What is it?

A One-on-One Encounter as a format of Participatory Art Based Research connects two people in an exclusive constellation, in which they talk to each other or act together and – by doing so – exchange and produce knowledge. Thus, this format is located at the interface between private and public and may contain confidential moments and information that should be handled with care by the researcher and all people involved. Therefore, the research setting has to take into consideration how to deal with this issue of privacy and the conspiratorial atmosphere that may result from it.

In the postgraduate programmes Assemblies and Participation (2012-2014) and Performing Citizenship (2015-2017), several One-on-One Encounters were developed within various research projects to investigate forms of action-based and activist knowledge in very different contexts and ways, such as Face-to-Face with the Many – Action with Video Calls by Margarita Tsomou (2014), The School of Girls II – A Citizens‘ Encounter by Maike Gunsilius (2017), or Moritz Frischkorn’ s On Logistics and Choreography (2017).

Staging a One-on-One Encounter for Participatory Art Based Research provides two different roles for the researcher: She can be a constant part of the one-on-one constellation and talk to or act with different other experts or participants consecutively. Another possibility is that the researcher curates and hosts a situation of different One-on-One Encounters. Curating these encounters means asking: Who meets whom? How are the people addressed who participate in the encounters? What roles do they enact within their encounter? What relation between participants does the curation suggest or predict? And how does the One-on-One Encounter finally happen? What outcomes does it have? To document these fragile encounters can be challenging for the researcher. Especially in the case of the curated version of a One-on-One Encounter the researcher has to ask herself what potential a certain match provides, how the exchange or the production of knowledge can be encouraged within the encounter, and how it can be documented. Thus, the design of the research setting and its staging are important: How narrowly can a framework be set? Is it even possible to stage the encounter and the sharing or production of knowledge in public or should it remain private? How can it be learnt if the two people involved have adhered to the setting or deliberately undermined it? Or might it be precisely the intention of the researcher to provoke participants to sabotage the frame? In any case, the possibility of losing control is a parameter of the format.

What is researched?

This research format aims at personal exchange in an intimate way. At the same time, it works with and around moments that produce knowledge in an exclusive constellation: Within this format, the researcher might aim at creating a situation that allows for the exchange and production of informal, insecure knowledge. In particular, knowledge that might be unproven and precarious can be exchanged and tested in this constellation. Whether the One-on-One Encounter frames a conversation or a space for acting together, cognitive as well as embodied knowledge can be verbalized and/or experienced.

Within a One-on-One Encounter, two people are connected in a direct or online face-to-face situation. They might both be addressed as experts from (possibly) different fields or contexts. Especially people who are usually not addressed as experts or experts who are not used to talking or performing in front of a larger public might share their informal, insecure, precarious knowledge more easily and comprehensively within the One-on-One Encounter.

Within this encounter, two people meet, perform and exchange ideas. Thereby, they receive or adopt knowledge from each other. Consciously or not, both of them produce knowledge in this very moment. Their (different) roles and the (different) ways in which they are addressing each other determine how one and one relate within this constellation. Within her research on activist protests on the Syntagma Square in Athens in 2011, Margarita Tsomou initiated the art-based research project Face-to-Face with the Many – Action with Video Calls: She invited a public to an internet café to meet twelve activists from Athens via video calls. In these face-to-face video meetings, the local participants could talk with the Greek activists about the situation in Athens, the protest movement and their activist strategies. In addition, Tsomou started a live chat as a meta-talk that anyone could join. Her setting takes up the activists’ strategy to elude institutionalised public channels such as the press by using net-based (social) media.

The act of addressing people as experts might create a hierarchy between a person referred to as an expert for a certain discipline and another person who is not. Thus, the researcher should consider carefully what kind of setting and what kind of relation she creates: an encounter between two people addressed as experts or between an expert and a non-specialist. Furthermore, the question arises whether, and if so, how it is possible to collect feedback and to document the encounters. This question should be taken into account when planning the setting.

