"But is it artistic research?"

In presentations of artistic research projects the question "...but is it artistic research..." seems inevitable, raised by audience, peer reviewers, surrounding management or by the artistic researchers themselves. To me this is an unproductive question, begging for unproductive answers. Still, the question comes up on a regular basis, at least here in Norway.

For the recent 7th Sensuous Knowledge conference [1], presenters were asked to consider the following question: "What makes your project an example of artistic/museum research and not (purely) a work of art or a design product?" [2]. Similarly artistic research projects receiving grants from the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (e.g., the Re:place project) are expected to present their projects at the regular national Artistic Research Forums. The presentations are explicitly requested to discuss how "artistic development emerges through the project - in a form that would be suitable for discussion among the participants". [3]

Looking abroad, the above question appears less omnipresent. The Art & Research Journal "welcomes submissions (...) which seek to engage with all areas of research in Fine Art practice and/or pedagogy. Submissions may take the form of interviews, analytical or polemical essays as well as audio, visual or text-based artworks which seek to address issues in / or are the outcomes of research in Fine Art practice." [4]. Reviewers for the journal are asked to consider if the submission is appropriate to the aims and focus of the journal, and whether is it of sufficient academic/artistic standard. [5] Neither the call for submissions nor the reviewing guideline requests a mandatory discussion of what make the presented work artistic research. Neither does the Austrian Program for Arts-based Research (PEEK) require this question to be explicitly addressed; rather there is an emphasis on research context, clarity of the aims, appropriateness of the methodology, topicality and potential for artistic innovation, as well as more instrumental potentials for increasing international competitiveness and networking. [6]

The guidelines when peer-reviewing expositions for the Journal of Artistic Research (JAR) falls somewhere in-between, explicitly asking if the submission expose practice as research, but further details this question as follows:

In the Research Catalogue, art is exposed, translated, transformed, performed, curated etc. as research. The claim to be research implies a relationship in one way or another to academic criteria for the conduct of research, which include:
1) A description or exposition of the question, issue or problem the research is exploring;
2) Evidence of innovation in the content, form, or technique of the work in relation to a genre of practice;
3) Contextualisation, which includes, or may include, a discussion of social, artistic and/or theoretical issues that the work responds to, a discussion of a range of positions taken by other artists to whom this work contributes a particular perspective, and some documentation of work by the artist that led to the present submission;
4) The (kind of) knowledge, understanding, insight, comprehension or experience the research is trying to enhance and convey;
5) The adequacy and soundness of the methods used and thoroughness of research, analysis, and experiment;
6) A correct use of referencing, following the MHRA author-date citation style. [7]

The question of whether a work constitutes artistic research first warrants a definition of what artistic research is. The question of "what is artistic research" belongs to the discipline of philosophy of artistic science in the same way as the question "what is scientific research" belongs to the discipline of philosophy of science. It is not necessarily the obligation of the artist or artist-researcher to provide academic answers to this question.

In scientific research you seldom hear anyone asking "whether this is scientific research". Works of science are not judged in terms of whether or not they are science. Rather the quality of the work is taken into consideration, as it expresses itself in how the presentation situates the work in a research context, the clarity of the aims, the appropriateness of the methodology, the relevance and importance of topicality, as well as the quality and contributions of results and discussion. It should be no different for artistic research.

Hence the vague question "is it artistic research" should be substituted for more specific questions relating to the above, and a presentation of artistic research implicitly argue for the quality of the research by addressing these questions. This will also lead to more precise questions for further development of the understanding of artistic research as an academic discipline, e.g., what relevant and productive methods can be imagined and applied within artistic research, and how might the methodology of artistic research be further developed?


This will also serve to resolve the equally unproductive need to distinguish between something being artistic research as opposed to "(purely) a work of art or a design product". [2] This discrimination to me seems primarily institutionally motivated, part of an argument to justify artistic research within the institutions (and funding for it) as something else than what is happening in the free professional field.

