Script & transcribed feedback

The practical difficulties that I encountered on the day of my presentation generated serious interventions at this event which in turn provided me with some vital learning experiences. Before I present my upgrade 'script' and 'transcribed responses' I need to provide you with a little more detail relating to the situation prior to this event.
I had prepared a range of ‘props’ to hand out during my presentation. These props were not simply intended to illustrate my presentation but offered the audience an opportunity to interact with-in the presentation. My props were varied and many (too many) and some of them (especially the dandelion heads wrapped in glue that I mention in my diary notes below) were very delicate. This meant that I needed to accept offers of help with getting my props into the presentation venue which of course meant that I was no longer working independently (as I am used to doing). I am now going to ask you to switch your reading style, as I am going to switch my writing style, so that I can offer you my diary notes in a more immediate and personal manner.

'The upgrade presentation was looming fast. I had all my props ready and everything done. My slides weren't organised but they'd wait until morning. I'd hoped to have a little quiet time before I did my bit, but was basically ready to go with whatever happened.

The taxi was late. I didn't get my slides out of the case to sort them because it may have turned up at any time. Still, no panic. I waited and waited. Half an hour later, the taxi showed up. He was a lovely driver, no point giving him a hard time about it.
Got to university, phoned a student friend who'd arranged to meet me to help get my props to the dept. and to pick up a letter giving me permission to collect a video camera so I could record audience responses during the session.

I'd earlier asked another student if they would make notes about how the audience were responding to my session because I'd be too caught up with my presentation to take notes. My friends suggested that as I'd need their help with managing the props, why didn't I set up a video recording to do the observational job? Great idea I thought (about to drop the bollock!).

Why didn't I think for just one moment about the implications of doing this? After all, its not as though I'm unfamiliar with the issues involved for they dominate my research (surveillance, oppression and so on). Anyway, I gets to university (about half an hour late), glued dandelion heads in boxes falling all over and sticking together. I have to wait a further 20 mins. for my friend to get to me and help me up to the dept. As we meet, another friend hands me a letter saying I have permission to collect a video camera. By the time we get up to the dept. I've lost the letter. Time is spent searching for it, despite my knowing from past experience that if I want a quiet time to prepare I'll have to leave the camera collecting till last. The letter can't be found and my friend tells me to collect another from the office.

Its busy now. People are arriving. My friend is telling me I've got to go and pick up the camera from Media Services. Why don't I assert myself and say 'no, I need a quiet time, sod the camera?' Instead, I rush over campus to collect it and get back to the seminar room. I'm ten minutes late by now. The first Ph. D. candidate is already into delivering his text... My slides aren't sorted, I'm not prepared and calm. Oh bastard-shit. [I calm down and listen to the speaker].

Its my turn now. I'd asked one of my helpers to scatter texts around the room, the chairs, and the floor with me. But the gentle 'scattering' and 'giving' gestures I'd hoped for became a sort of forceful 'chucking'. My helper had taken a lead [and I didn't check it or communicate my needs]. The all important ambience I'd hoped to set just wasn't happening. Oh well. Just 'go for it Sue'. If there's anywhere on the planet I don't want to be, its here. Friends set up the video camera for me. I didn't know it then, but at this point the bollock was dropped publicly and big style...


Ph. D. Upgrade Presentation Script - May 15 2002
[Notes to self in brackets]
Title, "FEDA : [feed' er]"1 : a communicative concept

[Voice: Academic]
This study presents a critical enquiry into the pedagogic possibilities and oppositional resistance's made available by means of transforming detritus from everyday life into aesthetic communications through visual arts practice. My key questions; the aims, objectives and outcomes, are shown on the handout I'll give you later. I'll be handing around items for you explore during this presentation.
I'm currently undertaking an investigation into possible roles for radicalised art practice as a communicative and educative tool, which is able to contribute towards relations between understanding and knowledge. But a problem becomes apparent. Contemporary educational systems require that specific outcomes are produced as evidence that learning has taken place. Aesthetic learning (even of a dominant mainstream kind) does not fit comfortably within objective measures. So how do we, or should we even try, to measure aesthetic experiences as knowledge? How might these issues effect and be effected by workers rights and conditions of labour? The structure for this work has emerged through personal experience and particularly through my need to find a means to protest. A by-product of my experiences has been the everyday detritus that they generated and which I then turned into aesthetic 'stuff', both by way of psychic release and as material evidence through production.

