if I’m being filmed, that doesn’t trigger like all my insecurities to develop all this kind of, and to build all this …
New speaker (female):
But it wasn’t necessarily his insecurities. You are making now, projecting into him what …
Previous speaker (female):
Because I don’t know, I don’t understand what happened.
Tom:
I will put it up, in order to avoid you getting into a terrible wrangle, I’d suggest that you put it all up as hypotheses, so whether that’s the most useful thing to work on, I don’t know. What was your question? It was in the form of a question.
New speaker (female):
I formed a question about this?
Tom:
It’s about the situation.
Female speaker (continued):
If there was any other information, if this is not only what we are doing, and there is like a background, or like a bigger frame, where this is set in, and this much here is going to be used for something – that is my question, and if there is, or you can’t talk about it, I can talk!
Tom:
Okay, well I can say something about it, which is, just from my perspective, which is, will serve imperfect knowledge, which is, I was commissioned to do one of my standard, this type of interview, a biographic narrative interview, with Jeremy, and I did, and he said he wanted me to have three of the panels which I normally have anyway, whenever I do these things, and this is one of them. There were two earlier ones in October, and these are panels which isn’t quite so usual, but understand it, in which I wouldn’t be choosing who was on the panel, it would be Jeremy who would choose who was on the panel – that’s fine by me. It’s more interesting for me if I don’t know who’s on it. He would set up the panel, so I’m running the panel, and this is the panel that I’m running, and from my point of view, its value is to enable me to interpret the material of the interview better. So I will, after this panel is over, there won’t be any more panels, as far as I know – well, no, there won’t be any more panels, unless I suddenly invent one just for fun. I shall continue with my interpretation of the material, and write it up for Jeremy, who’s commissioned it, and that’s what will happen.
What else happens, I don’t know. For me, it’s very useful actually, in terms of the method to have a good record of panels, because I never remember, I haven’t got time to make notes. I never remember what’s happened, so it’s very good to have an audio or a video record, which I can then look at, and see how the panel’s worked, because I’ve been running these panels, I think I said to somebody, about 20 years, and I still don’t really understand how they work, when they work well, when they work badly or whatever. So anything that provides me with information for improving my interpretation process of interviews like that is good. What Jeremy wants to do with them is something to address, to him.
New speaker (female):
I think you did tell me that it was more of a personal use as well? – but maybe I didn’t quite know.
Tom:
I think it would be very unusual if he was planning to use them in some sort of public context, without contacting the people on the panel.
New speaker (female):
Jeremy, we’re now talking about Jesper, and not Jeremy.
Tom:
If you like, we can talk about Jesper.
Female speaker (continued):
No, no – it’s just, what would Jeremy like to do with them.
Tom:
Who knows who Jeremy is.
Female speaker (continued):
Who’s Jeremy?
Tom:
Anyway, I suppose the reason why I’ve distinguished between the two was that, for me, the interpretation of the person who spoke in the transcript, we are constructing something like a fictitious person. We don’t know very much about that person – we only know what you get from an interview, which is always very very partial, however much you work at it, so the point of giving them a fake name, an imagined name, is to stress how hypothetical all this is, because it’s x as appears from an interview, as opposed to x as appears for observing them for ten years, or x as they appear from something else, so I find it useful to avoid confusion to refer to the subject of an interview by a pseudonym. If you walk to talk about the person behind, then I’m slightly uneasy about that, but I don’t mind very much.
New speaker (female):
No, me neither. Okay, it could sound very selfish? – but for me, it’s enough that I’m having this exercise, this practice, and that’s it.
Tom:
Right, anybody else like to comment on how to use the next 35 minutes?
New speaker (female):
35 minutes, well, I’d like to, I think something happened during lunch, which was one hour. One hour is quite a considerable time. You were there, and this young man who left in anger was there, and you were there, I was there, and there was somebody else.
Tom:
(he laughs) In fact, most of us were mostly there!
Female speaker (continued):
But you were not there, so you two were not there, and I think what happened during lunch is a lot of the reason why he reacted like he did, and for me, it became a very interesting discourse we had, and it opened with him being very interesting. I think he was the bearer of a new dimension of thought going into the conversation, which is, the conflict, so I think this is, so it’s not fair to the two of you who weren’t there, because we’re talking about another story now …
Tom:
(he laughs)
Female speaker (continued):
And so I just would like to repeat, how we started the whole thing, if that’s okay with you, or try to recollect it together.