Scientific research is primarily taking place within research institutions and the research-driven industry. In contrast artistic production and artistic research happens both within the academic institutions and within the free and independent professional field of artists and practitioners. It is my opinion that we cannot and should not make any hard distinction between the activities within and outside academia. It is a prerequisite of artistic research that it produce strong artistic works as one of its outcomes, and possibly the most important one. At the same time the practise of many independent artists have strong elements of artistic research, and should be recognised as such.

A positioning of artistic research as belonging only within the institutions, different in nature to the practice of the free and independent artistic field, encourages a divergence between the practices inside and outside of the academic institutions. This has the potential of leading to a separate strand of academic art, with the danger of it ending up equally irrelevant as the tradition of the French Academy of Fine Arts at the dawn of impressionism.

An important difference between activities within and outside the academic institutions with respect to artistic research is that the institutions generally have more generous resources available. Hence they offer improved opportunities (time, space and funding) for systematic reflection on the artistic practice, and the communication of such reflections. For this reason we can expect and require the institutions to engage with all aspects of artistic research, and provide major contributions to the field, but this should be of equal importance within and outside of the institutions. In contrast many independent artists find that they need to prioritise certain parts of the breath of activities that constitutes artistic research. The systematic communication of reflections is particular challenging to many independent artists as funding for artistic projects seldom leave room for this.

References:

[1] http://sensuousknowledge.org/. Accessed 2013-01-26.
[2] E-mail from "The Sensuous Knowledge Conference Team" to presenting participants January 4 2013.
[3] Letter from the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme to this author as coordinator of the Re:place project on December 5 2012. Translated from Norwegian.
[4] Note to Contributors to Art & Research. Available online: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v4n1/v4n1colophon.php. Accessed 2013-01-26
[5] Peer-Review pro forma for Art & Research. Available online: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v3n2/pdfs/Peer_Review_Pro_Forma.pdf. Accessed 2013-01-26
[6] Program for Arts-based Research (PEEK): Program Document. May 2009. Available online: http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/projects/ar_PEEK_document.pdf. Accessed 2013-01-26
[7] JAR Peer-reviewing guide. http://www.jar-online.net/index.php/pages/view/128. Accessed 2013-01-26

Imagined Places

Imagined Places is an exhibition curated by Anke Bangma at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam. The show opened on 12 December and will be up until 14 April 2013. The theme and content of the exhibition are extremely relevant for Re:place, and we look forward to visiting Amsterdam and seeing it in the course of the spring!

"Does a person's location determine their identity? Imagined Places is not about the significance of physical place, it is about our connection with other places. Adrian Paci, Zineb Sedira, Bouchra Khalili, Claudia Cristovao and Ho-Yeol Ryu present photos and video installations depicting real and imaginary places, chosen and unchosen journeys. Imagined Places is about the desire to be somewhere else and the reality of forced migration.

This exhibition was compiled by Anke Bangma, curator of contemporary art at the Tropenmuseum since 2011. Imagined Places appears in Park Hall and the Group Room at the Tropenmuseum from 12 December 2012 to 14 April 2013."

Program update

Details of seminars, exhibitions and activities planned for 2013 in Oslo have now been posted on the "seminars" and "program" pages. Director of Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Stephanie von Spreter, has now been added as a project partner.

Wouter Davidts (BE): Architecture without Address - Luc Deleu and the Lessons in Scale and Perspective

Forelesning på Bergen Arkitektskole, tirsdag 11 desember, arrangert av VOLT.

