Since the narrative accounts were so pivotal to my research project, it ended being structured in a way that not much could happen before I had started to collect the data. This had the unfortunate consequence of delaying my start because when I was appointed to start my PhD the school had no ethics committee to evaluate my ethical framework, since I am will be dealing directly with people's stories.
This phase of the project was set out to find, interview, and record the narratives, focusing on lived experiences of events that happened to them in public spaces. The starting place for this phase is to capture a detailed account of ‘what happened’. The data was then to be written into stories only using the words of their narrators. The main idea is to find out how the narrators – through their lived experiences – are writing themselves into the fabric of the Norwegian society and story. It is perhaps best to think of my role during this phase as an amplifier. These are not my stories, I am just another one of the loudspeakers through which they are to pass.
I will reflect on the process of realising these objectives.
On the data collection process
On narrators
In this research, I have already defined what a narrator is, but in this section, I will focus on giving a profile of the narrators who participated in the research. I can only provide a limited profile though because, under Norwegian law, the ethical clearance stipulates requirements for processing sensitive personal data must be met, such as:
· There should be no systematic processing of sensitive personal information about
racial or ethnic origin and religion, such as grouping or sorting.
· Health information must not be recorded in the project.
· Information security requirements in projects that treat sensitive personal information must be obtained.
I interviewed over 50 people, which produced around 170 hours of recorded audio data and took over three months to transcribe. At the time of the interviews, each narrator was a legal Norwegian resident/citizen who self-identified with having a background or heritage from elsewhere. Most of them were ‘first-generation migrant’, which denotes people who were born outside of Norway and emigrated, mostly as adults. A small number of them were ‘second-generation migrants’, which denotes people whose parents have emigrated before they were born, or who emigrated with their families at a very early age. The minimum age to participate in the research was 18 years old. At the time of the interviews, the narrators’ ages ranged from 18 to 79 years old. There was an insignificant difference in the gender balance of the narrators interviewed.
Evidently, the group sample was not homogenous. It consisted of narrators of varying gender, age, nationality, language, education background, etc.
On self-identification
Since there can be a gap between how people are classified and how they themselves identify, it was important for this project that I do not prescribe who fits into this framework but leave it to the potential narrators to self-identify as such. This was also to ensure that we interview people who see their positionality as a departure point for what I am trying to achieve with the project. Self-identification ensures that the participants truly perceive themselves as belonging to the targeted demographic. This authenticity is essential because it means the participants' experiences, perspectives, and cultural contexts are genuinely reflective of the group being studied. There was an attempt made to respect the narrator’s agency and acknowledge their personal understanding of their identity. It helped me to avoid assumptions and biases about who fits into certain categories. Imposing an external label or assumption about their background can be intrusive and disrespectful. In fact, several people who had backgrounds from elsewhere, one of whom really wanted to participate in the research, chose not to do so because even though their heritage from somewhere else is a factual statement, it does not reflect how they self-identify, something which had to be respected.
I also felt like narrators who self-identify as the targeted background are most likely to feel that the research is relevant to them and be more likely to engage meaningfully and provide thoughtful, nuanced perspectives. Lastly, I wanted the relevant narrators to feel like a part of their identity is being respected and recognized, which allowed both parties to trust the research process. Testament to this, I was gobsmacked by the generosity of the narrators and how quickly they opened up to the process. It can be surreal to meet someone for the first time and interview you about intimate details of your life. The vulnerability required to undertake this process is a delicate art.
On the recruitment process
How were the participants found and chosen?
As a newly arrived ‘immigrant’ myself with limited circles in Norway, the most convenient way to launch the recruitment of narrators was to start with my own personal networks of people I already knew. Thus, at the start of the research, I had planned to enlist participants using a snowballing method[1]. My thinking was that once I had recruited several people, I would then use the snowballing effect to find more. That is, I would ask those who had already agreed to participate in the study to reach out to their own networks and communities to find other people to enlist in the project.