Artistic means

Creating the set-up for dialogues between two people is a common practice in the arts. Works by Tino Sehgal such as This Progress (2010) or the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge by Hannah Hurtzig/Mobile Academy Berlin (2005 – ongoing) and others could be mentioned. These examples show that the improbable dialogue that can take place within the intimacy of a one-on-one constellation can work as an act of self-authorisation of the participants, enabling the sharing of knowledge between two people – as Bojana Cvejic describes: “[…] assumptions, beliefs, opinions, habits, facts, information, techniques etc. The talk is an encounter that establishes a relation between knowledge and non-knowledge, between learning and unlearning, explores the difference between ignorance and opinion on the one hand and what is idealized as its opposite, e.g. knowledge, on the other hand” (Cvejic 2006, 17–18).¹

Of course, the format of the One-on-One Encounter is not limited to conversations. Encounters that rely more on actions offer the possibility for the exchange and the production of non-verbal action-knowledge. A joint action can for example be structured by the use of instructions or scores. Instruction-based art  formulates precise instructions for actions framed by certain rules, spatial layouts, time limits, selected materials, etc. Especially a precise and narrow framing can work as an invitation to playfully try out and create things one would usually not do. In this instance, two people cast together as team partners do things they would not usually do, or at least not do together. In following the instruction, the knowledge of the team partners is enacted, performed, and new knowledge is produced collaboratively.

Both forms of One-on-One Encounters, whether they focus on conversation or on action (or both), initiate and stage a relation. They can be considered as a form of relational art, which Nicolas Bourriaud defines as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space” (Bourriaud 2002: 113). The format of the One-on-One Encounter thus has the potential to produce and question expertise, knowledge, know-how and doubt, and to relate them to each other in dynamic ways.

The research project The School of Girls II by Maike Gunsilius focuses on the collaborative and transgenerational performance of girls and women as citizens (and non-citizens) of postmigrant Hamburg. Six 12-year-old girls and six adult women meet to research the possibilities of acting together as citizens within an artistic performance. After a short workshop, they pair up in teams consisting of one girl and one woman. Each team investigates a certain aspect of the overall research question by following an instruction. By inviting a stranger to a picnic, one team for instance explores how citizens and non-citizens of a postmigrant urban society can come together. After three hours, the teams return to the theatre space to analyse and reflect on the results of their investigation and present and perform their findings for the other teams and for an invited public. By taking questions of female solidarity in a postmigrant society into consideration, girls and women are invited to meet and perform as a transgenerational team on equal terms. All participants are addressed as experts for a different kind of knowledge in order to investigate the potentials and limits of acting in alliance. In an ongoing process of planning and testing, Gunsilius examined how the performative instructions have to be worded to offer a clear frame and at the same time create a space that enables girls and women to act as citizens in an (urban) public. The wording also aimed to reduce hierarchies within the encounters.

Although the One-on-One Encounter produces exclusive and intimate situations, there are different ways of creating a framework that allows the sharing of experiences and findings with others in a larger assembly: For the second part of the School of Girls II, an outside audience was invited to observe how the one-on-one teams share their experiences. In the Blackmarket of Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge format, several One-on-One Encounters are staged to take place simultaneously at different tables in the centre of a room. These tables are surrounded by spectators who can listen in to selected conversations via headphones. In Face-to-Face with the Many – Action with Video Calls, spectators in the call-shop could witness the video-calls and/or join the public chat.

Potentials, problems and outcomes

In a One-on-One Encounter, knowledge, expertise and activities are shared between two people. The exclusive intimacy of this constellation between private and public has the potential to encourage people to open up quickly towards each other. At the same time, the content and findings of this shared exchange remain subjective. If the encounter is observed by an audience (including the researcher), the exchanged or produced knowledge is distributed in a wider circle. This distribution of knowledge in itself can be the specific object of the research interest. If so, this moment has to be focussed on within the respective setting. Thus, observing whether participants in the One-on-One Encounters adhere to the instructions and operate within the given frame or whether they ignore or subvert the set-up, might be more relevant to the research than the experiences and the knowledge produced and shared within the encounters themselves. Accordingly, in order to trace outcomes, the research setting for the One-on-One Encounter should – depending on the research interest – include moments of presentation, explication, feedback and documentation.

As already mentioned, it might be difficult or even impossible for the researcher to fully document this floating exchange of expertise. While observing the conversations in Face-to-Face with the Many – Action with Video Calls, Tsomou for instance noticed that most of the time the conversations did not focus on the set content (activists’ knowledge), but instead had the quality of a flirt between two people. Hence, the One-on-One Encounter might provide a frame for documenting research outcomes that are different from what was originally intended.