New speaker (female):
I wasn’t there at the beginning.
Previous speaker (female):
For me, nor was I, but the magic for me was him, entering in the discussion, and talking about, we were talking about …
Tom:
This is the discussion at lunch, you’re talking about? – yeah, okay.
Previous speaker (female):
Yeah, the lunch discussion. He came in with an element of, that we were all talking about the conflict between telling a true story, and making a career, the conflict there, and so we’re talking about this person, and then it came to, aren’t we all in that situation? Isn’t the whole art world in that situation? I was very interested about that, and I say yeah, we lose anyway. Either you lose because you choose your career, and the little lies you have to tell to put yourself in a nice position, or you lose because you’re persecuting what think is the real thing, but nobody wants to listen to that, so you’re the social loser, and I was enthusiastic about ….
Tom:
The insight?
Previous speaker (female):
Coming into the discussion. I had the insight from before, but that I’m not alone on the surface of the planet, thinking, looking at the situation like that, and this brought it up very, made the lunch very interesting, and then shit comes up!
Tom:
(he laughs)
Previous speaker (female):
With her father, having interviewed grown-up children who have been put in children’s homes because they came from abusive families, and how, of course, every paedophile on the face of the planet took a job in those children’s homes, and how they had been subject to a lot of violence in the children’s homes, who were supposed to …
New speaker (female):
Protect them.
Previous speaker (female):
Yes, and so, this brings a huge dimension into the art of interviewing, that her father had done, with some dramatic …
New speaker (female):
The interview, yes.
Previous speaker (female):
And that became very dramatic, so this is, we came into the drama of the interview, so this is the background of him.
New speaker (female):
Telling a story.
New speaker (female):
I think, got very emotional, eh?
Previous speaker (female):
And somehow, at a certain stage, we all agreed that Jeremy was the creator of the whole situation. Somehow, it wasn’t even mentioned, but everybody understood it at the same time or something.
New speaker (female):
Can I give a comment? – because I also, someone knew that it’s kind of a setting, and you are here, who is responsible for this setting, and then, when he has started to talk, that maybe he is also part of this setting, so he is also playing a role, so he’s the one who should start a discussion, and then you are insisting that it’s really a good exercise for you ….that’s totally fine, but I just started to doubt everything.
Tom:
To doubt everything?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah. Maybe you are also playing, to have this, to extreme …
New speaker (female):
Maybe I’m the only one!
Previous speaker (female):
Because you had to, totally extreme, not extreme, but it was like, kind of exaggerated.
New speaker (female):
Not the opposite for what he thinks, it’s just that even if what he says is like that, if it’s real, I don’t mind. I don’t feel offended – why should I? That is something, a different attitude.
Tom:
No, I think … there are still these two people who haven’t said anything very strongly. I don’t know whether either of you would like to say something at all?
New speaker (female):
I guess I came in here, and I thought we were going to discuss one interview, and I didn’t realise the interview was of the person behind this whole thing itself. I think it does change the situation.
Tom:
Could you say how for you, it changes the situation?
Female speaker (continued):
Well, I know that he’s going to listen to it, and look into the material, so maybe what you say, you’re a bit more careful with what you say.
Tom:
Okay, well that’s important, so that’s one thing. If Jeremy’s going to listen to the tape, then if you have any special relationship with Jeremy, as it were, then you need to think about that. No, no, I don’t mean especially in any other sense, but just, any relationship.
Female speaker (continued):
It becomes more a meta project than what maybe I thought it would be.
New speaker (male):
Well, I think I understood it was Jesper quite early, and I just think it’s interesting to be here and go through this, and it’s okay for me.
Tom:
Okay, so I think we now have to decide, unless somebody else wants to say anything, what we do for the next 30 minutes.
New speaker (female):
We continue this project.
Tom:
I’m happy to continue the project.
Female speaker (continued):
Let’s make Jesper happy!
Tom:
Okay, make me happy actually.
New speaker (female):
Do you know what makes him happy by now? I don’t.
Tom:
Okay, so … what are we going to do? I think what I’m going to do is to bolt these things together, because we’re now, we’ve got much less time than we had obviously, because of this interjection, so I’m going to put up a couple of chunks at a time, in order to make progress.
