Interviewing as a practice takes various functions for artists: it can be a research method to investigate subject matters, a working material to deal with and a form or medium of the artistic outcome itself. Artist’s strategies as interviewers and interviewees will be at the center of this pool seminar (e.g. Sonja Bäumel, Marcel Broodthaers, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Anri Sala, Ingrid Wildi, among others). With selected examples, we will question interview techniques, share our own experiences and explore challenges in practice. How to prepare for an interview and at the same time be prepared for the unforeseen? And what learnings and creative potentials lie in failures?
Beyond the practical aspects of working with interview formats, the selected examples will allow us to discuss and critically interrogate the societal role and potentials of the interview. How does the format contribute to the capitalist logics of the attention economy in today’s information society? What power relations are implied in quantitative surveys and scientific standards of the interview as a tool? And how can artistic ways of dealing with conversations introduce collective self-reflection and enhance transformative power?
Echoing Donna Haraway’s concept of response-ability, we introduce a hyphen into inter-view. The break between the two parts of the word adds more than a hesitation into the pronunciation: it allows us to focus on the in-between, the relational dimension of every conversation and the potentials of communication beyond discursive language and face-to-face situations.
About the lecturers:
Laura von Niederhäusern is an artist-researcher situating her practice in the fields of essayistic filmmaking, installations and writing. She recently concluded her practice-based PhD-project in which a self-made camera played a specific role for creating space-time of inter-views with a child and an environment of dementia care.
Julie Born Schwartz is artist and researcher constructing large scale narratives in mixed-media installations. Each of her projects start with conversations and are typified by a strong commitment to people and the stories they tell.
Ellie Kyungran Heo is an artist exploring socio-ecological solidarity, conflict and coexistence through time-based media and inter-/transdisciplinary research. Her PhD project investigates artistic strategies to promote the perception of plants among people diagnosed with “plant blindness”. These strategies are currently underway with cross-sensorial settings to amplify plant detection.
Marit Mihklepp is an artist-researcher interested in conversations that stretch beyond the human language, body and timescale. Her work includes instructed experiences, video pieces, performative lectures and listening exercises. Currently, she is making preparations to inter-view three meteorites and their craters.
For more information on the projects on the lecturers:
https://www.zhdk.ch/en/doctoralstudies/transforming-environments-10710