The artistry of conversation.

This thesis proposes a new way of thinking about conversation as a methodology and argues that conversation itself can be considered as an art practice. The practice research has been developed through a body of five artworks produced between 2012-14, each of which directly engaged with communities and residents of the city of Nottingham, UK, and emerged in relation to the specificity of this location. The doctoral research has been presented within the international contexts of art and social science through several seminars and conferences, including the researcher's co-founding and co-curation of InDialogue (2012 – present), a biannual interdisciplinary symposium. The research engages with existing work on conversation and the dialogic by Allan Kaprow, David Bohm, Mikhail Bakhtin, Grant H. Kester and Hubert Hermans, from which it develops a socio-artistic and philosophical framework to theoretically underpin a body of dialogic practice. For the purpose of this thesis, PhD stands for Practice in High Definition: the body of work produced has been tested and analysed to develop an original methodology, which has been termed APSSL, to describe its five key features: architactics, performativity, storyteller, social activism and legacy. The thesis sets out the framework for a performative and experiential approach, providing examples of the orchestration of space and the dialogic architectures of site and body. Conversation is considered as a methodological producer and as the instigator of practice. Aesthetic in approach, the methodology is recognised for its socializing power in terms of generating the opportunity for a public presentation of self and other, and for the mobility of voices in spaces. It establishes that there can be an artistry of conversation.

This thesis proposes a new way of thinking about conversation as a methodology and argues that conversation itself can be considered as an art practice. The practice research has been developed through a body of five artworks produced between 2012-14, each of which directly engaged with communities and residents of the city of Nottingham, UK, and emerged in relation to the specificity of this location. The doctoral research has been presented within the international contexts of art and social science through several seminars and conferences, including the researcher's co-founding and co-curation of InDialogue (2012 – present), a biannual interdisciplinary symposium.
The research engages with existing work on conversation and the dialogic by Allan Kaprow, David Bohm, Mikhail Bakhtin, Grant H. Kester and Hubert Hermans, from which it develops a socio-artistic and philosophical framework to theoretically underpin a body of dialogic practice. For the purpose of this thesis, PhD stands for Practice in High Definition: the body of work produced has been tested and analysed to develop an original methodology, which has been termed APSSL, to describe its five key features: architactics, performativity, storyteller, social activism and legacy.
The thesis sets out the framework for a performative and experiential approach, providing examples of the orchestration of space and the dialogic architectures of site and body. Conversation is considered as a methodological producer and as the instigator of practice. Aesthetic in approach, the methodology is recognised for its socializing power in terms of generating the opportunity for a public presentation of self and other, and for the mobility of voices in spaces. It establishes that there can be an artistry of conversation.