As with many “convenience sampling” approaches, there was a danger that my research could end up staying within my friends and friends’ friends circles. Therefore, it was vital to reach out to people beyond my networks. To avoid this weakness in my sampling, I targeted and attended seminars, conferences, social and political events related to immigrants or multiculturalism in Norway, where I could meet not only my potential narrators but also the ‘gatekeepers’ (Wanat, 2008) – referring to the people organising these events, who either have administrative positions or in-depth knowledge about this target group in Norway. These gatekeepers would be crucial in the task of helping me to gain access to these immigrant/multicultural communities and meet many of my potential recruits. However, due to the unexpected impact of the coronavirus situation, many such events were cancelled. Like everyone else, this forced me to work online – and recruit online.
This became a challenging problem as people were not respondent on email. It was difficult to get a response even from people I had already met and talked to about the project – never mind reaching people I had no prior contact with. It felt like I was taking a shot in the dark and receiving very few returns. The online recruitment also limited my access to younger people, as the older generation was not very active online. Thankfully, once the snowballing effect was in full swing, I was able to compensate for the drawback and managed to reach enough narrators. Alas, the process just took way longer than anticipated, delaying so much of my process.
On developing and conducting interviews
Narrative research is unique in that it is propelled by questions instead of answers. The key laid in generating inclusive, open-ended interview questions that narrators can respond to with detailed, personal experiences. This not only makes for a successful interview, but also reflects the oral history’s ‘fundamental’ of honouring individuals. The central or leading question used in the interview probed memories of encounters that shook their lives to the core or were seen as meaningful, especially those that have happened in public spaces. The focus here is not only on ‘what happened’ but also ‘where it happened’.
The potential narrators were given a sense of what the interview would be like in the recruitment communication as well. It stated that every narrator will be asked to share an important event or story that happened to them.
It must be something that has – in some way – shook your life to the core. In other words, it could represent an important turning point in your life, which makes it one of those ‘unforgettable’ moments, imbuing the event with a memorable personal value. Evidently, this is an event that you remember well and can still tell others about in great detail. For example, it can be about how you fell in love or lost something important to you, etc. It can be something amazing, sad, happy, tragic, funny, heroic, etc. as long it has had an influential effect on you. Notably, it needs to be something that happened to you in a public space. This is necessary because part of this project may include turning your story into a public ‘monument’ that will be installed on the exact same spot or location where your story took place – as a way to commemorate the narrated event.
The interview process revealed that people’s stories don’t always neatly fit into our proposed theoretical frameworks. I went looking for stories of people’s lived experiences, especially those experienced as transformational, life changing or important that needs to have happened in a public space. The justification for this was so that I can access those public spaces where the narrated events happened, and potentially install monuments on the sites. In my mind, it was assumed that the narrated event would happen in a given time, at a given place. Closed time. Closed place. However, the reality has been that some events are told in open time and open place (i.e. it happens over a prolonged time, and at various places). Now my project framework had to be expanded to accommodate these new developments.
Although this has never been an explicit demand, I had only really planned to attract stories of people who are based in Oslo only because logistically it would make my life easier. But just because you meet people in Oslo, doesn’t mean that most of their lives were spent here. I have now interviewed people whose stories are based in different parts of Norway and some who are even integrally connected to other places abroad. When I get to the monuments based on these stories, it will also be interesting to see how they will impact the project’s framework. So far, the most persuasive/possible solution is to split the stories into two categories: one for those which are Oslo based and then another for the rest. And then when it comes to making monuments, I would create individual ones for each story that is based in Oslo as planned, but then create a generic monument for all the rest. For example, this could be a concept akin to The Stolpersteine[1] project and install those outside of Oslo.