New speaker (female):
And I’m going to help you with that.
Tom:
Okay, thanks very much.
(bit of chat about the set up of the board)
New speaker (female):
I’m getting very enthusiastic now. I’m just reading a phrase, “interviews with elders who trained for seven years, and didn’t use their training” – fantastic!
Tom:
(he laughs)
Female speaker (continued):
It’s interesting, what he did.
Tom:
I was being very careful there, and got it wrong – this way round. I’m so used to it being the wrong way round, that I adjusted for that, and it isn’t wrong.
Female speaker (continued):
You’re used to doing it the wrong way round.
Tom:
Okay, I’ll read it out. I was already starting to work with non-professionals, inviting people, working with Vietnamese, “lots of people not familiar with the codes and language of contemporary art practice”; work also outside the art environment; invited untrained people to Paris to see some artwork, and reflect aesthetically. It is good to set up some working environments which could function as case studies later on.
Then, interviews with elders who trained for seven years as art professionals, and didn’t use their training, the artists who dropped out – any patterns? Did they use some aspect of their training? What are the mechanisms and the biographical stories? What differences of men and women, of those trained the Fifties, compared to the Sixties and Seventies? Awareness, he became aware of the importance of interviews, and different ways of doing them.
Finally, well finally on this sort of meta-chunk, two students, and the double ontology of experimental deception, of planted, non-artistic BAs. He employed an assistant with a BA, but not in art, to enter an MA arts programme. J provides the artistic portfolio, and re-writes their application. The assistant provides an ethnographic (I think there were two of them), provides ethnographic reports on their experiencing of this art MA, and gradually J gave interpretational tasks and more and more ownership to the assistant/student. There’s an ethical fine line in knowing/not knowing what colleagues are saying to the student, and to you, not clear (I don’t know what that means). You watch your roles, you don’t want to be unethical within your own principles of working. So … I didn’t realise I was standing in your way.
New speaker (female):
This was the logical order?
Tom:
Oh, the chronological order? I think these two are earlier, chronologically. This is later, this is a bit earlier, and this is earlier again. This is the earliest thing, which I think is earlier on. I’m sorry, I can’t be quite sure about that.
So what’s … we’re looking at both what he does, and in a sense, the “now” experiencing and the “then” experiencing. What is the line of his doing this sequence of things? What is he trying to do with it? Why did he go on and do this, as opposed to fifteen other things he could do, like working on the buses or something? And what might he be experiencing now, as opposed to experiencing then?
New speaker (female):
He’s definitely seeking contact outside the art world. He’s in the art world, and seeking out. There’s a sentence I don’t understand also?
Tom:
Only one? …. extra art world contacts. And the sentence you don’t understand is?
Female speaker (continued):
Choose students, and the double ontology of experimental deception of planted non-artistic BAs?
Tom:
I invented that sentence, and I’m terribly proud of it.
Female speaker (continued):
You invented that?
Tom:
I did. It’s one of my greatest achievements, but it maybe should go in the waste paper basket. Experimental deception means this person doesn’t have an art BA, and has agreed to be entered for an art MA, Masters programme, for which they should have got an art BA undergraduate programme to be acceptable, and what happened was that Jeremy provided the artistic portfolio and the application to enable this assistant to go and join the art MA, which they did. They successfully applied on the basis of doing that.
Female speaker (continued):
Without the BA?
Tom:
Without the BA. They had a BA, but in some quite different subject, or each of them had their own BAs in quite different subjects. They then went on to write reports on how they experienced the art MA, and he (this is badly put) gave more interpretational tasks to them. As the proceeded through their art MA, they wrote up more and more and interpreted their own experience more and more, as being on the MA. So what do you see as a line here, of what’s being done? Why would somebody doing, well, okay … this is seeking extra art world contacts, that’s one thing, but if you’re a researcher, why might you be doing this? What is this all about?
New speaker (male):
Challenging the question, “what is art”?
Tom:
Okay, so that, I think, it’s a, what is art question, or perhaps, what is art, or perhaps, what art can be or do? (this is me adding)
New speaker (female):
What is the art world?
New speaker (female):
How, it works? – the art, how the art world works?
