Nearly all twentieth-century artworks have been written as the product of the creative individual artist or genius. In contrast, recent social-activist and neo-conceptual artists have cited dialogue as a social mode of meaning-generation in contemporary art. For example, the WochenKlausur group offers a series of conversations as an artwork, a claim grounded in the conceptual and process-based traditions of art (Kester 2004).
Dialogue has been John Hammersley's principal mode of practice as an artist for a number of years. His practice-based research investigates what contemporary artists understand of dialogue, and argues that dialogue is a critical model for developing a socially-focused and reflective art practice. His projects exist as a dialogue which operates as the artwork, and which demonstrates the capacity of dialogue to extend the meanings and boundaries of art.