[Voice: Sue's]
I'd like to tell you why I need to protest through an autobiographical text called ‘This Time Next Year We'll Be Farting Thro' Silk(...)’1. Its a story about my aspirations contrasted with my experiences as a wage labourer in the English further education sector. I spent ten years as a lecturer in further education with the last three of those years spent in dispute with my employers because I complained about my excessive workload. Working hard was optional when I joined further education in 1991. There was little by way of resources but there was access to our subjectivity as workers and substance to our efforts. There was also a notable absence of the professional codes and rules that we violently inflict upon ourselves and upon each other in our work places today. I had around four years of enjoyable labour being able to donate an excess of labour towards my students who were grateful for my martyrdom. I in turn felt very satisfied in my work. But by 1993 there were rumours of change. Incorporation was taking place. We were leaving local authority control and operations had to become; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound... In other words SMART. The contract I held was no longer appropriate to my employers. I received numerous requests asking me to sign a new contract which meant I'd loose the holidays and rights that I'd originally agreed too. First I received letters offering me £600 to sign and was asked nicely and then these offers were put against deadlines, implying that if we didn't sign we'd be harming the institution. Finally our new principal came bearing the ultimatum 'sign or be sacked'. The institution was to be restructured. [Show evidence; pass letters. Pass things from different places Sue.}
Restructuring was implemented in order to achieve; efficiency, accountability, and flexibility, and through these methods the maximum possible surplus. This surplus though was introverted (due to diminished government funding) and required a stripping of services in order to operate at a minimum. [Show photos of the staff room]. My union Natfhe lost power and had ceased to negotiate nationally. When I saw my managers being made redundant I knew I was working for ruthless authorities. I became a git myself in an attempt to meet the needs of my new bosses and kept files on staff as requested (although I never passed this 'dirt' on). [Show evidence; post it note]. Within a week of working for the new structure I'd lost control of my workload. The number of courses staff taught on doubled due to a reduction in course hours. A full-time course in 1991 operating on 31 hours a week can be compared with the same course in 1996 operating on just 15 hours a week. Successive cuts in staffing were made through mechanisms such as; restructuring, merging and downsizing. Long-term staff absences were rife which in turn effected students and assessments. The excessive time I'd previously given was now autocratically taken and directed towards; statistics, evidence and data, governed by a cruel and hard agenda. The grip of the capitalist-maintained, industrial style management systems, tensened through political power disguised in the form of professional competencies. Meaningless guidelines were issued that were intended to reassure staff. [Show guidelines. Explain content].
These difficulties were further compounded through the introduction of a 'new' qualification outcome, GNVQ's. General National Vocational Qualifications were piloted in 1996. Art & design staff struggled to assess course work to the pedantic criteria that was set by examining bodies, while numerous 'tick-box' examination papers were administered which attempted to replace the need for any thorough demonstration of knowledge and understanding. An ex-colleague of mine was telling me of the moral struggles he has relating to having to tick boxes regarding the aesthetic competencies of people. An example he gave was that of a recent assessment sheet that stated that 'the student should produce a graphic image'. This criteria was accompanied by a tick-box (intended to determine whether or not this task had been accomplished). His dilemma emerged from the questions that arise with the action of ticking a box... ‘What sort of graphic image did the student produce?, What about quality of the image’? He couldn't simply 'tick boxes' because he found it morally wrong to do so which in turn made him feel depressed. So he decided to tick boxes and to also offer detailed written feedback until he was chastised by the external verifier for giving too much feedback. ‘Staff are seeking exams that will reduce workloads’2 says Gareth Holsgrove comparing the pros and cons of multiple choice questions in the Times Higher Education supplement. His article concludes though, ‘We can do better’3. After suffering a stress related illness last year my friend had to find a way of dealing with his situation. His solution has been simply to do it... to tick boxes and not to question. The fact that 'Thatcher's generation' has reached his classes makes this easier because they have experienced a school education system that's structured around tick boxes and narrow choices. This resistance of aesthetic learning to being quantified is but a minor annoyance to examining bodies. Yet by locating this 'problem' within the wider issue of value regimes in general the need for contemporary society to extend its understanding of the politics of dominance that masquerade as democracy arises. I need to clarify here that I can't offer solutions, only questions and possibly, possibilities.
Stress related illnesses have been documented widely in the public service sectors. In this drugs evidence bag, kindly donated by Inspector Nicholson of Holbeck police station are some of the empty packs from the medicines that I've consumed over the past five years. [Show evidence; pills]. This is a disposable society where looking after what you have is deemed to be false economy. The systems and the managers robbed me of a precious commodity... time. I've collected 'evidence' of my own, mirroring my ex-employers' actions and following in the example of Terry Dennett and Jo Spence who worked on the 'Crisis Project’4 which ‘was conceived principally as an archival documentary project’5. Terry wrote, ‘I have proceeded as if we had been given a historical commission for a future government. To produce visual material for a criminal trial, against those who have presided over the despoliation, and pollution, of today's society. Technically of course this is fantasy, but in fact the archives we are building up, using this historical imagination approach will, if they survive, be truly transported forward to the future, and the project will then almost certainly become a reality’6. [Hand round work and the image book and books with Terry and Jo's work in]. The same commitment to a 'wider community' is evident in the work of the artist Alison Marchant who provides a space for communication and enquiry through her work. In her Wall Paper History project involving the Match Women's Strike of 1888, she reveals industrial illnesses by re-presenting nostalgic archival images, enlarging them to visually emphasise that the women in the images are suffering from ‘phossy jaw a disease of the hands and jaw caused by the phosphorous poisoning associated with their occupation’7. [Show slides of Alison's work]. My work will contrast the dominant position which views aesthetics as a specialist activity with oppositions to this view from these critical artists who work with the complexities of the everyday, incorporating their lived experiences and a certain historical consciousness into their work.
[Show slides] The slides I'm now showing present the evidence I gathered relating to my abusive employer's actions. I juxtaposed it among artwork by Alison Marchant, Jo Spence, and, Terry Dennett and secretly installed this work in Meeting Room 2 of the institution that employed me. I imaginatively intend for this installation to be viewed as a lunchtime staff development session... so that workers on the management spine, might gain a wider understanding of their cruel actions; as shown from the viewpoint of someone who has been on the receiving end of professional abuse on a daily basis, over a sustained period of time. Of course it should be acknowledged that 'evidence' can never be considered to be wholly objective.
I'm now retired from teaching through ill-health. I have 'got out' but at great personal and, physical cost and my individual escape does not come severed from a social consciousness and a humanitarian awareness that is connected to my ex-colleagues who are 'still in there'. I've had to give up teaching which I loved and had to accept being categorised as a ‘too ill to teach psychiatric patient’ in order to receive my pension. The following text is from Dr Psychiatrist’s report about me and the photographs I'd like you to pass around were my devastated response to reading it for the first time especially as it contributed to my being refused legal support in challenging my employers actions.
[Hand round photos].