Wouter Davidts bor og arbeider i Antwerpen. Fra 2009 til 2012 var han professor i moderne kunst og samtidskunst ved VU universitetet i Amsterdam. Fra 2003 til 2008 var han var han ansatt som post-doc forsker ved instituttet for arkitektur og urbanisme ved universitetet i Ghent. Høsten 2006 var han British Academy Reasearch Fellow ved Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Davidts har skrevet boken “Bouwen voor de kunst?” (A&S/books, 2006), har publisert artikler om museer, samtidskunst og arkitektur i tidsskriftene Afterall, Archis, De Witte Raaf, Footprint, Kritische Berichten, Metropolis M, OASE og Parachute, og har også bidratt til antologier og utstillingskataloger. Han var redaktør for bøkene The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work (Valiz, 2009, med Kim Paice), CRACK: Koen van den Broek (Valiz, 2010), og nylig publiserte Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (Valiz, 2012, med Guy Châtel og Stefaan Vervoort).

Utstillingen Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office åpner i januar 2013 ved Stroom Den Haag og vil senere bli vist ved Extra City Kunsthal i Antwerpen. Utstillingen er kuratert Wouter Davidts og Stefaan Vervoort, i dialog med T.O.P. office.

Mer info på Underskog:  

http://underskog.no/kalender/91533_volt-presenterer-wouter-davidts-be-architecture-witho/forestilling/143573

The Cold Coast Archive (2)

Images from the exhibition and discussion in Rom8. The group discussion on 20 November focussed on the historical and contextual background for the exhibition, looking at the development and subsequent decline of the coal mining industry on Svalbard, the presence today of the global seed bank and of international climate researchers, and the ways in which the Cold Coast Archive weaves together diverse narrative strands, combining documentary accounts with personal observations and artistic interventions. In its multi-layered structure as both online archive and scaleable exhibition installation, the Cold Coast Archive addresses the question of place or site from multiple perspectives simultaneously, calling into question assumptions about the ways in which artists might examine, describe, enter into, interact with, represent or conceptually reconfigure a given place or site. As part of the discussion Anne Marthe Dyvi read a specially composed text questioning our conceptions of time and its relationship to space. The text is published below in English and Norwegian.

Photomontages & poster from the Cold Coast Archive. The faceted form of the photomontages is repeated in the arrangement of video monitors suspended on wooden platforms in the installation.

Exhibition opening 16 November

Part of the installation, suspended projectors sending images to all of the gallery walls, combined with surround audio

Exhibition view from the street (above)

Evigaturen, the eternity recording apparatus relieased its 2nd record.

Evigaturen´s travel up to Svalbard and into the vault is displayed in the photomontage- The audience can listen to the records (1. record: recordings of activity in the vault between Sept 2011 and April 2012, 2. record 2: April-Nov 2012). 

From the artist's talk/group discussion in the exhibition. Signe Lidén, Nora Adwan, Anne Marthe Dyvi, Georgia Rodger

Anne Marthe Dyvi reading a text written for the occasion.

ABOUT TIME / in Room 8 / 20^th of Nov 2012 /Anne Marthe Dyvi

Starting point/ a small excerpt from Wikipedia first:

‹‹ Two distinct viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.[21] An opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of actually existing dimension that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead an intellectual concept (together with space and number) that enables humans to sequence and compare events[43] This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[15] and Immanuel Kant,[22][23] holds that space and time "do not exist in and of themselves, but ... are the product of the way we represent things", because we can know objects only as they appear to us.›› 

(Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time)

My personal view on art, time and artistic research/ a hypothesis

Everything that physically exists is that which highlights time, in the same way that clothes on the clothes line reveal the wind. Time is not observable or existent without this. This is what I can, at this time, say that time is; therefore only able to explain it by its surrounding phenomena.

Our physical decay, our breath, our actions and movements are what make time exist; the surrounding is its level of existence. The artist observes this phenomenon, indirectly and without being conscious of it, then tansforms these observations and time data to be made manifest in art. Like the act of  taking something out of reality, putting it in a Petri dish under a microscope, categorizing it and preserving it.