On addressing power and accountability during interviews
In traditional research models, the researcher often holds more power than other collaborators. It was important to acknowledge and mitigate the implications of this power imbalance and its resulting dynamics. I intentionally wanted to somewhat subvert the power relation and shift it in favour of the narrator. To resolve this, I committed to some guidelines imposing specific restrictions that would allow the narrators to have more control throughout this process. At the beginning of each interview, the narrators were informed that the goal of the research was to give them an ear, not a voice. This placed a strict responsibility on the interviewer to listen, such that the story can only be written in the words of the narrator. A metaphor was also provided which likened the words of the narrators to a sacred scripture, if they were the source of the scripture, the interviewer's work was to be faithful to what he reads/hears. But, to ensure that indeed what he hears is what was said, the narrators would retain the final say in the final draft of their stories. That means every time the interviewer has compiled a draft, he would have to share it with them for approval. In this process, they have the right to change or edit the draft at will. The interviewer can ask follow-up questions about any proposed changes, but he has no power to oppose them. This strong stance allowed the narrators to know that they held the ultimate power in how their stories were going to be shaped. It made it clear what was to be expected from both parties, to allow them to hold me accountable should I fail to deliver on this agreement.
By explicitly agreeing with the narrators, this immediately shifted the power dynamics of our relationship. It also highlighted how important their every word was to this project, something that gave weight to how they chose to speak about themselves. Suddenly, they came face to face with the weight of their own words. The power they hold became palpable. It became clear that they were invited here because they had something to share about their own lives that was worth preserving. Knowing that I was only going to use their words also crystallised my role in the interview process as an active listener who is primarily interested in listening. It was an empowering experience that promoted a sense of ownership in their own stories, making them more committed to the project. This fostered a more trustworthy and productive interview environment. One of the remarkable benefits of this approach was evident when interviewing people who felt like they didn't have much to say when we started the interviews and wanted to be asked questions, but after being given the space to speak, they even managed to surprise themselves that they could speak for hours on end. It was common for many of them to even feel sorry for me. But this is the minimum work giving an ear demand.
It also made it clear that I regarded the narrators as the only experts capable of telling their stories; after all, who could know better about their lives than themselves? Appropriating the 5th principle of the VOW guidelines, my project was also guided by the notion that people can tell their own stories, to allow them room to (re)claim their identities and build their sense of self-worth. Crucially, I didn't want to have the narrators constructed as vulnerable or dependent, but rather as well-informed, expert individuals on their lives.
[1] The Stolpersteine, which translates to "stumbling stones," are memorials from World War II embedded in sidewalks at locations where Jews and other victims resided before being deported and killed by the Nazis. Each stone commemorates an individual, featuring a brass plate inscribed with their name, birth year, year of deportation, and date and place of death.
Writing the data into stories
On turning/translating the data into stories
The translation process began with the transcription of the interviews word for word, followed by editing the transcribed data into stories. I realised that I went into this without a fixed plan of how to structure the process, especially the workflow. I took it at face value that it would work itself out. But when you have over 50 interviews and 170 hours of recorded audio to process, having an efficient workflow makes a tiny difference. Since most interviews began with a rapport and building trust and mutual respect with the narrators, much of that information was not relevant to the stories. Accordingly, the editing process first involved removing/blacking out irrelevant or sensitive information. All the relevant parts from the original transcript were copied into a new document. After which, I switched on 'track changes' so that everything that was edited from this point onwards was tracked, which mostly consisted of moving parts of the texts around to link ideas to make the story cohesive and readable.
Afterward, some narrators were presented with their edited stories for comments and feedback, which came in two versions. Essentially, the story was the same – with only the difference that the first copy came with all the tracked changes visible while the second was clean with the changes accepted. To be transparent, I included the first version so that narrators could choose to see what I was doing to their words and stories. On the clean copy, the editing looks almost invisible, like a simple process, but when one looks at all tracked traces on the other document, it is hard to miss the violence of the editing on their words. It becomes obvious to see that editing is not an innocent process. To make this also apparent and transparent to the public, I am hoping to publish the collection of these stories in the same two versions, too. I want the public to see the lack of innocence in my editing and think about what it means that I was there in the room listening. As a co-collaborator in the telling of their stories, I was not just a quiet character in the room, my listening has consequences. My presence is doing something in that process, and even if it is targeted to be minimised, my role and influence are still intrusive, especially when you see the results. Mind you, this was only the first round of revisioning, after which there's a back and forth to give the narrators the chance to revise the text, deciding what should be excluded/included, to ensure they recognise and see themselves reflected in their own words and stories. Throughout this process, I also asked them to track the changes they made so that we could both see what we were doing to the original text.