[Voices: Sue's speaking, Academic recording. Begin reading report and have helper then play audio tape of the same reading out of synch. A distancing mechanism for me and audience from the pain/embarrassment of the content of the text. START READING, THEN PLAY TAPE].
‘The picture here is of a woman with a past history of psychiatric illness who over the past three years has been under increasing pressure at work. Over this time she has developed symptoms of a moderately severe depressive illness with marked agitation and obsessional ruminations. Her past experiences, particularly including her childhood, have resulted in her having great difficulties in asserting herself and has meant that she has tended to give in to pressures, particularly from dominant males. This has resulted in her becoming increasingly angry but also feeling very impotent and frustrated with the conditions that she experienced at work over the past three years. She has undoubtedly been traumatised by these experiences. She needs some specific counselling helping her to come to terms with her experiences over the past three years. This work is likely to take several months. Longer-term she needs to do some psychotherapeutic work helping her to deal with her childhood experiences'8.
My process of recovery involved fetishising time; walking and collecting. [Pass round dandelion heads]. These are just dandelion heads, but they are also more than this. They represent how I felt at that time, fragile, in danger of collapse but wrapped in the security of being ill. Materials used are; glue, dandelion heads, shoe boxes and time. WARNING, you may find them repulsive, (insects or phobic reaction?). You don't have to hold them but I'd like you to. They are intended for you, made for you, to do with what you will. Follow the urge to destroy them if it takes you, there's a world of them out there and they're a splendid example of reproductive success despite human attempts to eradicate them.

