Dialogues was instigated by Elisavet Kalpaxi with the valuable help and support of Konstantinos Panapakidis.

Complete list of participating artists:

Thanasis Foteinias, Nela Milic, Marie Molterer, Basil Olton, Messua Poulin Wolff, Ann Shuptrine, Klaus Wehner, and Wei-Hsiang Weng.

The project was presented at Connective Symposium by Elisavet Kalpaxi. The presentation included contributions from some of the project participants: Marie Molterer, Messua Poulin Wolff, Wei-Hsiang Weng, who joined the presentation via zoom, and Ann Shuptrine, who joined the symposium and contributed with a performance workshop inspired by principles of connectivity and the ethos of Dialogues.

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The artists and their work

The first instance of Dialogues in July 2022 involved eight artists: Thanasis Foteinias, Nela Milic, Marie Molterer, Basil Olton, Messua Poulin Wolff, Ann Shuptrine, Klaus Wehner, and Wei-Hsiang Weng.

For more information on the work, click on the images.

The artworks’ semiotic economy was enriched in a rather complex way by the space that the works were shown in.

The first instance of Dialogues in July 2022 involved eight artists. The eight artists were already part of our social or professional circles. The initial selection of artists was influenced by their practice or research, their understanding of the project and expressed interest in participating and connecting through the project. Following the initial selection of artists, the next step was to pair the artists together for the exchange. Unlike thematic exhibitions, similarities or parallels in the artists’ work and shared interests were not factors in pairing the artists. Different combinations encouraged envisioning different interactions. However, this was followed by a conscious effort to not curate the exchange and define the success of the project in such terms. The project’s aim of connecting through the work could be achieved in all potential combinations, given that the artists received the work, and engaged with the work and its exhibition. Dialogues aimed to allow interactions to emerge through interfacing with the work. Therefore, the planning of the artist pairs was mainly influenced by practical considerations in order to minimize potential problems that would prevent the actualisation of the exchange. It took into account the format and scale of the work, available spaces and equipment, but also locations, travel plans, transportation needs and cost. Some interesting observations emerged, as if the works themselves were establishing their own dialogues. An example is the use of ‘earth’ and centrality of spatiality in both Basil Olton’s and Ann Shuptrine’s work. Marie Molterer and Nela Milic have both worked extensively on participatory projects, Messua Poulin Wolff’s and Wei-Hsiang Weng’s work shares a focus on the study of the natural world. Both Klaus Wehner’s and Thanasis Foteinias’ practices are influenced by their preoccupation with collecting. Some of the artists started dialogues in person and/or online immediately after they were paired. The transcript of one of these discussions can be found on the right. However, similarities or shared concerns in the partnered artists’ work were not pre-mediated.

The gif on the left shows how the work looked when installed and streamed from the artists’ spaces on the project’s website. On the website the windows could be enlarged, offering a full-screen view of each space.

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Transcript of conversation between Wei-Hsiang Weng, Marie Molterer, and Messua Poulin Wolff

August 2022

M.M.: So how did you like your collaboration? I looked at your work, and it's so interesting. I said to Messua before, I'm from a textile background, so of course I was very interested in the dyeing. But your work, Wei, is also incredibly interesting. The puddle, the negative space, is amazing!

M.P.W.: I think all our practice relates in a weird way together. I was thinking a bit about it today. I really think they are echoing one another in a really interesting way. But just to ask [Marie], did you have a streaming problem?

M.M.: Yes, yes, it was a problem in Serbia and Nela wasn't there. So, we didn't have a dialogue in the end, which was a shame because I was looking forward. Her work is very nice, and I screamed it nevertheless. I'm sharing the file with you. This is how I displayed the work. It was nice to invite her work into my space. It really made it into my subconscious, even if we didn't have a dialogue. I said to Elsa [Elisavet] before, I was driving the other day and I was even thinking about a performance that would respond to her performance. Her photographs are about women marrying lampposts and British landmarks to escape the Brexit visa situation, and I was just in my head thinking, ‘how I could respond to that?’, throw a bridal party or something. It just made it in my head, you know, because you have the work. Surely, you must have had the same experience, you start to really think about it. I mean, in your work, both of it, nature plays a big part, which is really nice. So, it really fits together actually.

W.H.W.: I also like the works, both of yours, and I feel quite interested. Messua’s work is about the natural side and her work was exhibited in my backyard. The fabric was moved by the wind, and it was surrounded by green. There's a—kind of—return to nature, the essence of natural things, and I think that fits quite well in this event. Yes… and sometimes the cat would walk into the camera. That's amazing I quite enjoyed this.

M.M.: Is your work a sculpture, or how do you define your work?

W.H.W.: Yes, they are sculptures. They are, uh, a materialised virtual reality. So, the idea is how do we train AI to recognise our reality? How do we need to train and teach machines how to recognise a shape, and give them a bunch of data so they can slowly learn how to recognize the shape of a puddle? But they also recognise the reflection on the water surface as part of reality and this generates some kind of noise. So, I just 3-d print the information, and this is the material outcome. Artificial intelligence, as a process, is completely different to our cognition and how we understand our reality. So, this is a different form of intelligence.