In their revisions, there was one thing I asked for that could have potentially impeded their freedom to do as they wished. Since the stories are based on a conversational interview process, it is clear to read that the narrators were not writing them but talking to someone. I asked the narrators to preserve this quality of the texts. The reason is that when the book is published, I see the reading of these stories by the public as a little quiet moment between the narrator and the reader. As if the narrator were whispering their story to the reader, who is attentively listening to their recounting, just like I was and did when the stories were first told to me in the interviews. That is, I want the reader to experience the reading as an intimate moment of giving an ear to the words of the narrator. That's why I have also tried to keep – within reason – some of the fillers the narrators used when they were talking and thinking. These are some of the beautiful reminders that I want the reader to have access to because I don't want to disguise the fact that the narrators are talking. I try to remind the reader that they are being spoken to.
Unlike the VOW book series which has a strict editorial process, my Ph.D. research project has no pressure to necessarily meet a high editorial and literary standard, or rigorously fact-check what is said by the narrators, beyond the unacceptable indecency. In effect, since I am limited to the words of the narrators because of my working method, I made the choice that as a reader of these stories, I want you to be confronted by the narrators and their narratives, to reveal their comprehension or awareness of how their own stories and lives intersect with the world around them or lack thereof.
On writing/editing as a puzzle
In documenting the narrators' storied lives, it was important to give them as much space as possible to speak for themselves. In doing so, how has this way of working affected my storytelling and artistic control? Indeed, this is one of the questions I have been asked many times, if I am confining myself only to the words of the narrators, and giving them the final say in terms of how their stories are written, what, then, is my contribution? Isn't that too limiting? Won't it curb your creative license? Furthermore, when I let an ethical framework take so much room in how I work, what does that bring to the table?
To me, it has been important to understand what is unique about this process, focusing on its merits and how best to use and appreciate that for what it is. To begin with, I must confess that during the initial stages of the editing process, I experienced considerable frustration due to my constraint of adhering strictly to the words of the narrators. There were instances when I envisioned the potential to steer the narrative in a particular direction, but the words on the page did not permit it. In such situations, it became obvious to understand why and how important these restrictions were. Thus, I had no choice but to relinquish my own ideas and stick to the words of the narrators, which is of utmost importance. Once I got over the initial frustrations of what I couldn't do to their words, it became clearer and clearer to see what their words were saying. Suddenly, the writing process emerged as a puzzle, and all the pieces were already on the floor, and my only job was to explore how they fit together. For the first time in my experience, writing became a puzzle-building exercise. A new creative path had opened and all it demanded in return was that I just trust what I have been given, to know that that is enough. Each narrator has left all the important pieces of the puzzle needed for their story to be told. However, it is important to acknowledge that there has been a creative factor involved in this puzzling process. Although I may be facilitating the process of allowing somebody to tell their story, it is critical for both the narrator and readers of the stories to be aware that it is still going through my creative filter, however minimal that may be. I am not just presenting a transcript, but also a part of shaping the information into a story. Despite that, the stories didn't need to be embellished beyond what those puzzles could allow. I don't think I have ever understood a writing process in this way, which became an interesting way to work. After all the puzzling, it warmed my heart when the narrators could still recognise themselves in the stories.