In The School of Girls II, the encounters were narrowly framed and teams had to identify outcomes themselves, moderated by Gunsilius. Within the set-up of On Logistics and Choreography, Moritz Frischkorn was part of each One-on-One Encounter and could thus easily lead the encounters towards questions relevant to his research and note and compare outcomes.

One-on-One Encounters, whether they focus on verbal exchange or on acting together, have a unique way of addressing and connecting people – suggesting their collaboration, working on their relations and hierarchies and opening up a frame for research on social encounters.

Maike Gunsilius, Kathrin Wildner

response by Margarita Tsomou

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¹ German version: http://www.mobileacademy-berlin.com/deutsch/bm_texte/bonja.html

References

Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002): Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Presses du réel.

Cvejic, Bojana (2006): „Trickstering, Hallucinating and Exhausting Production. The Blackmarket of Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge“. 31 Das Magazin des Instituts für Theorie und Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich No. 08/09 (12/2006), pp. 11–18. Available: https://www.yumpu.com/de/document/read/23580535/pdf-des-gesamten-heftes-5mb-institut-fur-theorie-ith (Accessed: 20–08–2020).

Obrist, Hans U. (2013): Do It: The Compendium. New York: Independent Curators International/D.A.P.

Ono, Yoko (1964): Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Tsomou, Margarita. (2018): Zwischen Repräsentationskritik, Selbstrepräsentation und nicht-repräsentativen Politiken: Die Aktionsformen der Aganaktismenoi auf dem Syntagma-Platz, Athen 2011. HafenCity University. Available: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de//hcu/volltexte/2018/417/ (Accessed: 20–08–2020)

Works / Projects

Frischkorn, Moritz, On Logistics and Choreography, 2017, Hamburg

Gunsilius, Maike, School of Girls II, 2017, Hamburg

Hurtzig, Hannah/Moblie Academy Berlin, Black-market for Useful Knowledge and Non-knowledge, 2005-ongoing, http://mobileacademy-berlin.com/deutsch/index.html

Tsomou, Margarita, Face-to-Face with the Many – Action with Video-calls, 2014, Hamburg

Sehgal, Tino, This Progress, 2010, New York

responded by Esther Pilkington

What is it?

Michel Foucault named real places that are different from their surroundings and somehow produce their own alternative reality “heterotopias” (Foucault 1992: 34). According to him, norms of conduct are shifted in heterotopias. Furthermore, they are places of crisis and deviation, they have an entrance and an exit and are, accordingly, places that one goes through, where one gets stuck, or that one does not get into in the first place. Though ‘heterotopia’ is initially a spatial concept, heterotopias also have their own time and temporality. Many of the spaces that Foucault identifies as heterotopias are institutional spaces: prisons, cemeteries, hospitals, brothels, and theatres.

Since the 1960s, heterotopias have increasingly become a format of creation in design, architecture, fine art and live performance. The theatre had already been one of Foucault’s examples, but it seems that when live art leaves the theatre space to conquer other public spaces it takes the heterotopian potential of theatre with it and starts to produce ‘other’ other spaces through performative practices (geheimagentur/Pilkington 2019). The production of heterotopias became an intrinsic part of the participatory turn in the arts and could possibly be described as one of its primary formats.¹ In the context of PABR, the research format Heterotopian Zone invents an alternative reality in a designated area, testing alternative forms of living while also observing and questioning the world outside from within the zone.

What is researched?