[Voice: Academic]
[Pass handouts around]. I'd now like to draw your attention to the ‘key threads’ area on the bottom of page 1 on the handout. The two threads relate to two types of research presentations that I hope to deliver in the coming academic year. I am offering two differing presentations for two differing audiences; one is for art/media students and staff and the other is for business school students and staff. The art presentation questions what art can/can't be and asks how art can contribute towards political struggles and public awareness of dissent. The other applies these questions via a presentation relating to my experiences of having worked as an art educator in an environment that was dominated by a managerial ethos. I was struggling with how to define this aspect of my research as it resists categorisation. I've temporarily applied the term Participatory Action Research methodology or PAR to this area which ‘centres upon including the voices of people and interweaving critical feminist theory with [women's] lived experience and a view to facilitating change via feminist praxis’9.
Participatory action research methodology needs participants...
Over the Christmas holiday's 2001, I made 38 books. [Pass photos of book packages around, together with books]. These booklets basically outline my project and request a space in which to present my research work to staff and students. Of the 32 books that were sent out I have received two responses; one from Susan Hiller's studio assistant Sunil Rashel, saying ‘thank you for sending Susan the really attractive and interesting proposal which she will not be able to help with, due to her absence on research leave in Germany’10 and one from Professor Cary Cooper of Manchester University who was very helpful. There are practical reasons as to why responses have been minimal. One of these is that I have recently been diverted towards political activism and have not had the time to pursue my book proposals. Feedback was given by an academic I had approached explaining that a great deal of work has to be crammed into the course year and that finding time for anything extra is always a problem. I'm now in a position to begin contacting people with my proposal again.
However, my research presentations do not in themselves form a focus. They serve as a point of entry into dialogue with the audience/viewer for the responses of the audience are the key outcomes that these sessions hope to encourage. They don't seek to generate any specific outcomes set against measurable criteria but to invite responses as each individual deems it appropriate to offer. The aim here is not to produce a commiserating consensus but to gather and present a range of experiences in response to the session I offer. Responses may come in any form; verbal, textual, electronic and so on. They might be delivered at the time, issued later, or perhaps not offered at all, but the feeding back (or not) of these 'outcomes' would provide sources of data intended to contribute towards the possibilities that this research hopes to bring.
The term ‘outcome’ has differing meanings for differing people. Most often it refers to the objective, measured, validation of specific value structures and is therefore part of a 'regime'. Outcomes in education relate to the evidence needed to prove that an exchange of teaching and learning has taken place. An alternative view to this has been articulated by Sophia Lycouris an AHRB Research Fellow. ‘[I]in any art form where you create anything, you have to make decisions about how to use your materials. You have to be aware of what is going on around you and how these things come together in society. The experience of an audience as they watch a performance, is knowledge. (...)It is a “floating” notion of knowledge that circulates in a different way’11.
I would like to engage with the problematic of attempting to evaluate the efficacy of 'the aesthetic experience as knowledge' and then to further my investigation by asking ‘Whether it’s appropriate to attempt any knowledge based measure of aesthetic experience at all?’ What alternative/counter assessment methodologies might be applied? The aesthetic that I am referring to is not utopian (whole or divided), nor is it romantic. It is relational, ethical and therefore matrixial. In this respect, for me, practice doesn't simply illustrate theory, it is theory.
I would like to offer the example here of an artist who is also an educator working within the fine art sector who is interested in the ‘thinking that goes on in the practice of making’12. Joanna Greenhill (Director, MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martins) explores the moments between the polarities of thinking and making through conversational speech. She is working in the gaps between thinking and making and what comes out is a by-product of the process. This research is ongoing and involves collaboration, transcribing, recording, speaking and listening. Hers' is a dialogic intervention, applied in an educational context via an egalitarian philosophy of providing a shared communicative space. Thinking and talking takes time and time is a precious commodity. Through her work Joanna is asking, ‘How do we investigate pedagogy in terms of art practice?'13 For Joanna Greenhill the dialogue is the work. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger recently spoke of such processes as the ‘setting up of conditions for an encounter’14. She explained that Matrixial Theory is not simply another learning strategy, that it involves an-other knowledge that doesn't imply foreclosure for the subject, because it doesn't recognise symbolic judgement. It is this so-called ‘hysterical’15 theory that offers me direction.
[Get ready for feedback].

