International Seminar Imaginative Dialogues

Conversation 1: Towards an 'Imaginative dialogue’ | Reflective documentation as artistic-pedagogic inquiry

Martijn Boven, Hanze UAS Groningen (first part)
Eeva Anttila, Liisa Jaakonaho, Uniarts Helsinki (second part, based on a paper written in collaboration with Taneli Tuovinen).

This conversation will start with a brief proposition: in order for a dialogue to become imaginative, our ordinary understanding of dialogue first needs to be expanded. It will be argued that this can be done by combining two strategies: (a) the strategy of the dialogic encounter, which primarily focuses on the difference that emerges in encounters between two or more; (b) the strategy of internal differentiation, which zooms in on the minor differences that are at play in an internal dialogue and that differentiates participants from within, generating a continuous struggle between divergent local viewpoints. Combined with each other, these strategies create the conditions for setting up an imaginative dialogue. In the first part of this conversation, we hope to playfully explore the framework that emerges from this, in active dialogue with the participants.

In the second part, we will introduce our conceptualisation of the notion of reflective documentation, and propose ways in which this notion might be applied in the practices of arts education and artistic research. We will connect our theoretical discussion to examples of embodied practices of documentation and reflection during the intensive weeks of the PIMDI project.

Conversation 2: Dialogue, difference, and imagination | Becoming paradox

Ingimar Olafsson Waage, Iceland University of the Arts; Tormod Wallem Anundsen, University of Agder (first part, based on a paper written in collaboration with Eeva Anttila)
Helene Illeris, University of Agder (second part)

In this conversation, Becoming paradox, we offer some theoretical starting points for seeking to develop a ‘Pedagogy of imaginative dialogues’. The paper presents and explores three concepts that emerged as important points of inspiration behind the project; dialogue, difference, and imagination.  After a quick introduction, participants will be invited to work with the 3 concepts and use them to model their own forms of imaginative dialogue.

In the second part of this conversation, Becoming paradox, we will discuss some of the concepts that we have adopted as ‘theoretical tools’ in the development of the PIMDI methodology and that are presented on the PIMDI homepage. When we began to work with them, many of the concepts turned out to express inner tensions or even contradictions. Polyphony, paradox, vulnerability and transgression are examples of such concepts.

Conversation 3: Dialogue on the experiences of the students

Lisbet Skregelid, University of Agder
Students from Hanze UAS Groningen and University of Agder

Some master students from the participating countries participating in the PIMDI project have taken part in all four intensive weeks. The first one in Finland (autumn 2021), the second one in Norway (spring 2022), the third in Iceland (autumn 2022) and the fourth and final week in Netherlands (spring 2023).  During these weeks, the students explored in groups what a pedagogy of imaginative dialogues might be, with elderly, with pupils from culture school, with high school students and between their peers across the four countries. Skregelid will have a dialogue with some of the students who have taken part in four or three weeks, where they tell about their experiences and what they will bring with them from being part of this project. The dialogue between Skregelid and the students will give us an insight into the activities of the intensive weeks both through images and words.

Workshop 4: Parallax dramaturgies in embodied dialogues

Riikka Theresa Innanen, Uniarts Helsinki,
Gudrun Beckmann NHL Stenden & Hanze University  Groningen

In this workshop we investigate how can we benefit from the different points of view in democracy, and of how we both inhabit spaces and create spaces. We raise awareness and sensibility of how space and perspective affect your own experience, thinking and feelings. We create the multiple perspective lines for the parallax, and space and the dramaturges and experiences in it, become tools for curiosity, agency and authenticity. Some of the questions are: how to hold space or create in-between space in multilayered and multi-perceptional dialogue with clarity, fluidity and firmness, allowing us to use the differences as a tool for deeper understanding and radical knowledge creation. We want to enable a deeper embodied awareness of dynamic dialogues and multiple viewpoints, which we can use as pedagogical tools.

During the PIMDI project, Riikka Theresa Innanen initiated a way of 'parallax filming/documenting' by looking simultaneously and unfiltered at what happened from different positions of the participants. The PIMDI film inspired the workshop.

Workshop 5: Woandering - Polyphonic dialogues in words, metaphors and sounds

Yke Reeder, NHL Stenden University (metaphors)
Liesbeth Betten, Hanze UAS Groningen (music)
Nathalie Beekman, Hanze UAS Groningen (philosophy)

In this experimental workshop plurality is turned into an actual experience by understanding this concept as polyphony, inspired by the definition of Bakhtin, who describes it as a multitude of independent and unmuffled voices and consciousnesses (Bakhtin, 1984, 2019). This makes diversity between and within people discernible as a choir of voices that each come forward under different circumstances. In the workshop we will tickle the senses and the imagination and as such give way to these voices. While making room for autonomy and for a play with dissonance, we explore how this affects making these voices heard. We will use philosophical questions, metaphorical images and sound without instruments. There is no fixed scenario; we will be wondering wanderers.

Workshop 6: A Sound Walk of Imaginative Dialogues

Tormod Wallem Anundsen, University of Agder

Participants are invited to explore and reflect on PIMDI topics during a sound walk in the surroundings of Minerva Art Academy, Groningen. After a joint start, participants will be guided individually through a prepared route made available online, using their own mobile phones and headsets to listen and follow the route. While visiting different stops in the local cityscape, participants will listen both to recorded sounds and the sounds of the local surroundings and will be invited to reflect on questions arising from the PIMDI project and experiences.

At the end of the walk, participants are encouraged to record and upload their own sound recording (with or without words) in response to the sound walk, if they wish to share it with others. The collected sounds and the route itself will also be available via the same webpage for some time after the event.

Workshop 7: Imaginative dialogues with the environment – moving, sensing, drawing, and writing

Helene Illeris, University of Agder
Gunndís Ýr Finnbogadóttir and Hye Joung Park, Iceland University of the Arts

This workshop takes the form of a slow and grounded dialogue with whatever we meet in the urban landscape surrounding the conference site. We will explore artistic forms of interaction with the environment that meets us. Through moving, sensing, drawing, and writing we will experiment with a pedagogy of imaginative dialogues that involves more-than-human forms of existence.

From the beginning of the PIMDI project we have tried different approaches and made exercises to explore a kind of dialogue with and through our (different and distant) environments. During the intensive week in Iceland we focused on this kind of dialogue and explored connections between people and nature. This workshop is developed from the experience of this.