Let’s talk about (artistic) research

Let’s Talk about (Artistic) Research is a seminar series that was conceived and organised by the Theory in the Arts Professorship in collaboration with the ArtEZ Academy of Theatre & Dance (João Da Silva). The purpose of the seminar was to begin to make visible the myriad of ways in which (artistic) research is perceived and put to work.

The project consisted of nine gatherings in which many approaches to and questions about (artistic) research were explored. Several (artistic) research practitioners who had finished or were doing a PhD in the arts were invited. Together, they explored our own positions – their situatedness – within these approaches.

The uniqueness of the gatherings was that many art ‘disciplines’ and a few academic fields were present, such as fine art, product design, graphic design, music, dance, creative writing, and art history and anthropology. This made the seminars especially interesting because disciplines – a word that is not unquestioned – are not always running the same routes; or, at least, they are not always aware of their sharing the same challenges.

One of the outcomes of virtually all international discussions on (artistic) research is that it is characterised by just one stable quality: it is a systematically fluid constellation or assemblage that constantly, and as a matter of principle, reshuffles, reorders and redefines its own course, ideas and values. An important and constitutive characteristic of (artistic) research is that it is intrinsically public, in the sense that researchers must bring the research outcomes and their process in dialogue with others, opening up a discourse around the propositions of their research. In that sense, (artistic) research diverges and differentiates itself from art making.