Female speaker (continued):
As a system, the importance of the system to create art, because it’s breaking the rules of the system, and since claiming that it’s doing art.
Female speaker (continued):
It’s like he is creating some situations to analyse, to criticise, to understand how this art world works, how it functions? – so it’s like his whole investigation turns to himself.
Tom:
To himself?
Female speaker (continued):
Yeah, because he, for what I recall, he was like in a pretty experimental area, pedagogically at the beginning, and then he went into the, he had a more formal job, and then probably he started to question this, maybe this hierarchy, how this system works, maybe how the power is divided inside the academy, so he wants to try it, to prove if it’s, like …
Tom:
To prove what? What might he be trying to prove? Sorry, do you want to come forward? It must be rather difficult for you to hear anything at all back there. It’s a good place to sleep, though.
Female speaker (continued):
I don’t know, it’s like he’s testing the system.
Tom:
Testing?
New speaker (female):
Yeah, almost like a scientific study, experiment.
New speaker (female):
He’s very questioning.
New speaker (female):
Testing the system, yeah.
Previous speaker (female):
Testing/questioning.
Tom:
Well, I’ll put that for a question. We’ll all it the art system or practice.
New speaker (female):
Setting up an experiment.
New speaker (female):
Criticism, but not necessarily saying something is bad, but questioning, having a critical eye.
Tom:
Yes, but on the other hand, it’s a critical eye applied to anomalies within the system. One way of studying a system is to look at it doing what it always does in a completely regular fashion. In this case, he’s introducing anomalies. He’s starting to work with Vietnamese who aren’t familiar with the codes, untrained people in Paris, elders who were trained but didn’t use their training, and now, at the age of 50 or 60, he’s saying, well what was all that about? – I haven’t seen it, why did you drop out? – and did you use any of your art … was the training you did any use for anything at all, or was it just a sheer waste of time? And then, the planted MAs were, how necessary is an undergraduate arts degree for doing a masters level degree, or do they do different or less interesting or more interesting work, if they come from outside the under … if they haven’t had undergraduate training, but do something interesting maybe, or totally boring, I’ve no idea, when they do get to masters level, so all these are actually doing things. They’re like experimental disturbances of what ordinarily happens. Normally an ethnographer – well, not normally, but typically an ethnographer – will look at what happens, and remain as a pure observer outside, and say, this is what they do out there, and I’m in an invisible little box, and they don’t see me, and we just watch what they ordinarily do. This is much more experimental in doing things and producing situations that aren’t ordinary, or at least they may be ordinary to other people. They may not see the unordinariness of it, but for the normal art practitioner world, these are unordinary things, produced by Jesper’s intervention – sorry, Jeremy – I keep forgetting his name, and he’s studying what difference that makes, so he’s not studying the routine – he’s studying the odd, or the contrived odd, and that’s why it’s experimental observation, not just observation of routine, and there is an important difference.
Right, I think I’m just going to move on, as it were, so that you can see where it is.
Alright, I think I’m going to have to put them all up at the same time. We’re just running short of time.
New speaker (female):
You could glue them up together?
Tom:
Let’s think … they can overlap. The trouble is, it was all very carefully calculated, to speak about 13 minutes on each chunk, and we would get to the end of the chunks in the two-and-a-half hours, but this has now unfortunately been thrown, which is alright, but it does mean that we’re now doing something different. So that goes down properly – perhaps I’ll remember this time round.
New speaker (female):
Do the others in a line as well?
New speaker (female):
If he is going to use … I think he is making a pick on them.
Previous speaker (female):
You want us to make this also up, in pairs?
Tom:
I’ll do that in a minute.
Previous speaker (female):
We can do that while you’re talking.
Tom:
No, no – you should be focusing on this. Can you read it from where you are? Can anybody not read it? All those who can’t read it, tell me what they can’t see.
Previous speaker (female):
We’d love you to read it?
Tom:
You’d love me to read it? – okay.
