Parallel dialogues

Abstract

This paper was presented by Elena Cologni and Rhiannon Jones and was delivered at Nottingham Contemporary for InDialogue Symposium 2016.

The paper set out to provide some provocations found through their shared, or parallel dialogues. They described how their practices share a commonality, they both work within the contextual frame named ‘the dialogic’ or, as both having ‘dialogic practices’. These overlaps provided a framework from which the paper emerged dialogically, through conversation.

Their individual approaches and practices utilise a performative and experiential approach, the orchestration of space, and the dialogic architectures of site and body. The paper provided a series of provocations - such as how is dialogue used in our practice and how do you define conversation? The paper resulted in a series of discussions, sharing of theoretical frameworks that both presenters use in their research to facilitate practice. The paper set out the context and territory for each of their 'parallel' and dialogic practices for other researchers to engage with the discourse.

Parallel Dialogues was the result of a series of conversations between Rhiannon Jones and Elena Cologni which were then turned into a research framework for the paper, The paper became an example of a live process of practice as research through its iterative and reactive series of provocations and open ended dialogue in order to use the paper as both a conversation starter and as part of testing a new methodology for dialogic provocations as practice as research.

The working paper for the artists was also a key text for them to discuss their practice research with one another, and with the InDialogue delegates (other artists and researchers) and collectively it sparked a wider discourse about the form and shape of papers, the performativity of papers and its relationship to dialogue.