M.P.W.: What you just said about the need to learn and that through more learning there will also be more recognition and more practice, forms a nice parallel probably in-between all of our practice. In relation to my work, for instance, there is a big part within that is about the action of making and doing, and the knowledge that is gained. I did not grow up in the countryside and I'm quite bad with plants, but obviously through my practice I'm now more and more able to recognize which plant to use, etc. And I just think, if I understand well, in how you work, Marie, there is this process of learning within collaborative making. I think there is a really nice parallel, as you said, AI and humanity illustrate different forms of learning. I think it is always easy to try and humanise AI, but I really think that it fuses notions of process and translation. There is this thread that links up our practice even if they are coming from different points of view.

M.M.: You know what? What I really like, if I understand this correctly, is that with capturing these forms, you try to capture these elements too. You sort of try to create a database. You collect data as well as forms, right? That's such a good project… sort of smart.

I went to RCA like you guys. After I graduated, I started to work in Amsterdam and worked for a company that was working half in Morocco and half in Amsterdam. We made carpets with Moroccan crafts women, which was also a collaborative experience. So, my whole work is very much based on collaborative design. I would say it's a bit more low brow, not that much technology involved, but we also had to collect data, in a sort of different way. If you are sponsored by an aid organisation, for example, you have to collect certain data. You just have to collect research data all the time. We did this workshop, that I did with children also, which was about saying out a word, and then everybody had to, for example, draw this word out of their imagination, what it means. And the words could be very abstract. We did it with ‘open’ and ‘closed’, and then we did it with paper cuts as well. The shapes that came out were very abstract. Some of them were very different, but sometimes there was an overlap. Obviously our work is very different, but this is where I see the overlap. It wasn't about a surface, but it was about the imagination of everyone involved. Collecting this information was very interesting… compiling it.

So, what are you doing with the data when you collect it?

W.H.W.: Yes, I think that's how we expect AI to do that prediction. But I'm particularly interested in the failure of AI because we expect machines to recognise something, to take over our job, to create something, but they are actually not thinking as we, as human beings. I take mis-interpretation maybe in a positive way, trying to see in data what we seem to ignore.

I think something quite interesting is that your work is about the collective, like co-produced work. This idea of collectivity is also reflective of this event. At the very beginning I gave clear instructions on how to set up the work to Messua, but I have not seen Messua’s place. It turned out to be something really nice and which I don't have fully control of. So it's in some degree between the artists. We swapped work, we let other artists to join part of our process, like present the work and with that probably relate it to another context, of the space, and that is also very interesting to me because I'm not in full control. Joining something can be very strong—combined together, it can create something you are not in full control of.

M.M.: Hmm. It's so nice that you have an installation outside. Is it still outside in the in the backyard?

W.H.W.: I took it down now. There was a very strong wind during one of my streams. The work is very calm and peaceful, and it can suddenly become very dramatic responding to the wind.

M.P.W.: It's funny as well, because this work was always intended for the outside.

It was a commission for an exhibition that never took place because of COVID, and then it went to an inside space etc., etc.. and finally, in this exercise where we are supposed to re-contextualise the work, the work finally went back to where it should have been.

M.M.: t looks really good outside. Out of all the pieces in the installation it is almost the best I think, because it looks amazing. You installed this really well. It looks fantastic.

M.P.W.: Is it really good? Thank you!

Wei, your work is so delicate, but you know, your work travelled… I did a bit of a geeky calculation earlier to see how many miles the work has done in two weeks with me, and it did at least 800 miles, or something ridiculous like that. A lot of the time it was hidden. I'm and also really sad because, you know, you used an AI scanner, or whatever is the exact name of your mysterious technology, and I really wanted to know what your work would look like, going through the scanner at the airports. But because I was really scared to be honest, that they were going to tell me to open my suitcase for security reasons—and it looks quite strange—I could never take a picture of the scan. But I really thought, a mistake in data shows a reflection as this design basically. I'm really wondering what another machine looking at it would make of it. We will never know.

M.M.: You know what? When I first saw the work, for some reason, my first impression was that it was the cast. But it's a 3-D print…

M.P.W.: And what's the material? You said it was a specific 3D printing material. Did you say it was shell or sand?

W.H.W.: Yes, it's made out of a compound powder which is made out of shell and plaster.

M.P.W.: That's amazing because 3D printing sometimes looks a bit plasticky. But when you get close, it looks so organic; basically, because of the materials.

M.M.: You can do so much… My brother is doing his own game pieces for fantasy games and you can give it all kinds of interesting surfaces and you can really do a lot with 3D printing.

How did you choose the puddle as a shape?

W.H.W.: Well, I was living in West London and it's just a normal street puddle. The idea is to speak about Artificial Intelligence and use this technology to predict something as we expect it. But I just accidently found that the property of the scanner and also the algorithm of AI cannot really understand how we understand it. We have been taught that this is a reflection. We are training AI, or we will in the future train it to assist, and do some of the work we don't have the ability to finish. But what we call intelligence is just a process, an algorithm that is then written by a human. This process does not involve embedding all of our knowledge. It generates many misinterpretations and when failure comes as a result, it doesn't have any value. I just wanted to think in a reverse way, and collected all this failure, collected all this mis-interpretation and revisited the environments we are within.

M.M.: In language translation programmes they have a lot of this neural learning. I don't know if I translate correctly from German, but nevertheless, I don't know if you have heard about DeepL, it's like a language, a bit like Google Translate, but much better; and with every translation request it gets better.

W.H.W.: Yes, that's exactly that. That's the same thing. But we train the machine to do what we want. I just wanted to work in the opposite way.

