The dramaturgy of Conversation

ingrid cogne

The dramaturgy of Conversation aims to tackle different approaches, analyses, and practices of conversations. Several forms of conversations and various related knowledges are questioned from different positions and perspectives. The data studied come from personal, external, or created (for and within the project) archives. In this project, researcher Ingrid Cogne analyses, develops or transforms, re-articulates and re-structures the ways in which one creates, inhabits, and facilitates conversations. The central question of The dramaturgy of Conversation as a methodology is HOW: How can the context, structure, location, and duration of existing or created situations of conversation support the (re-)articulation of the persons involved? How can one use or work with conversations? How can one read, inhabit, and embody the parameters of a conversation? How can one facilitate a conversation? How does a situation itself facilitate the meeting with knowledge? How can one create a situation of conversation that will be the facilitator itself? The dramaturgy of Conversation proposes situations, settings, and protocols of conversations that involve, combine, or isolate various languages (spoken, bodily, and written), “in-between” and relational knowledge, and dialogical methods and processes as well as formats of communication. The dramaturgy of Conversation is a methodology that focuses on “how” practical knowledge can be read, unfolded, and circulated within the “doing”. It is a research project that facilitates the access to the unknown and the inarticulable – navigating between quantity and quality, fiction and reality, material and immaterial, visible and invisible. This research is aproached by the author as the context wherein a self-reflective process can be (re-)articulated and CO- and reciprocal activations of hardly articulable knowledges can be performed. With this re/search, Cogne insists on the need of “conversation” to be practiced and considered as knowledge. Duration: 15.1.2019 – 14.1.2025 Project leader: Ingrid Cogne (IKW) Funded by: FWF - Austrian Science Fund | Elise-Richter PEEK (V709) Institution: IKW, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria

The title "The dramaturgy of Conversation" indicates the central directions in which the research is unfolding: “dramaturgy” (re-)presents the methodolgical approach to the entire research – ‘choreographic dramaturgy’ and ‘dramaturgical choreography’ – and “conversation” is the object of study.

With this research, I flirt with im/materiality to insist on spaces of and for movements, to call for motricity, and to support possible un/conscious choices, transformations, and rearticulations when "in conversation".

My research aims to identify the nature of the connection(s) that can exist between the elements in presence in a situation of conversation with a layer of attentiveness and to work on “perceiving” what others perceive. TdoC insists on the need of conversation –be it knowledge – to be practiced.

The dramaturgy of Conversation navigates in, between, and in-between expanded choreography and process-oriented arts-based research.

Body languages, gestures, poses and relation(alitie)s between individuals and objects

Along my research-based years, I developed different formats and tools to create points of references in between which circulation of knowledges could be facilitated by the created situations – each format being approached as knowledge. The im/material tools are conceptualized to propose points of reference/departure for the ones involved to have a common agenda while developing their own articulations and knowledges according to their current needs. Some rules can be proposed to start with. These can be adapted depending on the curiosity, needs, skills and knowledges of the protagonists involved.

Over times I have organized my thinking around types of situations, scales, and formats of "being with" when sharing information, data, and knowledge in live moment. Meaning than "presence", "improvisation", and "translation" became central notions to my understanding of what being in relations could mean and involve.

The concept of “playground” (in reference to sports' practices) in situations of CO- is a take I invite others to think the room, the relations and relationalities between the peoples involved, as well as "how" communication could take place, or not.

“Causer” is a French verb that has the double meaning of “being the reason of” or “having an informal talk”.

MÛ au quotidien

Solo Exhibition, May 2025

Mz* Baltazar‘s Lab, Vienna

CAUSER

8# Salon: Ingrid Cogne, May-June 2021

Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna

SETTING—SEATING—SITTING

"HOW to move”

“HOW to be with”

“HOW to combine (material and immaterial) elements”

Playing with the circulation of thoughts but also with the activations that bodily movements could perform on the practice and practitioner.s of languages – be it alone or with others – I have been studying situations and sceneries of "gathering", taking in consideration potential and multiple combinations of background, conditioning, and filtering one may have been confronted to when it comes to HOW TO COMMUNICATE.