Notes
1. Wilks, Sue, 'This Time Next Year We'll Be Farting Through Silk', in Work, Craft and Labour, ed. by Griselda Pollock and Valerie Mainz, (England: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), pp.193.
2. Holsgrove, Gareth, "What is the right choice?". The Times Higher, May 4, (England: 2001), pp.25.
3. (Ibid.)
4. Dennett, Terry, Re-negotiations Catalogue (Norwich: BD&H, 1993), p.43.
5. (Ibid.)
6. (Ibid.)
7. Marchant, Alison, 'Wallpaper History/Reprinted Pages', 1989.
8. Clinical Psychiatric Report, May 13 1999, Personal Communication.
9. O'Neill, Maggie, Understanding Prostitution through Participatory Action Research, Women's Studies Network (UK) Association Newsletter - April, (England: 2002). pp.9.
10. Rashel, Sunil, Personal e-mail communication, February 4 2002.
11. Lycouris, Sophia, 'Guardian Education', Newspaper, (England: 11 April, 2000). pp.12.
12. Greenville, Joanna, Personal notes, Seminar, The University of Leeds, March 19 2002. Also see, Greenhill, Joanna, Love, Kate, Throp, Mo, Trangmar, Susan, Speaking and Making, (Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London: 2001).
13. (Ibid.)
14. Lichtenberg Ettinger, Bracha, Personal notes, Seminar, The University of Leeds, 11 May (England: 2002).
15. (Ibid.) School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at The University of Leeds

Ph. D. Upgrade Presentation - Transcribed Feedback
Edited [for colloquialisms and descriptions] this text presents a transcript of the feedback that I received at my upgrade presentation, May 15 2002.

Dr C [Chair]; Sue, delighted. Are you ready to take questions?.

Senior Lecturer; Sue, really interested in that because I went through exactly the same thing in '94 with the 'Silver Book' [contract]. With regards to performance and theory, where do you see where one starts and one begins? Would you have done it differently in a gallery environment?

Sue Wilks; I wouldn't do it in a gallery environment I don't think. It needs an educational context - teaching and learning. Theory and practice are polarities. I don't refer to a unity but its all in there.

Dr A; Two questions... the first one relates to notions of surveillance and control and aspects of relations between these in the workplace and the fact that we are being filmed now and the fact that we weren't asked if we wanted to be. There's a parallel going on... subjecting us to the lens in a way that structures subject? [can't identify word on audio tape].

Sue Wilks; You are right. I can't justify it, I can only offer you the reality. [I offer the practical constraints that beset me before my presentation as my reasons, but acknowledge that they are no excuse]. I wanted to know what you are feeling, how you are responding to this presentation but you are spot on, I didn't ask and that's impolite.

Dr A; Its not just that, but the issues it raises.

Sue Wilks; Absolutely. It needs asking. What do I do if some people say ‘no’ and some ‘yes?’ [to being filmed]. It’s an issue for me to deal with, thank you.

Dr A; And the second point is around experience and aesthetic experience, what are the differences?

Sue Wilks; It defies articulation. Do you want me to define aesthetics? There's so many kinds.

Dr A; Why are aesthetic experiences different to everyday experiences?

Sue Wilks; I've been looking at aesthetic history and Dewey's notion of aesthetic and everyday being separate but not distinct. It refers to polarities yet again. Relations are polarities and yet if they are shifting all the time, it depends on where your head is when you view them, e.g. dandelion heads, are just that, and more than that. I'm referring to Matrixial Theory.

Lecturer; A historical question... Where does your particular practice sit in a history of both art making and, radical, political artist/activists? In a sense it comes out of a 70s engagement of the women's movement with art practice, like Martha Rosler and after that Jo Spence, the people you've quoted. In terms of the way you'll be presenting your project you are going to have to locate this kind of practice very carefully and the second thing is your use of the word 'aesthetic'. You are going to have to historically track how this word has come back into use again. You quoted Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger and it [the aesthetic] has a particular use there. What is the relationship between aesthetics and politics? Where does your work sit in relation to that? These are things you will have to track very, very, carefully. How to define what you mean by aesthetics now, the history of the word and why now it’s come back into use at a particular moment. Is it a screen behind which politics is hidden?