M.M.: You have these little mistakes and hiccups, and it’s really cool that you document these, not even a glitch, but more like a different viewpoint, for us, the mistake, I guess, or hiccup.

W.H.W.: When I wrote my dissertation, I read a book that is about object-oriented ontology. This is about the possibility, if you can shift your position, shift your cognition to other things… an object can have its own perception and understanding of the world. I was just thinking as a human being, I can never do that. I recognise my mind, my reality, and that reality is based on the knowledge we all build as human beings. So, I can never bypass my understanding of the world. I just take this notion as an agent, to revisit the world. This is a small idea. And it's not really going deep into the technological novelty of AI. It is more about defining a possible way to reassess the reality that we are in.

M.M.: It’s really current. It's a topic that's going to get more and more relevant for our lives, because now it's almost, to a lot of people, a very futuristic topic. But I think artificial intelligence is getting more and will be more and more part of our everyday lives. So this project is very interesting, actually. A lot of art doesn't really follow technology, so there is really a big space for this kind of art.

W.H.W.: I was wondering, what do you guys think of the livestream thing? Because when I was doing the livestream for Messua’s work, it really depended on the connection of the wifi. So sometimes the image quality was very low. And I was thinking if we are to continue this project, how this could happen? Is the live-stream important? Or do you have other ideas of how to show the work?

M.P.W.: In a way, it was relying on so many factors on our ends. When I was streaming your work first time, I was in the middle of nowhere, so the network was really bad, and I thought it would not work at all, and there were delays. This was again interesting in relation to the work, because you look at how something is supposed to work, and when something goes wrong… And I thought it was ironic for the opening night, me trying to make the streaming work. I think Elsa mentioned care and other things, but, you know, it's not just putting a work there, you really need to attend to it. You need to make sure it works and sometimes it just doesn't work. So, I think actually the livestreaming allowed all these accidents, the thing that doesn't work. You could never stream your work sadly, Marie, because the other person never received it at the other end. But the Internet is also like that. You are linking one point to another, but sometimes there is stuff happen in-between and there is nothing you can do about it. I think the exercise of streaming actually added all these different relationships… To me, it enriched the process. It made all the experience much more tricky. We needed to be all synchronised, even if we were in different places.

M.M.: Also, I found it quite personal.

M.P.W.: Yes, and it's in your house as well! And sometimes you forget that you record, and you are in another room and you go on with your life and then you come back and you think, oh nuts! So I think it is this mix of odd things that make it work.

M.M.: Yes, as I said earlier, it really entered my brain more. I think it is different to visiting a gallery and looking at a work. It really entered my imagination, I have to say. Me and the artist didn't really have a dialogue, but still the work had a dialogue with my subconscious. It's so personal, you know… It's in your space and you sort of really think about it. For example, Brexit, the topic she chose, is a topic that really affected me. I left the UK because I just didn't like the, I don't know…I thought the atmosphere was a bit anti-German. I mean, it was not so dramatic, but Brexit was part of my own experience. Her work resonated with me on a personal level, and I really thought about it quite a lot. So I was really thinking about this a lot, even if we didn't have so much of a dialogue. For me, this format really worked. I mean, okay, it's not like printing your own sneakers at home, because I was thinking when you said you used a 3D printer Wei. People now say, oh, in the future you will order a sneaker and you can print it at your house, and then you have your sneaker. It's like the future of shopping. I was already thinking, is this like the future for art that you can invite an artist into your home? It would be an interesting approach to do more of these art exchanges, because it is such a personal experience. Also with COVID and being really homebound, being a bit isolated, it's an interesting way of inviting someone’s art into your home. I think for me it was a more intense experience than going to a gallery. You probably felt the same. It's such a personal engagement.

M.P.W.: And more sustained as well. I don't know if I didn't understand or not, but you know, the total streaming-time was at least 6 hours. I was on my annual leave, but it was set like a ritual. I did it twice when I was in France, but then when I came back in London, I almost had it every day of the week at different times. So it was like a regular activity, yet on a different pattern. The light might change and then it would be different. I almost miss it to be honest to not to do this today. I did it for a last time yesterday and I was like, ‘oh, wait, this is the end’ kind of thing. I could do this once a week.

M.M.: You could make a permanent installation.

Were you doing painting at the RCA?

M.P.W.: Everyone going out to RCA is going to some department, and then they are doing something totally different.

M.M.: So what were you doing Wei?

W.H.W.: My programme was called Information Experience Design, which is a very tricky name.

M.M.: Is it with Imperial College together?

W.H.W.: No, it's not that one. But we had a sound design pathway, we had moving image, we had experimental design… which is also a tricky name.

M.P.W.: Would there be anything you would have done differently?

M.M.: I think, well, I am obviously a bit sad that the dialogue with my partner didn't happen. Her photos, the one I sent you, is a performance. It would have been interesting to do some kind of a visual exchange. I'm not really a very intellectual artist and it’s not that I would have liked to discuss with her end on end, but maybe we could have done a collaborative piece or something, maybe like a visual response. And I regret that. It's a shame that I didn't have this exchange with her.

M.P.W.: But do you know where your piece is now?

M.M.: Well, it's in Serbia and it's going to come back now. I had a friend who speaks Serbian and he sorted it out. He called the post office and now it's going to come back to me.

M.P.W.: So it did a little run around as well.