Feeling part of two worlds, none of this, except what’s in quotes, is what Jeremy has aid. Feeling part of two worlds, not being able to discuss the project with people, the increasing importance of concealed identity truths. You need a bigger chapter on confidentiality. Work in the health sector also has “borders of what’s accessible and what’s closed”. Three exhibitions belonging to this topic, part of the same conceptual environment. One was being a member of all the political parties in Norway, when he came back to Norway, so this is going back a bit in time. Going to meetings and being involved in Christmas tables and topics, interviewing leaders of the key political parties, and an exhibition based on metaphors, of sharing and negotiating values from early Norway onwards, an a political (forget that bit) … discovering that political parties are not as powerful as they used to be, and there is a different system behind them. Then there was an exhibition based on metaphors to address the audience in the public sphere, “a certain anachronism in the whole. We’re looking back, we’re dismantling, first aid or something like that, kind of, pointing to that exhibition, and that earlier project … “ Oh, perhaps I’ve got this in the wrong order – yes, sorry, this should have come earlier. Anyway, he joined all the political parties, or most of them, in Norway, and all of them, and implicitly shared values of each party community. He maintained a poker face in local meetings and elsewhere, but sometimes he admitted a watered-down version of the truth. I’m researching volunteering.
So in a sense, he started this process of apparently doing something, like being a member of a political party, while actually being a member of a number of contradictory political parties, but not revealing that in order to find out something about how political parties in Norway functioned at the local and regional and even national level, and then he produced an exhibition on the basis of that, with five exhibits, which I can’t at the moment remember. Sorry, that has got out of order, quite right.
Okay, I’m going to just move on. I’m sorry, there just really is the problem of time. Let’s make sure we’ve got the right numbers – thirteen, fourteen.
New speaker (male):
He seems to be ambivalent about enter … ambivalence towards the situation, where he is an entrepreneur? You get top prize as joint Sellotape warriors! I know we have a Sellotape warrior.
New speaker (female):
In three hours, they successfully managed to put the papers up!
Tom:
Who says that new skills don’t develop in the course of any repetitive practice. I think I’ll put this on here. Right, the first one is about experimental pedagogy in Prague, around the drawing of your hand in conversation. This is the one that I like most, to be honest, but this is a personal statement. The first station, you put your hand in through a slot in enough detail. You have to draw it, and you put the drawing, you can’t enter the exhibition unless you put your hand through a slot, and give them a picture of your hand. Then you move into a room with three stories on headphones, about aspects of competence, building on the interviews with elders, whatever that was – it was on the previous page. Then, you have an unseen conversationalist. You talk to somebody behind a screen, and the conversationalist, it’s sharing an imaginary play space, so they talk about, the conversationalist behind the screen will say, well, just imagine that your hand then moved across the room, and inviting them to play with the idea of the drawn hand that does its own thing. Then finally, in the last room, there’s a photograph of the original hand, and a photograph of the original hand drawing – is that right? I think that’s right, and then they leave the exhibition after these four stations, about the drawing of the hand, and the conversation. He said, it’s a four station experiment, discussed and imagined, variation and feedback. He found a child psychologist as one of the conversationalists, art with an environment, confusing the roles of producing art and experiencing art, because the people had to draw their hands to some extent in order to then have all that, and then receive as an art object in the last station, a photograph of their hand, and the photograph of the drawing that they took. “That could be interesting, could be for children of refugees”, and he said, “One could talk to the four people who sat behind the screen”, so there were the people sitting behind the screen and having the conversations with each person. As they came through, one could talk to them.
Then another experiment is the Warsaw Modern Museum, volunteers over four weekends, so they were volunteers who were working in the museum, as part of an exhibition, and then there was a sub-exhibition, which was a workshop within it, over four weekends, so they, I’m not sure what they did in these four workshops, but they never knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t very visible or very clear what it was all about – we do something, and the head of education afterwards, who sat in on those four weekends with the ten volunteers, said, it’s different now – our usual ways of being together were different, and then afterwards, Jeremy did an interview with each of the ten people separately, what’s their story, to discover their motivation for being volunteers, and discovered that there are very different motivations for being volunteers, and the final thing is a secret current project, known only to my partner, to be observed by a committee sworn to silence. If I present it now, it can’t be done. The committee will have to sign a contract of no talking, to be allowed in the context, and see what is meant by this double ontology. They are quite the people I found which I’ve been running from. I expected they would get the point without explaining too much. Worth trying to see what it does in a real time setting.
Any thoughts? What’s his experience, what is he trying to do? Is he succeeding in what he’s trying to do, whatever that is? – etcetera.