Reading bodies: Navigations – Occupations – Relationalities

Translating spaces

I started to work on "conversation as a situation" in 2009.

Text-based art and languages does not limit the artwork and/or format of communication to appear within the formats of a written dialogue, a podcast or a video work.

I believe in the thinking of im/material knowledges in order to provide points of reference – be they visual, textual, material, visible or not. in 2021, I performed several re/searches on the relation object – relationalities – response-abilities in situation of being with. My ambition was to bring attention to the “in between” by materializing the “unoccupied” spaces.

The objects above appear to be more of an extension of the furnitures than an extension of the bodies involved. They imply thinking one's body and others' bodies in 3D, in perpetual movements, and in relations.

The reflection developed into the thinking of the pieces presented in the work titled Conversations (2024). There, I reduced the amount of persons involved to focus on their potential abilities to respond to the "twisted" objects: with this work, the relation body to body cannot be avoided.

A conversation can be assimilated to a chessboard or a labyrinth. It is a shared setting where different actions combine:speaking, listening, transcribing, reading, transporting, transforming, and displacing.

One is a filter.

An instant composition requires the reading of the different routes one can take and the turns one can choose.

An embodied dramaturgy supports:

- the coexistence of registers and forms of knowledge implied,

- the “gymnastique” (mental activity) of temporalities, and

- the “glissement” (shifts in meaning) between fiction and non-fiction.

Some rules can be proposed to start with. They can be adapted depending on the curiosity, needs, skills and knowledge of the peoples involved.

Reading, inhabiting, and embodying (the dramaturgy of) conversations

PUTTING AT PLAY AGAIN AND AGAIN PRACTICES

Points of references and movements in between the points of references

Live, formal, and/or informal communications navigate between bodily, spoken, written, and tacit languages.

How to think and “embrace the “interval” [?]

(I. Cogne, Displacement(s) as Method(s), 2018, p.60)

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGES – TRANSLATIONS – OBJECTS

A “conversation” is a situation wherein the people involved would approach this format

1) as a knowledge,

2) of being with,

3) expanding their own knowledges beyond what they were before this moment of encounter.

To create situations is a method:

- to study ‘what’ can be observed in an open but structured process – to detect what is appearing, and

- to filter ‘how’ this process is appearing and unfolding – like in a choreographic improvisation.

expending the relationalities between the protagonists using these conversation settings. Various distances, angles, flexibilities, amount of people.

How does one articulate and motivate – between theory and practice – both ‘vision’ and ‘doing’?

Facilitating a situation that is to be expanded.

→ Well, when thinking the “doing” in relation to the “performative”, I perceive the voices of the practitioners not being taken in consideration in the dominant discourses. I believe knowledges need to be practiced not only in the articulation of thoughts, but also in the practices of the environments considered and concerned. I want to stress that, more than being taken into consideration, the elements “more than individuals”, “contexts” and “objects” would not exist without relationalities, and that all the elements involved in the situation should be acknowledged (without exception). I may accept that concepts need to be limited (in the sense of simplified) to be accessible and circulation-able, yet I regret that the doing and doers often remain side-information instead of being signals. In other words, practice and practical should not have to “fight” to be part of knowledge systems. They should be validated like any other elements or objects even if they are immaterial or invisible. I-19N

THE DRAMATURGY OF CONVERSATION_A Performative Essay, Or: Thinking The performative within the Hierarchy of knowledge by Doing Conversations, playing with Languages, Material and immaterial, visible and invisible, proposing the / to be the place for Articulation. By Ingrid Cogne and Steven Dixon

To think with dramaturgy and choreography the possibilities of writing events in time and space.

I use the notion “conversation” to qualify live, formal and/or informal communications based on the principle of articulation and circulation of information between individuals. It is an everyday practice and situation.

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