M.M.: And I'm so happy I insured it. Because I was at the post office and I was really thinking, you know, it's €30, it's quite expensive, but you know what, I'm going to do it now. Thank God for that. What about you? Would you have done anything differently?

W.H.W.: For me personally, I think maybe, if we have next time, I would probably do something like I make their work half done and leave half for the process, where it's finished by the other artist. My work is pretty much a like a sculpture, but your work and also Messua’s work I feel like can generate a new narrative through the livestream. Maybe we can do something different to a livestream.

M.P.W.: We didn't know each other yet. So everyone was very careful to show the work of the other artists, to feed the idea. We were all really polite, nice, but I think if we also develop a relationship with the collaboration taking over from one artist to another, we might be more free to interact with the work more.

M.M.: Maybe also respond to the work even or something like that, you know, like a message in a bottle. Do you know this game where somebody whispers to each other? Sometimes pieces can have their own meaning, right? Somebody can see something and even if this is their own interpretation, they can get very emotional about it. See a photo or a piece and really like it without even knowing what's behind it, and attach their own meaning, which I find quite nice.

[Zoom Break]

M.P.W.: Um… Yes, it totally disrupted our stream of thought this zoom break.

M.M.: You know what? I have an interesting question out of this sheet of questions. What do you think? Do you think this could be developed further, this way of art exchange or exhibiting livestreaming? What do you think? And In what way?

M.P.W.: Yes, as we kind of start to end, I think it would be interesting to maybe try and do it even more interactive in which the receiving artists, would be more comfortable and almost trying to do, not necessarily a co-production, but to have in some way more freedom, or, as we were saying, present a work that is not yet finished and be finished by someone else, and yes, explore what this means.

M.M: I think that's a great idea. Do you think it's possible to do this with a lot of people, like a huge number, you know, maybe like 200 or something like that?

M.P.W.: Erh... yes. Maybe do one in-between first, but it could definitely and maybe that could be a way to do it, depending on the practice of the other artist. Maybe that could be a way to generate more work as well.

M.M.: Yes.

M.P.W.: More people, yes, it could be crazy. It would be definitely a lot harder to get together.

W.H.W.: For me, the exchange and the process of the work are interesting. But I also feel this experience is limited to the two artists who are swapping their work, and I'm thinking how to make it more engaging to other people. I swapped work with Messua and know more about it through this experience of the work. If I were the viewer, and not the artist, I would be disconnected to the context of both these two artists; and I'm thinking how to make it more engaging. So maybe people could count more, people could take over, and have an additional platform, which would be easier to reach to and people could join the exhibition… I am not too sure.

M.M.: Yes, I like that as well, because I also think that it's very intimate and personal to exchange work like this, but it also would be nice to open it up. It would be also nice to open it to a wider audience, or make it more participatory for more people, but I don't know exactly how that could happen. But yes, I also think that could be really nice, to invite more people into the project. But how exactly, I don't know 100%.

I am thinking about the future, and virtual reality. I know it sounds a bit strange, but I am thinking about what the future of virtual reality is. It is not so far off from making a virtual gallery experience. I mean, we don't have that now, but maybe in a few years in the future, I think that could be really interesting to have glasses at home and be able to almost walk into a virtual room. I don't know.

M.P.W.: Or maybe walk around the room and then when you could arrive to the intimate setting of the artist, maybe already trying to stream, trying to cross realities…

Just to go back to what you're saying on how to include more people within the process, maybe there could be a snowballing effect employed as well, by using Instagram and social network platforms, and rather than having Elsa [Elisavet] and Kostas [Konstantinos] trying to organize everything, there would be self-organization within people. Say you've got 200 people, and rather than having someone consciously telling them, they can have a chat and organize themselves together, and all these little exchanges could become stories. 

M.M.: Yes, it could be an app or something, that matches people. I really like this idea of a chatroulette. It actually was in my head, but I don't even know if it's still online.

M.P.W.:  It can be an art chatroulette. Or maybe because no one is using chat roulette anymore, we could just appropriate the platform—good luck to Elsa and Kostas or anyone who wants to come up with the technology. But if you've got a page with 200 videos, more than individual exchange, you could get all those videos turning up on different time and that could be quite interesting.

M.M.: Definitely. And different time zones as well, all over the world, different environments could be really interesting, because the cultural aspect is also important, right? If we did this worldwide, it would also be completely different. I mean, we all are from different countries already, but also if I would exchange work with somebody in India or Australia, it would be already a different experience because of the different times and more...

W.H.W.: I am thinking also of how to document our experience of the exchange. Maybe encoding data could be quite interesting. And just to add something onto that virtual reality idea, you probably know that there's a 360 degree camera. So, we could be doing the same thing, like a livestream thing, but you can then use your mouse to explore around the space and bring the sense of the private space to the screen.

M.M.: I think what would be really interesting in the future when people have their own virtual reality glasses at home. There's so much potential for this in the future. If somebody has a drone, you can also put the glasses on and then you can see from the drone, like a fly over…wherever the drone flies. And I think that's so interesting for art in the future, for visiting spaces, and that something like that could be shared with a lot of people if the technology, the equipment, is there.

M.P.W.:  Just to come back to Wei, I am thinking that the 360 video in relation to the intimacy of the space in which the work is set would be very interesting because, obviously, the livestream is already curated and involves choosing what you show to the people. For instance, I sent an email to Wei when I came back in London and I was like, okay, my carpet is terrible, and I don't think your work would look good on this old beige carpet. When I set up the work in Normandy, if you look at the wall next to it, it is not painted. So, it's also what you choose to show and what you choose to hide. The 360 setting is playing on another register and obviously is a bit more intrusive, but could be as well.