Foucault’s heterotopias are set against the background of normativity and the unified space of national society that is surrounding the “other spaces” (Foucault 1992: 39), co-creating their otherness through sameness all around. The rise of heterotopias in the arts (Digel/Goldschmidtböing/Peters 2019) might be spurred by the erosion of that national normativity that came along with the idea of the one public, the one society, the one code of conduct. At best, these new kinds of heterotopias are set up to negotiate what diversified common space and what commonality could be in the context of the erosion of these old Eurocentric norms. Therefore, heterotopias have become laboratories of collective research: In order to create an alternative reality, many aspects of living need to be transformed, many sub-spaces and sub-practices need to be invented to sustain the claim of an alternative reality. Many co-researchers need to be involved to set up their own sub-spaces and practices belonging to that Heterotopian Zone. Heterotopias such as the Floating University (Raumlabor 2019), Animals of Manchester (including Humanz) (FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research 2019) or the Free Port Baakenhöft (geheimagentur 2017) involved different groups in their realisation. In the Free Port Baakenhöft, geheimagentur invited other Hamburg artists to propose contributions, for example to a Battle of Baakenhöft and to the African Terminal, where an exchange of used goods and a business school were set up to counteract and remember the colonial past of the warehouse where it was located. Heterotopias such as these are try-outs of alternative worlds of togetherness, worlds that are governed by a specific set of alternative rules, which can often be defined as a different set of rights that participants of that zone are entitled to. In the Free Port Baakenhöft, everybody has a right to access and use the port. Thus, Heterotopian Zones bring forth different constellations of beings and things, different practices and different subject positions. In contrast to a simulation or an immersive experience of a fictional space, they are trying to make the alternative world real, for example by holding real business school classes and engaging in real trade. A Heterotopian Zone is designed to be taken over when opened to the public. It is made for interaction and embodiment. In order to set it up, different kinds of forecasts have to be made, and different kinds of offers and impulses have to be formulated and presented. Participatory performance practices enable researchers to do that (Plischke 2020). When these forecasts are materialised, it becomes very clear whether they have been correct or not, simply by looking at the way people relate to the offer, use the opportunity, embody the alternative protocols – or not. In all likelihood, people will do these things in a way that is not quite covered by the forecast, making this deviation an important outcome of the Heterotopian Zone.

As a set-up for collective research, Heterotopian Zones allow for a multitude of different research approaches and outcomes: What is a post-colonial trade cooperative? How can a ship welcome station be constructed (Free Port Baakenhöft)? Being limited in space and time, these try-outs are not ideal spaces but daring ones. In crisis and in play, heterotopias negotiate between different approaches and practices of producing an uncommon common space. Hence, it always also researches these negotiations that bring forth a new commonality, which is partly or potentially created by the heterotopian experience in question.

Artistic means

Creating a Heterotopian Zone is a complex undertaking on many levels, including logistics, resources, permissions, crafts and techniques, concept, communication, design, performance, decision-making and care. It is necessarily based on the collaboration of a heterogeneous and transdisciplinary team. It is essential for heterotopian research to adopt a form of collaboration that reaches beyond all kinds of thresholds – institutional, disciplinary, social – and that is driven by vision, desire and curiosity.  Many meetings and assemblies are to be hosted in the process of preparing a Heterotopian Zone. In this process, it is important to devise and host all these gatherings in the spirit of the Heterotopian Zone and follow the respective concept as closely as possible. The specific quality of the process will define the quality of the zone. Arguably, this practice of collaboration is the most important “artistic means” in this kind of research, a practice across divisions, collaboration driven by the question of how to make the alternative, the improbable and often supposedly impossible come true.

Claiming an alternative zone obviously does not mean that existing laws and rules do not apply. Therefore, the team creating the zone has to identify those rules that will produce conflict between the claim and the given order of things and either redefine or try to bypass them. In this context, understanding this process of creating the zone as research means that conflict will be intentionally sought out, it is already a result of artistic experimentation and should be made visible. In the Animals of Manchester (including Humanz) all animals, including humans, have equal rights. If it is impossible to overcome rules which restrict movement of certain animals in the zone, then human animals also have to be subjected to these rules, thus achieving equal rights and making existing rules and legislation visible.

Potentials, problems and outcomes

Heterotopian Zones facilitate engagement and interaction with their publics by artistic means. Concurrently with the interaction, visitors are also invited to engage in research from an individual perspective. Heterotopian Zones potentially enable everybody to not only think about an alternative concept of living, but to also experience and embody it temporarily: How does it feel to be an animal amongst animals? How does it feel to be surrounded by co-species, to be part of a trade network, to wave your human privilege? This artistic aspect makes the research format of the Heterotopian Zone very accessible. It allows for a huge spectrum of different approaches and various levels of engagement. A playful example of research offering an accessible approach and inviting diverse forms of engagement is Constanze Schmidt’s The Centre for Vocational Design: 1st Vocational Orientation Fair (2017), which took place in the FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research. Together with students of the Goethe Gymnasium in the Lurup quarter of Hamburg, the researchers transformed the theatre into an exhibition centre with five different exhibition stands at which new professions and new forms of vocational orientation were invented and designed. Entering this Heterotopian Zone, visitors were instructed to orientate towards known as well as unknown professions and ways of working.

