“ Most of us think a relationship is two people interacting. We propose a relationship is two people and the Space Between them. The Space Between is an energy field that flows between you and your partner. And the way two people care for the Space Between determines the quality of their relationship. ”
Talking is vulnerable. The more honest we are, the more it reveals something about what is in our heart, what we desire, and who we are. Relationship therapists and married partners, Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. say “talking is the most dangerous thing most people do.”[1]While that may seem extreme, it does make me realize how habituated we are to the daily weaponizing of our words and the level at which, even with those close to us, we gear up and put on defenses so that what we put out there in the form of conversation is not used against us.
Working in the mental health field, I have learned that if people do not feel safe, they usually default to a fight, flight, or freeze response to an actual or perceived threat. This is not just in warfare and physical combat, it’s in relationships and therefore conversations too. Conversation is another relational space that can become a space of domination, rather than a space of mutuality. Every time someone shuts down, lashes out, or runs away from a conversation it is arguably because they do not feel safe.
Art is a conversation[2], and conversation is also an art. Conversation is co-created in the “space between” according to Hendrix and Hunt who state, “Most of us think a relationship is two people interacting. We propose a relationship is two people and the Space Between them. The Space Between is an energy field that flows between you and your partner. And the way two people care for the Space Between determines the quality of their relationship.”[3]
I started thinking about the steps one must undertake to have a more egalitarian conversation. The first step of conversation is not speaking, but showing up, ridding ourselves of distraction, and being present. Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present is of course one of the most salient performances of presence in our time.[4] In this piece, Abramović’s celebrity functions to give value to something immaterial. Normally people wait in line to get an autograph or maybe some memorabilia of a celebrity. In this case, the participants waited in line to have a moment of uninterrupted, focused time with the artist, which in some way signifies that this type of immaterial exchange is more valuable.
A second step in conversation is that one person speaks while another extends that presence into listening. In the Osnabruck iteration of Ernesto Pujol’s performance piece, The Listeners, trained listeners performed the practice of listening for hundreds of citizens who came to be heard.[5] The artists were vessels for the audience who spoke about whatever they chose. The participants could have spoken out loud to themselves in private, but again, the hunger for being in relation, for being able to talk in a safe space is evident in the fact that people stood in line for this experience.
We might think the next step in conversation is the response of the listener, but it is not. The third step is making sure that we, as the listener, have heard the speaker correctly, that we have understood the intention and meaning of the speaker. If we are listening to another to weaponize their words, to argue with what they are saying, to look for statements to pick apart, and ultimately to win, then it is not as important to truly understand the speaker. If we are trying to build a conversation on a structure of mutuality, then we must be certain we understand the other person before we respond.
Hunt and Hendrix recognized this need within their own relationship, and even though they were both therapists, they didn’t know how to do it in their own lives. In fact, they were on the brink of divorce when they realized something had to change. [6] Together, they developed the Imago Technique which centers on mirroring back what your partner has said and checking for understanding.[7] Truthfully, it is tedious and a bit awkward. I am reminded of Marchart’s description of a pre-enactment as a “quite mundane, unspectacular affair”[8], but it is better to inefficiently build a space for mutuality than to efficiently build spaces of domination.
After years of doing the Imago Technique as part of therapy, Hendrix and Hunt realized that this practice can be taught outside of therapy to everyone as a basic life skill. Hunt and Hendrix theorize that the history of communication is characterized by monologue. Historically, the king spoke, and everyone listened. The husband was in charge, and everyone obeyed. Our desire for equality necessitates a greater skill around dialogue, but the couple states that much of our attempts at dialogue function more as parallel monologue instead.[9]
[1] Ben Illian, “What Is Safe Conversations,” Safe Conversations (blog), accessed October 2020, https://safeconversations.com/what-is-safe-conversations/.
[2] As SVA Art Practice Chair, David Ross, is known to say.
[3] Harville Hendrix Ph.D. and LaKelly Hund Hunt Ph.D., The Space Between: The Point of Connection (Franklin, Tennessee: Clovercroft Publishing, 2017), 17.
[4] Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present, 2010, Performance, 2010.
[5] Ernesto Pujol, “The Listening School & The Listeners Performance,” Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, accessed March 2021, https://www.spencerart.ku.edu/artists-respond/ernesto-pujol.
[6] Getting the Love You Want | Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt | Talks at Google, 2016, https://youtu.be/FfbfHtoHqiE.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Marchart, Conflictual Aesthetics: Artistic Activism and the Public Sphere, 187.
[9] Hendrix and Hunt, The Space Between: The Point of Connection, 33, 97.