M.M.: It's like entering another reality. I don't want to use the horrible meta, this word from Facebook, but you know, it could be almost like a comic book that would contain a real other reality, and people could be part of a private experience, almost. It would be interesting to do this without losing the intimate connection I think that you can have with the work when it's in a private space.

M.P.W.: You mentioned that you still streamed the work of the artist, and I don't know about Wei, but when I was streaming the work, I was also in a way in a space in-between; careful to not interrupt the work, but also was like ‘I forgot something there and I need it now. I cannot wait’. But then this is part of the work. This is my home, it's my place of activity, I need to get stuff. So, in a way we self-censor ourselves knowing some things are being recorded. This is something I would change next time.

M.M.:  Okay, I know what you mean, because my friend actually went online and checked the website and she could hear me. It's funny, she lives in Ireland, in Dublin, and she sent me a WhatsApp saying, ‘are you aware that the sound is on, and I can hear everything?’ I was talking to the dog, I was like ‘Lily, raus, raus!’ I mean, she was the only one, I hope, who saw it, but I think that's quite funny. I was alone in my own private space, and I didn't think about the sound.

I think that's so great. That's like an event happening within the work. So, I think that definitely adds to the work in some way. There is someone or something interacting with the work.

W.H.W.: We are doing the livestream thing in our private space and in a way, we open our private space to the public. I remember when I did the live-stream, I tried to be very quiet. Like you said, I didn’t want to generate too much noise. But my neighbour is barbecuing all day and they are playing horrible music and I decided to mute the sound. Now I think I should not have muted it.

M.P.W.:  I placed Wei’s work in a corridor originally, that is a walk through area. So everyone in my family was asking me, ‘but can we walk there?’ And I was like ‘you should not crash the work, but it's okay’. So, in a way, even though the work was supposed to be set in an intimate space, the space suddenly became so public.

M.M.:  It's strange, isn't it, to put something like that on the Internet, especially YouTube? It was so easy. I thought it would be really complicated, but it's not at all. The only thing I was always a bit worried about was the camera. Did you do this as well? After I stopped the recording, I was a bit like ‘hm, I hope, it is off and nobody’s still watching’.

M.P.W.:  Yes, I got to turn it off, and close my laptop directly!

W.H.W.: Does it not bother you if the image quality of the livestream is very bad?

M.P.W.: Well, it was the same for me. Why is that? Is it the Internet connection? But I kind of like the webcam DIY vibes.

W.H.W.: Yes, I like that as well. It doesn't need to be very polished. Most museums have a 3-D archive, like the British Museum, and a 360 degree camera. You can really zoom in and look into the detail of the work. I'm not too sure if this could apply to this event to. I can send you a link…

M.P.W.: It would be really nice to be able to go really close to your work on a video, Wei. It doesn't give justice to the work when you cannot do that.

M.M.: Wei, I looked at your link, and it's so well done.

M.P.W.: Yes, it's incredible. But is it purely a 360 camera, or is there some 3D modelling going into it too?

W.H.W.: I have done this scanning before and it's actually very easy. You can just use your phone, but you need to take a series of photos and try to cover every surface of the object and then just put it into a software, like an auto generate 3D object software.

M.M.: That is interesting, but this is like an object from history. It's more about the artifact, right? I mean, I don't know if it would be good for this project, if it would add something to it or not.

W.H.W.: I'm not too sure if this is suitable for this event, because in a sense you detach that background and detach the context so you can only see the object.

M.M.: I guess it's an ‘unemotional’ display of something. It's really about the object, isn't it? But could be interesting.

M.P.W.: This could be another form or exercise, because changing an object from its context or removing from any context and putting it in this void of nothingness, would not generate the same thing at all, but it could be a variation of the exercise.

M.M.: Well, if you would include 200 people in this, you could have one object displayed in this clinical, detailed manner, and then you could send it to different people from different disciplines and they could interpret it and display it in different ways. That would be interesting, I think, to see. So, you could have the ‘pure’ version of what it actually is. And then you could have from all the different artists, different interpretations or different viewpoints. And this would be the objective viewpoint.

M.P.W.:  So, now we exchanged material objects and changed their context. But what if we start from this like object being a digital scan and then send it to people who would then recontextualize it?

M.M.: It's, sort of, an objective view on something that can be very emotional, and when you display it, it becomes subjective again.

M.P.W.: I think maybe artists next time should also, well, of course talk and care and listen, because one wants to respect the work of other artists, we really want to make it as good as the work could be, but maybe by doing the exercise several times, we could end up at a point being more playful.

M.M.: Or maybe send less precious items, and then you can be more free because you obviously don't want to break someone's work. Also different disciplines can work really interestingly. Who knows what an architect would do with your work. Maybe they would think about a completely different application than a fashion designer, for example, or a performance artist. I think that's really interesting, passing it on.

