Paper short abstract:

‚Portrait as Dialogue' investigates how an art practice can disclose the processes involved in any attempts to represent otherness by exploring different culture specific modes of representation and by positioning the artist/researcher and the cultural actor both as subject and object'.

Paper long abstract:

‚Portrait as Dialogue' is a series of experimental practice-based research projects spanning more than a decade and continuing into the present. Together they investigate how an art practice can disclose the processes involved in any attempts to represent otherness, including different groups such as Westafrican wood carvers, Sámi singers, Australian Aboriginal hunters or people in Yemen, who use other cultural codes and perspectives. Building on alterity as condition of interaction, the projects were based on the hypothesis that we as artists and practitioners are inscribed and present in our creative representation of the ‚other'. The clou of 'Portrait as Dialogue' is the strategic reversal of classical perspectives: the role of the artist as the sole performer and the status of the researcher as outside observer are overturned. As artist I am initiator of the projects and, at the same time the object of the portrayals, while the project contributors are not only subjective portrayers but also the objects portrayed.

The resulting art projects celebrate and draw attention to the fact that besides the Western tradition of 'portrayal' a rich potential of representational means exists - a potential which remains largely unperceived as such, and therefore unexplored - thereby exploring how it may be possible to remove vision and the visual as the organizing methodological and analytical frame by which the Other can be represented.