This is Not What I Think begins the conclusion to the parallel research project, Social Script, and consolidates my thinking on reciprocity, the trust found between strangers when conversing without known names, why changing where we talk changes how we talk and the freedom given to us when speaking without thinking too deeply before our utterance.
This is Not What I Think is accompanied by two short prose fictions, which are instructional in style, When Initiating a Conversation and When Ending a Conversation. These set the larger questions of the essay within the practice of drills, or habits of good practice which are intended to uphold safe boundaries and protect the hopeful equality of conversation.
This is Not What I Think claims that the role of conversation with learning and teaching practice in art school is both to distill what happened when an artwork is made, and to witness the unpredictability of the making process. Conversation about art making in the fine art studio is presented as a listening technique, a method of observation and a means of provocation.
The essay reflects the polyvocal experience of learning within cohorts, where multiple perspectives and positions are equally disruptive and productive. The natural shattering of entrenched approached to making and presenting artworks come about through practicing in communal studios. This essays captures the momentum created by shifting the foundations of practice through confrontational dialogue.
This essay was written in response to an invitation to participate in the project 'A Social Process of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time': Work on Conversation is a collecting responses, dialogue, exchange and new writing produced as part of writer and translator Dr Kate Briggs' residency in the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art, A Social Process of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time restates Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet's questions 'What is a conversation? What is it “for”? In a life? In a practice? In a pedagogical setting—like an art school?'.
Kate Briggs was in practitioner-in-residence for one year, hosted by the MLitt Art Writing, 2022-2023, and worked with staff and students to consider the site of 'conversation' and practices of conversing, an artfulness requisite to both life and teaching.
'A Social Process of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time': Work on Conversation is edited by Dr Kate Briggs and Dr Laura Haynes, Programme Leader MLitt Art Writing.