Transcript of conversation between Ann Shuptrine and Basil Olton

July 2022

B.O.: The idea of this is based on a Russian artist who made works in a corner, and which are supposed to project out to the room, based on religious iconography from Russia. Russians have a lot of altars or statues, which are placed in a corner and they project out to the room. So, this is the idea of this, the positioning of it; also, the idea of projecting. I was thinking more about the corner and how the walls support the piece. So, it's about how the environment supports the work and becomes the work, using that idea of projecting into space. Clay as a Camera is based on the idea of a camera that takes a recording of the space, and this creates an impression. It is based on a manifestation of space, how forms change in the space. To make a recording of a space, you might take a picture of, say, this space here, or I might make a clay form in the corner to take an impression of it instead.

A.S.: What I'm getting from that—I don't know if this is what you mean, maybe I'm kind of adding my interests in it—is that whatever we put in the space, also shapes that space. It gives new meaning to that space, and it creates a different meaning just by its existence.

B.O.: I used to put them into boxes and used the box as the corner. And the idea is that that space could be translated to another place, another corner. The perception of it changes. So, it is based on space and objects, and memory in some shape or form. It is this idea of a photograph and how it records a memory, a space, and clay was trying to do the same sort of thing but just by being there.

A.S.: Right. So, the form of it is the recording of the shape.

B.O.: Yes, the shape of memory, and memory changes shape.

A.S.: Yes…That's really beautiful.

Sometimes I'm aware that when I'm confronted with speaking about something that's quite personal for me, sometimes it's easy for me to relate the context, and sometimes I feel like possibly it's so personal and maybe so meaningful to me that I am blocked.

B.O.: Well, I made the work thinking that it's not personal. But anyway, it always is. I've made work recently, which I thought was completely different to the way I make work. But it is almost the same as I made work 20 years ago. I ended up finding some notes from 20 years ago, and this is where I thought I have not really moved very far away from this. I thought this was completely a new way forth for me, but it is connected to anything I've done. So, you never fall far from the tree. I thought I had, but I hadn’t. And this is quite reassuring for me as well, to know that you are on a particular path and that there is a step-by-step way forward, so there's a progression. ‘A manifestation of memory in space’. That is the term I normally use or have in my head. The words change around in order, but it means same sort of thing. The idea about being projected into space was the new thing for me. I wrote it down a few years ago, but I'd forgotten I wrote it, and when I read that I thought ‘oh, that's what I do. All things are connected.

A.S.: I really appreciate your thinking around it and the conceptual idea around it as well. I have an interest in photography and that's where some of my work originated. I'm really interested in objects and how they give meaning to the stories that they hold. I guess the piece that I'm experimenting with I see as kind of a process piece to help me think about an idea. Rather than an end product, it's something that I'm trying to work through by doing it. Actually, there's a relationship between your piece and mine, because what I'm doing is creating this circle of soil, and part of it is my interest in how our movement shapes and gives meaning to space, and also how our movement in the world shapes not only space, but also culture. I'm also questioning things; what divides us, and also what binds us, to ourselves, to each other and to the earth in a way. It's like this paradox of what's alive and what's dying. I'm kind of exploring that in that piece. But at the essence of it, it's really about shape and form through the body, but also the soil is like a trace. We're standing on some kind of ground that we all share no matter who we are in the world and that has a certain shape to it.

B.O.: True, yes, this is a nice relationship between shape and form. We did an exhibition once based on a John Berger book, ‘The shape of my pocket’. I like ideas on shape and form. Something you said about shape and form reminded me of Vallie Export; she did some photographs of herself making these shapes, which would draw a triangle. She has made different shapes of the body, but then she would start to draw triangular forms on top of a photograph. There is no neutral space. Space is always loaded with meaning.

A.S.: I'm interested in that process when you create something like this, because that's all movement and your actions give rise to this form. When you created it, it may not have had a story to it, but inevitably there is a story. Actually, I'm really interested in that.

B.O.: Yes, well, it's almost like the story comes after sometimes. It does because you start to live with the object, and you might refer back to it for some reason and it stays with you to the future. So, if there's no story of it at the beginning, it kind of forms some story because it moves forward in time. It's moved in time. This creates stories around it. I would never think I would make work in a series. My thought is to label it as something, Clay as Camera, just so it could be part of a family of works. Even if the works change or the title changes, it still is part of a particular project. I quite like the idea of working with a project, cause when we explore something it can be a little bit abstracted, you are separated from it. When you live in it, you don’t actually explore, it is just part of what you're doing.

A.S.: I love that as well. My work takes shape in different ways and sometimes it's more artistic and sometimes it might be that I'm working with a group or something in a workshop. I might talk about exploring something, but actuality, everything that I do with people and on my own, is all about my process of understanding the world.

B.O.: Everything is about that, everything is about understanding the world, whether it's science or any subject. It is about how that particular person understands the world. Science, humanities, whatever it is, an understanding. I like the idea of having an idea and trying to translate it with particular material. So, I might have one idea, but if you use particular materials, you get a different answer. I might use clay or a collage in that way. But also the material could be anything, photography, could be a particular discipline. So is dance or a workshop, a collaborative project. So you might have the same question, but you might be getting a different answer depending on what you're doing. You read different books, but you still have a particular way of thinking and you understand this book through ideas which you've already had or a constructed knowledge which you've already had. You may understand things later in a different way. So hopefully, that understanding grows.

A.S.: Yes, our experience is what we see the world through, and depending on how much we allow life to touch us and what we choose or actually have the privilege to do as well, we have the possibility to be shaped by that also.

B.O.: Yes, exactly.

A.S.: But it doesn't always happen that way.

