This article offers an analysis of turn-expanding practices with the connective å sen ‘and then’ in Swedish multi-party conversations in which the participants discuss and assess works of visual art. The connective is recurrently used to introduce a turn continuation, i.e. a stretch of talk that is produced after a possibly completed turn-constructional unit (TCU). We identify three types of continuations: same-speaker continuations, occurring post gap or post-other talk, and other-continuations by the next speaker. Some of the “and then” continuations are clausal, syntactically free-standing, while non-clausal continuations have more in common with TCU increments. “And then” continuations specify, restrict or redirect the unfolding contribution while at the same time orienting to a collective interactional project. In same-speaker continuations, the speaker can introduce a new aspect of the established theme or offer an account. Other-continuations can be used to achieve a shift in footing to introduce a somewhat non-aligning contribution. Both grammar and embodied resources (especially hand gestures) are activated in the management of the completion of a prior turn unit, the initiation of a turn continuation and the recompletion of the speaker’s turn. The typical multimodal trajectory is: syntactic completion of a first unit + retracted gesture; link to prior talk and upcoming talk with “and then” followed by the core of the continuation + a redeployed gesture; and finally, syntactic completion of the continuing unit + retracted gesture to a rest position.

This article scrutinizes the trajectory of an evaluation of the visual appearance of an artistic installation, during a conversation between a visual artist and a critic. The study analyzes how the artist receives and responds to the critic’s evaluations of the artwork in three different phases of evaluative discourse: an initial, an elaborating, and a concluding one. The artist’s responses change from minimal responses and hypothetical solutions, via repeating utterances, to overt agreements and outspoken explanations. The development of the artist’s response to the critic’s evaluations reflects an increase in the participants’ shared intersubjective understanding and in the artist’s strengthened epistemic position: the critique can be accepted only after the artist has gone through interactional phases that lead up to an appreciation of the critique that thus can be commented on and partly transformed.