Overall, this experience demonstrated to me that working within well-defined ethical boundaries is not something we need to see just as limiting but as a potential force that can amplify our artistic expression and surprise us with new avenues to rethink or re-imagine our artistic processes and their outcomes. The relationship between ethics and art is a complex and evolving one. The journey of exploring the creative process through an ethical lens is rife with challenges, but the rewards are potentially equally profound. As we navigate the ever-changing landscape of art and ethics, we, artists and researchers, are increasingly called upon to strike an appropriate balance between our creative impulses and our ethical responsibilities.
The Wall Experiment
The Great Wall
When I started thinking about how to meaningfully involve the public across all three phases of the project. This brought an interesting twist to this writing process, one because I struggled with how to invite people into a process that was supposed to be so delicate. At this point, I had already recorded the interviews and the process of transcribing and turning several of them into stories was underway, so it was time to think about how to open and share the process of turning the data into stories. But what was missing was perhaps an exchange or engagement with the reader.
In 2021, when I was presenting the project during our Artistic Research Week (ARW), I thought about giving the research community at the school (and beyond) a taste of the stories collected. For this, I planned a physical ‘exhibition’ of extracts of the stories to be shared on a wall during the whole ARW, which, unfortunately, did not happen because of the lockdown that forced us to cancel physical activities. But this idea of a wall as a space to hold a physical exhibition later ignited another idea to use the wall as an invitation to open up the working process with the data/stories to the KHiO community. I also saw this as an opportunity to use it as a possible part of my documentation and reflection. The coronavirus situation had forced many of us to work mostly digitally, and I had been concerned with most of my work up to that point only existing in a virtual space. But now that the stories collected were real and not just ideas in my head anymore, I wanted to find a way for them to be alive. To be out there. To give them a part of this ‘public visibility’ I had been talking about. And since I’m also working collaboratively across all the different phases, I wanted to extend that to the writing of the stories which was so far a solitary process.
It was not intuitive to figure out how to open it up to people, without resorting to invited readers. I have worked countless times with this dynamic and it didn’t excite me at all. It lacked the element of a chance encounter with someone unanticipated contributing to the work. But the wall helped to introduce a potential solution: why not put the draft stories on a wall to expose them to the public at KHiO, giving people the possibility to read, comment, and/or propose edits of the stories? Taking that even further, why not open up about the ideas I had for the monuments and allow people to comment on them, too? Wait, if people can read the stories, why not make it possible to also suggest ideas themselves? These were the possibilities that I thought would make the wall interesting for people to engage with. I would also have the wall for the entire duration of my fellowship, so that my project could really inhabit it or take over the wall and make it the physical ‘site’ of my project at KHiO, a site for the KHiO community, especially the students and staff in the theatre department, to engage with my work. I thought this resonated well with my own research title, making the wall a place where something related to my research itself was happening. This will be something akin to what in Norwegian you’d call veggavis.[1]
Now the plan was to update the drafts of the stories, blackout out all the sensitive information, and then post them for everyone to read and comment on. When updated drafts were available, I would not remove the old ones but simply clip the new ones next to the old ones, but simply develop a way to paste/stack them on top of each other. For those who were interested, you could see how the story was developing – showing the traces of the process itself. The same will be done for ideas of monuments and scenes for the theatre play. And as I develop these ideas, too, I will also update them on the wall. Moreover, I will respond to people who leave comments on the wall, and vice versa. I want these small, fragmented conversations to happen on the wall so that they can leave their own physical traces behind. As you can imagine, this wall will be a living, breathing thing, that might even quite literally be the internal heart of my project at KHiO. I will be making a case for my storytelling as a collaborative act/process, and I want this wall to be the physical manifestation of a part of that process both as a documentation and reflection of it.
Going forward, most of my presentations at school were meant to happen around this wall, so that it is always in focus, and activated for people to engage with it.
Activating the wall
Actors:
Mubarak Muse, Victor Kimathi Mati, Hibba Najeeb, Amalie Sasha Schanke, Yara Emilie Medina, Kristine Opsahl, Hawa Janlo, Jawad Aziz, Franklin Mukadi.
