The objection takes place in a tungsten-lit room when it’s dark outside. It begins when everyone is seated, arranged at a central table. The chairs are forceful and once in position the participants feel a crushing burden to abide. They have circled to unwind the object and the object’s subject and this is the point where the subjects object. Within these walls, in seclusion, a real-life drama is to be enacted. They have gathered to present and debate a paradox: the paradox of the relationship between an object [its constituent components] and its history and effects [the story or plot attendant to its existence and consistency]. All at this point are pragmatists—they have answers and believe that solutions probably exist. One member stands to define the conditions for the animation of a material object in words. This member contributes that all words should start with the object. That language—visceral in its description—should inhabit the object. They believe that the rhetoric which presents the object is what gives it a life in reality. That the ritual that narrates the story constructs the object. But there are objections. And the objections build; they build and build to fuel the thick coal smoke above their social ritual.

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.