B.O.: Not at all, but there's always a possibility of that. Some people might just not like it. It could be a conscious choice. If you don't allow something to shape you, you're not going to understand it.

A.S.: One of my interests is dialogue. That's why I was interested in this project. I'm really interested in how we can have dialogue, because dialogue in a way means that we're open to be shaped by the other, and if we're in debate or if we are adversaries then, just like what you said, we cut off that opportunity to be shaped by the other person or by the experience, and so how can we create conditions or the teachings for having dialogue rather than having debate?

B.O.: Yes, a debate. There always has to be a winner in a debate, there is something adversarial about debates, but in dialogue everyone is on equal footing. It's just an open-ended discussion about a particular thing and there's no need to win something. We are talking about things with the object of discussion in the middle.

I never thought I was artistic at all in the past. I will tell you a story about this. Someone sent me a message on Messenger saying, hello, my name is such and such, I don't know if you remember me, but my mother's best friend was talking about you. And she said, when you were at primary school did you go to Broom Barns Primary School in Stevenage? She's my age. Her mum must be at least 80. And then she said, oh, you used to be really good at arts. It must be when I was ten years old. So someone, someone who is 80-85, remembers me from primary school when I was ten years old because I was good at arts. I never, ever picked up a crayon until I was 30. I never thought of myself as artistic in the slightest, even though I remember being in school and looking at someone's drawing and thinking, mine was better than this.

But our art teacher was the head of the Stevenage National Front. The National Front is the precursor of all far right wing movements and he was head of the Stevenage National Front. The council said oh, it's his own personal opinion, it won't colour his profession. Obviously, it does. So, I never thought I was artistic. I started thinking ‘who is this person?’ and I realised it was a teacher. It's a strange story. It happened about a month ago and it's always in my head.

A.S.: And then what happened? How did that make you feel? Did it make you experiment with art or…

B.O.: This happened a month ago. I never thought I was artistic in the slightest until I was 30. But everyone can write a book and everyone can do anything. It is whether they have the opportunities. Everyone has the ability to do things.

A.S.: Did you originally get interested in ceramics?

B.O.: Yes, I did. I began getting interested to art through ceramics, but was introduced to thinking around art through philosophy. I would not call myself a philosopher, but reading about things, reading about different ways of approaching problems and different ways of thinking, I was always like that. Being an artist is one way of questioning or trying to find answers for particular questions. And that's why this project is exciting. It's really good because people come from different perspectives, different countries, and the idea is a dialogue, even though there's really no set question. But because of the fact that everyone's in dialogue, you kind of find a question through the dialogue. It's a nice thing to do as well. I mean, it's a little bit plain. But in a way it is not, it is quite serious because this is what we spent our time doing. There's a seriousness to it as well. Things can be serious and still be plain. I mean hopefully, the most serious things are plain.

A.S.: Do you have a sense, in my space where you might think the work?

B.O.: Well, I look over there… I remember this particular position. But it has not got to be that corner… I like the staircase as well…

A.S.: It might be easier to stream in here somewhere… But I am kind of openminded where it is.

[voices dissolve into the background]

B.O.: Any more ideas about the…

A.S.: The piece? Yes, I think we could do it in your studio space and, like you suggested, maybe we could put it up there where this piece was.

B.O.: Yes.

A.S.: In a way, it doesn't matter who sees it as it's going to be streamed online. Also, the space, whether it's used while it's there or not, it's a space that is used. In that context it has meaning, and I like that aspect of it because it relates to you. Whereas if it was projected out to the street, it would lose its connection to you.  

B.O.: Yes, it becomes something different. If it is displayed out in the street, it means something else and then it becomes more of a display.

A.S.: And that's not really important for this particular thing.

B.O.: Yes.

A.S.: I'm really interested in space and how we create space. Meaning is made in spaces through what we put there, and so I like that there is life there. There's layers of meaning and non-meaning. You know, it's a shell, but then there are also other things within it.

B.O.: That's nice. I was working a lot with space, but I started to move away from that slightly. It had to do a lot with public space and display of power, that also has to do with space, but more than about space in and of itself, it is more about the context. So, it's nice to work with the space as an object in itself.

A.S.: That’s really interesting what you're saying now about power, because if I think about it, it wasn't really what I was intentionally envisioning, although I think it's inherently part of it. Part of the process that I want to do is that it is going to have a few iterations, but that is also part of it, the dynamics of what happens in space This circle that I'm making, maybe the concept is greater than what it is, in a way, but I also see it as this face of collective witnessing, and what happens when we really witness something not as art that we consume or throw away in a way. We might go into a gallery or something and we love something and then we forget about it, and we might watch news that's terrible and really heart-breaking, but then it leaves us and we go on to something else. Part of the way of wanting to progress this work is as a space of collective witnessing, so I am kind of asking the audience, which will now be online, and maybe you or whoever is in space for however much time, to really sense what they notice and feel through what is happening there.

B.O.: Yes. That's good. I like this discussion as well.

A.S.: I will figure out what to do. Yes, I mean, that's kind of part of it.