New speaker (female):
I think the showing Prague took a very, very large part of this day, so I think he’d had enough. I’m more interested in the other parts.
Tom:
And what would you say was their interest, or what might have been their interest … we’re trying to construct why somebody did the things they did, in this case, the things they do are putting up, doing some work, which I’ve just described out there. What do you infer about the subjectivity, who did those things? This is what our problem is. They did those things, and they’ve told the story of doing those things.
Female speaker (continued):
The Warsaw lady volunteer, she explained very precisely why she was a volunteer. Hers was the story that was very interesting to me. The other stories, I didn’t understand their motives. It didn’t impress me, the Prague story. Her story, she said, I’ll go along with anything as long as it is interesting. She had made her, she made her openness, made it an important thing for her. She discovered, she let herself go along without having control of the situation, and it became important for her, and she told about that, so I think it was a good idea. You’re not in charge of the context, but you can use the story in a meaningful way, so that’s what she did. The others, I didn’t understand them.
New speaker (female):
You’re not talking about what happened earlier today? – you’re referring to what happened?
Previous speaker (female):
Yeah, it’s the Warsaw, the volunteer.
Female speaker (continued):
But he explained that he was there, so he explained a little bit, so now I understand it. I wanted to make sure.
New speaker (female):
Because someone asked her, why do you think he doesn’t say anything about, you are going to do? – why he doesn’t explain, why he keeps some information he doesn’t reveal? He said, because if you know before, if you knew, maybe you will drop it, because you will know, what is this all about, and maybe you don’t want to commit, but then, all the people that stay, was open to whatever comes. I think that’s another kind of selection.
Tom:
What do you mean by another kind of selection?
Female speaker (continued):
That the art is using people that is completely open, and that he’s trusted, and that can go with it, because they know, or they trust that it’s going to be an interesting experience, whatever comes, even if it turns out to be a bit disappointing, or if it’s going to feel maybe uncomfortable, or it’s going to push you out of your comfort zone, but it’s another kind of selection. What I think he’s doing there is going deeply in those motivations, when he interviews these ten people separately, after doing the (?? 55:25), to ask them, why did you stay? Why did you play along? Why are you so open? I have you so trusted.
Tom:
Okay, any other thoughts on different aspects of all that? Bear in mind that not everybody, including me, was at the witness session, so I’ve no idea what, whoever it was, said about the Warsaw programme, because I wasn’t there. Any other thoughts about what is said here, shared data?
New speaker (female):
I was thinking about this, taking pictures of hands, and these pictures are some kind of pictures that you never see them, obviously, and you have no idea, and most of the time, when people take a picture of your hand, you don’t know what they want to do with that, and I really find it interesting that the workshop is also like, you’re doing something, but what for? – and you are doing it, and you do it without asking, why should do that.
Tom:
So in a way, one of the lines of research, implicit lines of research, is, people either being able or not being able to participate in a process that they don’t fully understand, and some people can. I think you said that you were quite comfortable with it, and clearly, I don’t know his name, but whoever he was, he felt very uncomfortable and had to leave, because he couldn’t bear it, and that’s not a judgement on him – it’s just a statement that an experiment like this shows up that both those things can happen.
The question is, well, what does it – sorry, this is a bit of a different question, but for me, the interesting question is, what does one learn about artistic practice, the practice of being some sort of art practitioner, from these various experiments, and I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s the one that … okay, here are these various pedagogic experiments, or experiments in different sorts of installation and all the rest of it. What, if anything, has been learnt? I’m not sure what I would say about that, but that for me is the important question.
New speaker (female):
Could you repeat the important question?
Tom:
No, I’ve forgotten it already. It’s so important … no, what it was is, what does one learn about art practitioner practice from these experiments, these perturbing experiments, or troubling experiments, they’re troubling routines. I don’t mean they’re bad, I’m a great believer in creative trouble, but I’m in a lot of creative trouble myself most of the time, but what does one learn? What would be the point of it? Assuming that Jeremy is a research fellow in artistic practice, what are his contributions to art practitioner knowledge, or what might they be, or what might be the shape of what the contribution would be, as opposed to just producing some more still lives, 1995 style?
