Paper short abstract:

This video can either be installed as a looping installation or as video/film in a classroom or theatre.

Paper long abstract:

'Rehearsing the Examination' is an artistic research film from a multimedia project entitled On Intelligence Tests: Psychological Objects and Their Subjects which employs novel creative approaches to study the material and performative facets of a charismatic and influential scientific object, the 20th century intelligence test kit. In 'Rehearsing the Examination' (2021), eight actors rehearse and perform a selection of intelligence test kits. By re-contextualising the testing procedure in a theatrical space, the video recasts the test examiner (usually a licensed psychologist) as an actor, the test as a prop, and the testing room as a black box theatre, and therefore re-frames intelligence testing as a theatrical performance. In the film, the actors determine what tone, affect and costuming they find appropriate for playing the examiner, and their performances of this role evidence the decision-making process that goes into the professional performance of the examiner. The test manuals themselves have complex understanding of the role of the examiner, who is figured as a hybrid educator-clinician-scientist. By staging the tests as if they are performances, this artistic research enquires into how a professional test examiner is asked to perform the tests and, at the same time, how the subject of the test is at once a participant and observer of the performance. Therein, it also queries the possibility standardising interpersonal encounters and wonders about the limits of what a good, or even good enough, performance of a test is such that the results are fair and valid.