While I was working on the wall, I was told that Norwegians are shy people who would probably be too shy to just start writing on the wall out of politeness and that they don’t want to interfere with other people’s work. I was advised to consider making sure that they know they can interact with the wall. After the preparations of the wall were completed, I finally had a physical ‘exhibition’ of the stories and ideas of the monuments, that the artistic community at the school and beyond can engage my work through. Heeding the advice I was given; I slowly began to introduce the wall to the department by visiting several classes and even bringing some of them to the wall itself to talk about the project and extended an invite for them to feel welcome to engage/interact with it. In fact, this was the only reason for putting this great effort into it. I was encouraged to hear people talking about it both to me and to other colleagues.
Now it was time to organise an official launch. At this launch event, I wanted to activate the wall by hosting a presentation of my research project in front of it, work with a group of actors to bring some of the stories on the wall to life, and then afterwards, invite the public to interact with the wall and the displayed research material. Luckily, the next Artistic Research Week was around the corner around the same time as I was working with the Nordic Black Xpressen group. As I said earlier, I wanted to find a way for the stories to be alive. To be out there. To give them this ‘public visibility’ I have been talking about. I thought the best thing would be to have the stories that were on the wall being performed by the students on-site, in front of the wall itself. This felt like a good way to ‘open’ them up to the public. I assigned each student a story and we worked to summarise each one to a page (following plot points that I will discuss in more detail in the last part of this reflection). I gave them a task to come up with three images (i.e. tableaus), one to mark the beginning of a journey, another the middle, and the last one an end.
The idea was for each actor to become the ‘living’ embodiment of their stories, like it leaped from the wall onto the corridor. This was borrowing or following along the lines of Mette Edvardsen’s idea of the ‘living book’[1], but instead of a book, I wanted the actors to be ‘living stories’, making each one of them introduce themselves as the narrators behind the stories. Additionally, each actor would be standing on a spot (on the map) that represents the geographical location where the narrator was born. All the narrators would tell us a story of where they were born, they will tell us about their journey of how they moved from ‘elsewhere’ to Norway. Through this journey, we see how they all start at different places and slowly move into the centre, Norway, the intersectional point in our map where all the stories meet.
At the end of the exhibition/performance/presentation, the public was invited to interact with the wall. (Each participant was offered a pen). It was also even possible for the public to ask the ‘living stories’ (aka narrators/actors) questions, etc. Thankfully, even with all the COVID regulations we had to navigate, some people who attended the event managed to interact with the material and even left comments/reactions to the performance and some suggestions of ideas for monuments on the wall.
For a moment, it seemed like my plan to invite people to read and comment and/or propose edits of the stories was going to work. Going forward, I was also planning to use the wall – whenever possible – to host my presentations at school around the wall, so that it is always in focus, and activated for people to engage with it.
The following weeks and months went by and apart from those initial comments, my veggavis was struggling to gain further traction. Apart from spam, no one seems to be engaging with it. Of course, lack of feedback doesn’t necessarily mean that people are not reading what is on the wall – in fact, I have met several people who are now referring to the corridor as my ‘wall’, which, at least means that the wall is achieving some of the objectives. But the most important one is to draw people to engage, and it seems like I have failed to present the stories in a way that could encourage further participation.
It was during this period that I had to go on my paternity leave, the wall effectively died during this long period of my absence.
Lack of engagement: the failed interactive experiment
This wall was conceived as something that would be like the heartbeat of my work at KHiO, a place where my practice could be materialised, and I would bring all the different things I was working with for the KHiO community to engage and respond. I was really trying to open up my process, and since this was during COVID days, I was not imagining many people gathering there to read the stories, but a person now and again sitting there. Most importantly, it was an attempt to think about how to reach KHiO as a public. Unfortunately, in the first few weeks/months, the school community did not react to the wall, and many months later when they did, it was just spam. Today the wall is full of interactions, people have left messages to each other, posted about their shows, etc. They have clearly engaged with the object of the wall but not my materials on it. Safe to say, my attempt did not quite materialise the kind of engagement I was hoping for.