Postscript - Dialogues 2023:

By December 2023, when the final draft of this article was eventually submitted, four new rounds of Dialogues had already emerged. The links contained on the images below lead to the four new projects’ websites. All four new rounds were different from the first in terms of structure and form. The number of participants varied, with one for them, Joy Miracle Kauya’s Dialogues #20: No Concept of Territory consisting of one person only, and where instead of an actual dialogue, the project offered the opportunity for reflection on the yearning for artistic interaction and challenges entailed (see Dialogues #20 website and Joy Miracle Kauya's reflection below). Dialogues #7: Mycelium, curated by Elena Stamatopoulou, consists of 7 women, who responded to prompts that were inspired by number 7 in the course of 7 weeks. Dialogues #6, curated by Marie Molterer, one of the participants of the first round of Dialogues, focused on the exchange of work between partnered artists, but also on responding on each other’s work. Dialogues #8: Between the Organic and the Spatial, curated by Sef Hidde Hermans, started in August 2023, but is still ongoing, and was prolonged due to extensive discussions between the participants and experimentation on the best ways to present their interactions online. Two more projects are currently under incubation, and many more people have been interested in starting their own dialogues. Dialogues is still about creating opportunities of meaningful exchange between artists and exploring posibilities of artistic connectivity.

Dialogues #8 
Between the Organic and the Spatial

Participants: Gordon Williamson, Emilia Benitez, Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer, and Farout Artistic Research (Beatriz Pomés, Sef Hermans, Igor Saenz)

Curated by Sef Hidde Hermans

August - November 2023

Dialogues #20
No Concept of Territory 

Participants: Joy Miracle Kauya

Curated by Joy Miracle Kauya

August 2023

Dialogues: Reflections and Communications on Process - Joy Miracle Kauya: No Concept of Territory (N.cot)

1. What happened to the artwork during the exhibition?

I’ll just comment on a few:

21 Pilots (exhibit 1): So in twenty-one pilots there was a box and the box was a box throughout the piece of artwork but the interesting thing I found that happened with the box is that it grew, it glowed, it multiplied, it increased; but it also stayed integral to its nature. Even in the increase of the box, the different changes and transitions of that box testified to the nature of the original box. Even when it was alone and in isolation, the forms that came from it were later Expressions of it.

I found that the box in this piece (exhibit one) communicated a sort of richness and identity - an increased ‘wealth’ without loss. And in relation to the theme of not having a concept of territory, I feel like it kind of expanded my perspective of what it means To have a No Concept of Territory Exhibition (N.Cot), to be defined but not be captive to the definition that has been established.

The drawing . . . (exhibit 2): The sentimentality in exhibit two was intentional and pre-conceived when I created it, but I found that as I watched it over, the pace slowed down what I already knew was the essence of the piece. In the artwork, I found that it drove me back in time to reminisce on what the initial thinkers and designers of typewriters and a lot of technologies that we use today were thinking. It made me remember that territory in our now can limit us from seeing the territory that could exist in the future.

...in paint (exhibit 3): so I’ll start by saying that exhibit three was not meant to have sound. Initially when I watched over what was created after it had been exhibited, I was upset because the sound I felt drew away from the reflectiveness I intended the piece to have. After I thought about the artwork more though, I realised that there were a lot of elements to the artwork and it was almost like a deconstructed communication because: it had elements of words, it had elements of sound, it had elements of nature (water, wind and a picture of fire in the moving souls and soul charged objects [being cars]). I feel that the sound added to that deconstructed piece allowed for the piece to be viewed as one piece with individual aspects in it. I feel that it really communicated the nature of the theme. To have No Concept of Territory Exhibition (N.Cot) is interesting because you have that connectedness but you also have that individual quality (it’s) that is not clearly defined so you could exist as separate but connected, yet divided.

2. Any interesting stories about the work's presence in your space, e.g. interesting incidences, or other people's reactions.

So the interesting thing, and this is mentioned on the website, is that we had six artists invited to exhibit, but I, the curator, ended up being the exhibitor. So as I thought of a dialoguing piece created on a digital platform by a solo exhibitor, I thought “how can I still have all of these artists as a part in their essence”? I then decided to arrange the curated communications in a way that was inspired by the different disciplines these artists came from. So we had a designer, we had an archivist, we had a digital designer (that is someone who designs UX VR and 3-D websites), we had painters, we had visual artists (photography and videography) - a plethora of skills. So you would find that in some of the exhibitions things like angles and perspective was incorporated in the design; things like virtual was incorporated - especially in the piece that had dancing stick figures in an aerial taken picture. You also had almost a sense of archiving communications or communicating archives, you had painting pictures and actual painting and painting processes with the community. The interesting thing about the painting element was N.cot was originally meant to be a communal effort and in the painting and drawing aspects, I did actually work with a few community members but I didn’t really consider them as exhibitors in a formal sense but as part of the exhibition. When I was working with them, there was a huge element of capturing collective painting.

3. Are there any links you can identify between your work/practice and your partnered artist's?

So as mentioned, the people or the partnered artists did not actually end up partaking in the piece, and even if I was to compare, I would not see the practice as related with my practice in its function. However, I was exposed to the potential of interdisciplinary practice.

Dialogues #7
Mycelium

Participants: Facta Non Verba (Elena Stamatopoulou, Eleni Ntaga, Antigone Avdi, Nancy  Stamatopoulou, Evi Tzortzi, Marianna Gouzdouva, Mary Maragoudaki)

Curated by Elena Stamatopoulou

October 2023

Dialogues #6

Participants: Alina Dietrich, Cabbage&Kraut (Maria Canavan and Sarah Quinn), Elisavet Kalpaxi, Marie Molterer, Max Molterer, Alei Verspoor

Curated by Marie Molterer

November 2023