Our submission this term will comprise of a curated ‘conversation’ presented in the form of moving image. Dialogue is a key medium of intercultural practice. This term we’re thinking about the qualities of a meaningful conversation and about ethics within cultural norms – how we negotiate difference to generate meaning.
Some notes from class and the brief about what it should be:
- The conversation should be ‘aware of itself’ as a conversation, and aware of its audience (other MAIPers)
- It should demonstrate meaningful dialogue with others, including listening and turn-taking
- It should contain a well-reasoned and well-approached ‘consideration’
- It must be curated through how it is set up, carried out and edited
- In terms of the ethics of dialogue, it should embody my values while considering and honouring the other voice(s)
- It should show awareness of the ethics of creative output and grapple with criticality and creativity.
The learning outcome we will be assessed on is an awareness of the ethics of creative output; and the ethics of conversation. I should be asking what impact does this video have on the world? On the person I’m having the conversation with? Thinking about permissions, negotiation, risk.
The assessment criteria for this task is focused on ‘process’: how well we evidence that we’ve experimented and critically evaluated methods, results and their implications in a range of complex and emergent situations.
The brief encourages us to think about themes that have become relevant to us over the course so far. For me, some of these are:
- How do we gain knowledge and how do we change our minds; ideas of embodied knowing
- Value – what gives art value and meaning; the meeting point of artwork and viewer/world; how art’s value relates to other models of value (economic, social), intrinsic vs instrumental
- The ethics of fictionalising real life
- The ethics of criticism, of reviews, of writing and talking about art
- The beauty of everyday life, the value of revealing complexity, of sonder
- Personal responsibility – how much control we have over how we think, feel, act
- Our understanding of reality, spirituality, self-determination, free will, agency, responsibility (individually and collectively) – as a line of difference that has to be negotiated.
And to collect examples, precedents and material that are relevant to our own sphere of interests. What would these be for me?
- My own writing? Journalistic, criticism and creative – a practice drawn from life, from facts and lived experience
- The work of Quarantine – particularly the use of conversation in art, of creating frames for interaction (No Such Thing; 12 Last Songs) – as well as artists in this sphere, Kate Daley, Sonia Hughes, Lowri Evans
- Everything is Alive podcast – as an example of conversation as art, of practices of empathy
- Marina Abramovic & Ulay: ‘Talking about Similarity’
- Ethical Aesthetics /Aesthetic Ethics: The Case of Bakhtin by Prof. Dr. Sevda Çalışkan. T
- Carla Lonzi’s thoughts on cultural criticism and her interviews ‘Self-portrait’ (Autoritratto)
- Lights On by Annaka Harris – breaking modes of thinking about consciousness
- Critics at Large – the New Yorker podcast
- On Being with Krista Tippett
- The work of Ben Buckland, particularly his project trekking across Switzerland by asking for hand-drawn maps (creating a story through interaction with others)
Where do I want to build skills with this submission?
- Creating well-balanced, informed, generative discourse
- Contributing to cultural criticism?
- Exploring what the role of art is
So far this term, my thinking has been circling around ideas of responsibility and consciousness. One idea I’ve had is to produce a piece of cultural criticism centred on the Netflix series Adolescence, which I’ve written about on this blog. I would put myself in dialogue with the creators of the show through what they’ve said about it publicly, as well as public reaction from around the world, and perhaps record an additional conversation between myself and someone else in which we use the show as a jumping-off point to consider the ethics of art making and more broadly of ideas of individual/collective responsibility.
However, I think I may be disappointed that I’ve missed an opportunity to produce something that feels more like a piece of art in its own right. Thinking around these topics and why they are drawing me in right now, I keep coming back to the idea of decisions. I think it gets to the heart of most of the things that are interesting me right now. I wonder about a project that invites people to share experiences of decision-making (a decision made; or a decision in process) through conversation. Or perhaps a conversation with just one person about how they feel in relation to a particular decision, but without revealing what that decision is, so it becomes a broader, more relatable conversation.
I’m interested in decisions
In the anticipation, the in-between space of when a decision is not yet made, when more than one outcome is possible
In how we arrive at a decision
In the moment of taking a decision – a moment of change/transformation – but how sometimes this needs to be repeated
In whether what we choose is inevitable
In whether we feel that a decision was our own
In how we take responsibility for our decisions – or not
In holding on or letting go
What have you decided recently? Or are you currently deciding something?
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