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

Tacit / Practical / in movement Knowledges

Conferences and forms of presentation

Facilitator, online conference Art of Research VII, Authorship and Responsibility, at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Espoo, 2020

READING…entre les lignes”, ‘Poetic translations’: Conversations across the plurality of Arts disciplines in Visual Arts Exhibitions (Zoom webinar), Solent University, Southampton. 2020

Choreography and Dramaturgy of Knowledges, #espace. Diskursive Streifzüge durch die raumtheoretische Praxis, University of Vienna (online), 2020

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGES—TRANSLATIONS—OBJECTS, Arts-Based Research, Stadt‐ und Raumforschung, Jahrestagung der ÖGS Sektion Stadtforschung, Vienna. 2021

Articulation(s) and Object(s), Swedish Research Council’s Annual Symposium, Malmö. 2021

Works and research projects questioning/involving/performing the format “manual”, FEM*MAD, Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory, Vienna. 2022

Vulgarization of Knowledge, 3rd conference FEMeeting – Women in Art, Science and Technology, Lisbon/Évora. 2022

Rules, ethics and expanded knowledge, TTT2023 Malta, at the Malta Society of Art. 2023

The dramaturgy of Conversation, Research Day 2024, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2024

The dramaturgy of Conversation, #23.ART, ESE-IPP, Porto, 2024

The dramaturgy of Listening, Listening Academy Dehli, at Sarai-CSDS. 2024

Im/Materialities of CO-. From CO-researching to CO-imagining, APARN2025, Centre des Arts Dramatiques (MCS), Université de Chulalongkorn, Bangkok, 2025

I always write “knowledges”, even it is not grammatically correct., 6th Conference “Taboo – Transgression – Transcendence in Art and Science”, CUK Kino Šiška, Ljubjlana, 2025

Publications

2025 : Im/Materialities of CO-. From CO-researching to CO-imagining, APARN

2024 : 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, co-written with Steven Dixon

2021: Format is Knowledge. Exhibition – Activation and Trace, essay, in On the Question of Exhibition, PARSE, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts Gothenburg

2021: Facilitator, article, in the Research in Arts and Education journal, Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Art

2019: Déplacement, article, in the collection Écosystème, Chambre Blanche

I approach choreography as the writing of movements –let it be material or not, visible or not.

I approach dramaturgy as the ways in which elements placed or existing in a particular situation are dealt with, coordinated, or connected to expand their individual characteristics, basically 1 + 1 equal 3 (not 2). The third element – in that case – being the relation. The triangle CONTEXT – CONTENT – FORMAT has been recurrent in my work be it practical or more theoretical. It implies relationalities.

Conversation is a notion used 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, but also a notion that is overused as a title for events and/or publications to announce forms and formats of communication/presentation in the Arts.

Since 2004, I used it as:

Choreographic knowledges

such as RE-, DIS-, or CO- think/place/articulate one element (be it visible or not, material or not), as well as the system of bodies and elements in which it is involved—is unfortunately underestimated.

IM/MATERIAL KNOWLEDGES

Can the hierarchy of knowledge and the power relationships it implies be challenged through the doing? Can situations of meeting on/around/with knowledge open up for alternative positions and functions for practical knowledge? The dramaturgy of Conversation addresses the activation, articulation and circulation of knowledge. It involves, combines, and/or isolates various languages (spoken, bodily, and written), “in-between” and relational knowledge. This research focuses on “how” practical knowledge can be read, unfolded, and circulated within the “doing”. Facilitating the access to the unknown and the inarticulable, it navigates between quantity and quality, fiction and reality, material and immaterial, visible and invisible.

Language as matter

Knowledges in Space : Positioning and Manipulation

Knowledges' circulations in in/formal situations

I always write “knowledges”, even it is not grammatically correct.

No matter how precisely a conversation is planned, it contains a necessary and structural element of improvisation that encourages the challenge of (/an attitude toward challenging) positionings and representations through perception. A conversation only takes “shape” in its process of unfolding. TdoC compels placing attention on the intention, action, and activity of identifying “how” (parameters and conditions) to generate space for (re)articulation.

Working with words and playing with wordings in my artworks and projects (be they artistic or research oriented, be they alone or with others), insisting on translating between languages (bodily, spoken and written) as a method, I have been expanding Text-based Art strategies and tactics, to challenge the perceptions of, projections on, and meaning of notions and concepts.

Since 2022, Steven Dixon and I have been reflecting together in order to challenge the hierarchy of systems of knowledges.

One of the Operating Modes – to be performed (methodology): To identify the different languages put at / into play and the ways in which they manifest themselves in practical and non-articulated/-able knowledges.

The communicability of tacit or practical knowledge is a matter or translatABILITY.

Tacit is not fiction, yet it may call for projection as it implies several shifts of languages.

Steven Dixon (born in California, USA) lives and works in Stockholm (SE). After receiving his doctorate in philosophy and teaching for a few years at the university level, Steven Dixon began to work primarily in the visual arts as not only a teacher, lecturer, and writer, but also as an artist exploring the edges of media and ideology of art production.

I cannot remember when I started playing with languages – detouring words, gestures, and signs to break and distract patterns in knowledges' circulation and communication. Content-wise the "slash" became a central tool in this research when the "dash" was central in my PhD thesis and post-doc research project... even if it was already performing within the notion of RE/SEARCH.

The / gave me the space to insist on the relations between immaterial and material as well as invisible and visible. In/visible and Im/material being central concepts and tools to facilitate my articulation on tacit and practical knowledges.

The “/” embodies a space as much as what is placed before, after, above or beside it. The / is a carrier of possibilities that invites projections that may contradict or concur in an agile liminal space of interchanges and discussions. The / is a space of movement. It carries un/conscious choices, transformations, and possible rearticulations. The / is where knowledge manifests both as system and materialization of contents.

→ I think that what you are trying to do is to think how to localize ourselves inside of the unstable. This seems to be the way to avoid the trap of language, discourse, embedded texts and in consequence system and hierarchy of knowledge. Steven 231024

→ I think that what you are getting at is that every object has an infinite potential that may not be understandable in a normative environment. but then again, inside of a playground there are casted agreements that should occur in the playground - when the tacit performs. Another paradox is that you want to recognise the infinite potential while recognising the other one involved in the situation you describe narrating the way in which you want your peer and yourself let go. Steven 131124

→ Could it be that the paradox is the caretaker? could it be that the paradox is the floating element to be kept floating and free in and around objects and situations? IC 131124

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

Conversation as a playground

MÛ au quotidien, Solo Exhibition, May 2025, at Mz* Baltazar‘s Lab, Curated by Patrícia J. Reis

The / manifesto 1, 2025, Mesh banner, printed text, 613 x 460 cm, Text co-writing by Ingrid Cogne and Steven Dixon

A conversation requires the reading of the different i) routes one can take, ii) turns one can choose.

One is a filter combining different actions: speaking, listening, transcribing, reading, transporting, transforming, and displacing.

The filtering of the situations, contents, and forms is done by the persons involved in the research, who encounter the research on political, physical, and perceptive levels.

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