I was quite confused by this paradox of the resulting lack of response to my work but the overuse of the platform itself. To try to understand this failure, I discussed it with my supervisor to think through it and we were able to identify some potential reasons why the wall may not have resulted in the desired outcome. 1) As a marketing choice, the wall was not visually or aesthetically interesting enough to grab people’s attention or inviting enough for people to engage with it. after all, I am not a graphic designer. 2) Since KHiO is an art institution, there is often a surplus of artistic work being presented all over the space. 3) People were just too busy to engage with it. 4) People were just not interested enough to actually engage with the project.
Firstly, I think a big part of it is my fault, that I didn't quite activate that wall in a way that seems to have brought people in. I was sure that presenting the wall directly to different classes in my department would make them feel like they had permission to interact with the wall, but that also failed. And of course, this is part of the risk we take when we experiment with new ideas and strategies. And I wholeheartedly accept this responsibility. But it also raises some implications for us as an artistic community - or lack thereof. The fact that I opened my work to an entire artistic community and spam was the engagement that came forth is quite confusing.
Even though I have failed to get people to engage with the wall, it seems like many have noticed the wall itself. Certainly, many people have been talking to me about it. So on some level, they have been witnessing it. But it would also be a problematic thing to say that engagement can only derive from visually exciting things. There should still be ways to invite people into our work that do not rely on the marketing aspect of it. This is largely why I went to present the wall to the students and activating it at the artistic research week to announce it to my community. Also, the wall has been a durational invitation. If it was there for a week, or even a month, I could accept that people just didn't have the time or it didn't grab them, and it wasn't there long enough for them to really engage. But now it has been over two years. The irony is that the wall has been engaged throughout these years. In fact, write now most of the surface area made available for people to leave feedback/comments is full. There's very little writing surface left anymore. So people are engaging heavily with the wall. It's just not about my research. There has been a great deal of engagement with that wall. It's just 99.9% of it has just had the misfortune of not being about my project. And for me, that breaks the illusion or the idea that the wall is not visible enough.
In many ways, I think it would have been okay if no one interacted with the wall at all because then I could say, this really failed to activate people. But for all the interactions that have happened there to not be about the project, and for anyone who wrote on the wall not to find that strange that they are writing on a wall that invites them to engage in a specific way. The impression I was given of Norwegians being shy and not really wanting to mess with other people's work does not hold anymore.
As this is my part of my artistic work, I'm willing to take all the responsibility for the engagement that has happened, or lack thereof. But I'm also aware of the fact that I'm doing this work and collecting these stories that are not well represented in the public inscriptions because they lack engagement from ethnic Norwegians. And then I'm putting them in an artistic institution that is mostly dominated by ethnic Norwegians and the same lack of engagement is reproduced. No one owes this project any engagement with it, but I think it's a missed opportunity that these kinds of risks that artists take to open their work can't even be done in an art institution. I simply fail to understand what are we even doing in an art institution, if we are not curious about each other's work? What is the point? The more I reflect on this, the more questions it raises.
Phase one collapsing into phase two
After the experiment to make KHiO community part of writing the stories failed, I lost the angst to publish the stories in any way that would be interactive. This was mostly because when it came down to how to make the book reading experience an interactive activity that would also be bringing a meaningful element to the interactivity, I couldn’t find a convincing artistic way to do it. Since this is not something that falls within my expertise, I did not have the liberty – time wise – to launch into another experiment.
So, instead of the book being a separate thing, I started to think about how to embed them into their respective monu(mo)ments as well, so that the audience can access them through their interactions with the monu(mo)ments. Here is a booklet I made of them, but apart from this reflection, they will be accessible via the monu(mo)ments.