New speaker (female):
I think this is a lot, for me now, but I wish that we had more time, because now we just have the time to see, immediately pre-judges. I’m not caring about this presentation of Jeremy. For me now, this has a lot to do about power, and I can also understand the person leaving, because when are you open and willingly, and when you have control? For me, it’s like the art world, having control, who are able to participate in certain exhibitions, who are able to do studies, all the control things, and he is destroying all the control things, but then again, in the end he is saying, but I have a secret. I have my comment, that are silent to me, where I’m totally not open at all, and the people have to sign that they’re not going to, my secret is not going to be told to anybody. In a way, that end in a way, provokes me, about him asking everybody to enter as an educated and powerful people playing a power game, and then in the end, not being that open himself at all, because he says here, I have sworn to silence. I can’t put all my words to this, but I’ve started thinking about it.
Tom:
It’s an important point, and then the question is, to what extent, what do you do if you openly assert, in an interview which is going public, in the way that this has now gone public – I’ve put that segment on the board, that you are engaged in something which is too secret to tell anybody while it’s going on, is that a higher level of power game, or is it a way of taking, of not having the power game, because if you were really engaged in a power game, you wouldn’t tell anybody you were engaged in it, so there’s a contradictory or paradoxical nature of being engaged in a power game which says, I’m engaged in a power game, and please notice that I am, so that’s not an answer to your question, but this is an interview he gave, and this is, these are extracts from his interview which are being presented to you as people interested in art, and come to discuss it, so bear that in mind when you think about, what is the power for? I mean, I would say, following Fuco (? 1:01:05), that we are all unfortunately always engaged in a power game. There isn’t anybody who isn’t, and therefore the question is, what happens if you engage in a certain sort of power game, and draw attention to the fact that you are just in a power game, and this is going on, and I don’t know what the answer to that is, but that needs to be thought about.
New speaker (female):
I’m sitting here, and I’m struggling with, all the time, that people took a picture of my hand, and I cannot get away from that, and I was thinking, oh, my mobile is also taking a picture of my finger all the time!
Tom:
(he laughs) Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh!
Female speaker (continued):
But I really, it makes kind of sense of this consciousness, it makes for me, in the things that you are not really conscious about maybe. It’s again, the situation that I am in, without knowing that I am in, and everybody is in. Everybody has it, and it becomes like, an everybody thing, that it’s okay, because everybody …
Tom:
Okay, well somebody has said that there won’t be such a thing as privacy in twenty years’ time, because all the trans-national companies will have so much data from absolutely everything, that privacy is, oh so last century, but anyway, and this, in a sense, may be embodying that to some extent. On the other hand, it’s making it explicit, which is different, and the question is, what is being learnt for art, if anything, out of these experiments? What is it, being learnt about our type of situation, namely we are never in control of all our context, like Britain is going for Brexit because we wish to take back control of our borders, which is a totally ludicrous idea, because there’s no way it’s ever going to … that is not what’s going to happen, so similarly we aren’t going to get back privacy, and we aren’t going to get back total knowledge of all the games that we are part of. The question is, in this particular thing, what can be learnt for art about this set of experiments in which people are not quite certain? – not always quite certain of what they are. I mean, the elders presumably, when they’re being interviewed about why they presumably, I don’t know, why they didn’t go on as art practitioners, would be one question, and did they get anything from having studied art, when they went on to do whatever else they want to do? They would know what they were saying. The hand, I’m not sure about, and other things are a bit uncertain, as to whether there’s any feedback to the people involved. I get the sense that there isn’t, but I might be wrong, but what does art, what do we learn about art practice and art practitioners, from this? – and I’m going to have to stop, seven minutes ago, but I’ll go on for one minute, and just pretend it’s one minute to three.
New speaker (female):
No, my answer to that takes more than one minute, and I have a story, and I think you will enjoy it, but it takes more than one minute.
Tom:
Two minutes?
Female speaker (continued):
No, no. I’ll make it short, but the short version takes more than …
Tom:
Okay, well I think what we’ll have to do is to stop, and if anybody wants to hear your story, then they should stay. I’m very happy to stay, but anybody who knows that they were leaving seven minutes ago, and it’s now three o’clock, then I just want to say thank you very much for coming along. I’ve certainly got lots for my research out of the panel, and I hope that you’ve got whatever you’ve got, even if it’s a feeling of creative or uncreative discomfort. Anyway, thanks very much, and if you wish to stay around for your story, then that’s fine.