When the public enters the Heterotopian Zone, the research is intentionally diversified and distributed. The desired outcome is not one single result, but a multitude of perspectives. Thus, the question of documentation becomes important. Which outcomes should be documented and how: Is there a scribe taking down what happens in the zone? How can participants become co-researchers by having their voices heard and recorded, by being more fully included in the research process?

Meanwhile, it has to be kept in mind that in other areas of culture and leisure heterotopias as such are not necessarily research-oriented or visionary. Heterotopias today cannot only be found in the arts and in those institutional contexts where Foucault had originally located them. ‘Heterotopia’ has become a crucial concept for urban planning (Digel/Goldschmidtböing/Peters 2019).  Considering furthermore the rise of tourism as a key sector of the global economy, it seems clear that heterotopia – as spectacle – has become a product: Cruise ships, wellness resorts, exclusive conference environments, resident estates, they all are ultimately trying to sell a heterotopian experience.²  Therefore, the research format Heterotopian Zone, which is supposed to be a set-up for collective research, has to resist from turning into an experiential product, as, for example, in the context of festivalisation (Bennett/Taylor/Woodward 2016).

Finally, a word of warning: The large scale and great variety of practices are key to designing a Heterotopian Zone. This will almost inescapably push core members of the research team to the limits of their resources.

Sibylle Peters, Maike Gunsilius

response by Constanze Schmidt

response by Esther Pilkington

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¹ The memorials by Thomas Hirschhorn are outstanding examples from the world of fine arts: The memorial (Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument, 2013) is reinterpreted in Hirschhorn‘s work as a heterotopian space in which practices of gathering, learning, relating and remembering are hosted, triggered and performed. Another example is Banksy’s Dismaland (Banksy, Dismaland, 2015), a dark version of Disneyland set against the background of migration and European crisis. Dismaland also reminds us that the fairground and the circus have always been heterotopian experiences and at the same time shows us how Banksy turns the amusement park into an artistic format.

² See Heterotopia: Designing Our Mindscapes by Jason Silva, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKxQMyBl22o, last visited May 3, 2019.

References

Bennett, Andy/Taylor, Jodie/Woodward, Ian (2016): The Festivalization of Culture. London: Routledge.

Foucault, Michel (1992): “Andere Räume”, in: Barck, Karlheinz/Gente, Peter/Paris, Heidi/ et al. (eds): Aisthesis: Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik. Leipzig: Reclam, pp. 34–46.

Digel, Marion/Goldschmidtböing, Sebastian/Peters, Sibylle (2019): Searching for Heterotopia. Hamburg: adocs.

geheimagentur/Pilkington, Esther (2019): “Other other spaces”, in: Digel, Marion/ Goldschmidtböing, Sebastian/Peters, Sibylle (2019): Searching for Heterotopia. Hamburg: adocs. pp. 76–85.

Plischke, Eva (2020): Zukunft Auf Probe – Verhältnisse von szenischer Kunst und Zukunftsforschung. HafenCity University. Available at: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de//hcu/frontdoor.php?source_opus=519&la=de

Works / Projects

Banksy, Dismaland, 2015, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England. http://www.dismaland.co.uk

geheimagentur, Free Port Baakenhöft, 2017, Hamburg.

Hirschhorn/ Thomas, Gramsci Monument, 2013, Bronx, NY, USA. http://www.thomashirschhorn.com/gramsci-monument/

Raumlabor, Floating University, 2019, Berlin. https://www.floatinguniversity.org

Schmidt, Constanze, The Centre for Vocational Design: 1st Vocational Orientation Fair, 2017, Hamburg.

FUNDUS THEATER /Theatre of Research and Live Art Development Agency, Animals of Manchester (Including HUMANZ), 2019, Manchester, UK

folgt

response von Liz