An extract from ‘A Social Process of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time’: Work on Conversation, edited by Kate Briggs and Laura Haynes (The Yellow Paper Press, 2024)
The first workshop was intended as a writing workshop. We were going to share our thoughts and questions and experiences of conversation and then do some writing. An invitation was sent out to the School of Fine Art community inviting anyone with an interest (or a potential interest) in the thematic to join. Conversation—described by the invitation—as, among other things, a form of social involvement. Possibly as Henry Fielding describes it in his ‘Essay on Conversation’ (1741): the ‘grand business of our lives, the foundation of everything either useful or pleasant…’. As something that happens around or happens to or essentially supports a practice. As a modality of teaching and learning. As a material, potentially, in and of itself. (What if a conversation is the artwork?).
The meeting lasted for two hours.
We introduced ourselves, we introduced ourselves, we introduced ourselves.
On Zoom.
All we did, in fact, was introduce ourselves. Offering our faces to each other, our names, our situations within the institution (student, staff, which department, which programme); bits of information about our work.
Then someone said (at the very end): You know what?
I hate group discussions.