Sue Wilks; Political environments seem to welcome artists, now, as in the 70s. There are practical and theoretical influences upon my work. I'm not a performer.

Lecturer; How will you do this, will you have a chapter dealing with historical location or, how is the performance to be central and build its context? The status of the video is an issue. Where are we? What is the status of the recording?

Sue Wilks; I had hoped to take a camcorder to pass around in an institutional context.

Lecturer; Time is an issue but you should talk to (a person) from Vera Media about these problems of relations with the camera and get practical advice.

Sue Wilks; Could I just ask the audience if anyone minds the video? [I had to ask, to take the risk of a negative response, its my duty, the least I can do].

Dr D; I don't like being videod.

Sue Wilks; You don't? Do you want for me not to look at it and to dump it?, I don't mind doing that.

Dr D; Yes please. If it doesn't affect the progress of your work in any way.

Sue Wilks; That's okay. I'll dump it. Friends can recall for me later or I can transcribe. I shouldn't have run over to get it.

Lecturer; But in a sense, that what you're discovering.

Sue Wilks; Yes it is. Thank you.

Audience; Around evidence and the archive or this notion of an archive... Archive's have rules of evidence. Access, storage, future uses and so on, such as internet misuses.

Sue Wilks; Yes its huge.

Dr B; You need to think about the video taping, not so much in relation to our particular preferences and whether we agree or disagree, but in terms of how Dr A put it, in terms of the apparatus of surveillance, precisely the apparatus that has oppressed you. You need to reflect upon the use of language also, your use of aims and outcomes. This is the language that has oppressed me. Living with this language in art education is hugely important. You need to question and reflect further because on some level you are adopting your own language uncritically, projecting yourself onto us, using the tools without critical reflection.

Sue Wilks; Have you looked at my outcomes?

Dr B; Yes.

Sue Wilks; I'm using their [managerial] language and style. Education deems it to be evidence. In using it, you are saying 'you can have evidence, but you can't'.

Dr B; I think you need to unsettle that language, to critically overturn it. You are attempting to do that, but as with the video camera you need to reflect on these thing, because I think you're not getting there yet. You are still thinking within its terms and looking at evidence within its terms.

Sue Wilks; Can you take me further please?

Dr B; Its how you gave the whole presentation. Its something we in HE are familiar with and I think you are adopting it uncritically and not examining it more directly. You are parodying and there needs to be a more direct reflection upon its use. Then it doesn't end up just reversing the terms of power and doing to your audience what has been done to you.

Sue Wilks; I get it now, thank you.

Audience; One idea might be to take surveillance to an extreme and subject your audience...[discusses detail] (...)because I thought that's what you were doing. We were almost being force fed with detritus and it may be worthwhile as a real or thought experiment. It began with the problem of assertiveness and it would be worth thinking about asserting yourself totally over the audience.

Dr A; It centres on control of power and powerlessness and structure. There's a set of relations that a spectator experiences, control of the painting, mastery of the artist. A willingness of the spectator to give up control, a level of volunteering. Performance has relations of control with the audience, sado masochism. Performance has a history of confrontation with the audience.

Audience; Thank you [Sue] I enjoyed that, but I'm just looking at your handout and trying to work out FEDA. You refer to a sort of energy, a forcefulness, a flow. I'm not sure where these come from and how that ties in with the kind of power relations we talked about earlier.

Sue Wilks; Its relational and matrixial. It allows you to imagine - I can only feel it.
Lecturer; Except that the art practice that it comes out of is almost the opposite. In Matrixial Theory you don't know that there's ever going to be any kind of response. It may or may not and is uncontrolled, in the way were talking about control.

Dr C; I have a question about articulation, between the aesthetic and the audit. If this comes out of the same conditions as the audit culture you were placed under, that moment of surveillance, there needs to be something articulating that relationship. Are they two sides of the same coin or on the same side of the coin? We’re happy to talk about the crisis of representation and so forth and then not to move forward... being stuck in this crisis of representation. But then that leads to politics and anyway we can leave that until the formal interview.

Lecturer; You need to think about humour also. You could push it to an excess, e.g. Gina Payne... you could push the humour more.

Dr C; We need to clear the room for a staff meeting, thank you.