So for the first time, I have realized the reason for the existence of the term 'artistic research', but it was not what I thought it was: that artistic research is the art that artists make, display and write about. No, artistic research or the making of art is actually research on TIME, artists demonstrating time through research. Artists can depict time, detach it from its original location or logic, and enable an abstract interpretation. You find it in visual art, in literature, in music, theatre and dance.

But all this research, and I naturally want to say, art, prove that time is a personally experienced phenomenon. In two ways: there are many artists who do a lot of work where time is observable. So therefore; many results create a wealth of information, experiences, and expressions, mediated through the artist. There is a huge body of material, and when they relate to the same research field, the results affect each other. The fact that it is a personal or experiential phenomenon, is proved only indirectly by artists: it is the artist's peer review, namely the viewer that interprets research results within him or herself, by experiencing the art. The viewers then get their resonance or dissonance from the artwork, namely the artists evidence / research material on time.

This large group of appraisers and material manufacturers don’t work with the hierarchical structure that the university sector is based within. Sure, there is a hierarchy in the arts as well, but this is around the art work (possibilities, power, money, networks and so on). Art not including the power structures around it cannot build brick by brick, research refers to research, and there are so many voices contributing that they create a cacophony.

The concept cacophony is often used to critique music if it is perceived as complicated and dissonant, or to describe many voices making sound simultaneously, preventing the transmission of messages or sense.

Perhaps he fact that the results are cacophonous can help us to identify and formulate time’s own character. As a Lime tree repeats its own form in the shape of its leaf, tree and leaf are similar. It may be that the methodology of scientific time research, known to us as art or artistic research, can say something about time itself. So if seen as a whole the research results constitute a cacophony.

Time says this to us:

“I am in transitions - I am observable, or in a mode of existence when the transition occurs, when a snowflake goes from snow to water on the palm of your hand, I'm there. But like anything emulated, I cannot be without the other, without physics. Maybe I am a by-product of processes, such as friction creates friction, but heat as well. Or maybe I am the motivation of the processes, they happen to generate me, Time.”

Unfortunately, TIME also reminds us that it is our self that hinders our ability to grasp TIME. We resonate time in a physical way, but strive to create a language around our experiences. For we are only mediums with the limitations that this gives. Like a radio is unable to transfer images, we struggle to comprehend time. To be able to experience time at the same time that we view it from a distance. We have such difficulty to be in two times simultaneously. Experiencing and interpreting simultaneously. Ultimately we want to be at ease with time. We know who you are; you cannot make us feel troubled, Mr Time. Therefore, we use art as a research park on time, to cope with this turmoil. Then it will be in art itself that we can hold time down, to study it through a personal microscope. For the benefit of the formation of self and the formation of culture.

But if we look at research as a place for development, or evolution as a refining process, where will this art or time research bring us, when the methodology and the transfer of results are so scattered? Seemingly without a clear goal. Will we succeed in time research within art, to fully grasp time? Or put another way, will we get an answer on what time is through art? If so, will the case of art research change from time to something else? And if so, what?

If we get answers, the methodology of the research is proven to be adequate, and the model might be preserved. The research lifts us to a higher level of enlightenment, the time after the defining or discovery of time. What the next case will be in the arts I am also probably not able to describe, as I have not reached enlightenment enough. If we don’t reach enlightenment through art, we will probably just keep on researching the answer to what TIME is. The answer then is that keeping up this activity is being as close to understanding time as possible. Or that we as mediums are not able to develop our selves to receive time. Experience tells us that we will continue to develop, unless it is the case that to grasp time is contrary to our evolution, but then I can not know that either. Maybe we have a built-in default that prevents us from fully grasping time, since to do so might bring about our end.

Or maybe time is merely a relationship, or a glue. The glue in the collage. Information and time fail to conclude.

Norsk: 

The Cold Coast Archive at Rom 8

Next Re:place event: the exhibition The Cold Coast Archive at Rom 8, 16.-25. November

The Cold Coast Archive is a joint project between artists Annesofie Norn, Signe Lidén and Steve Rowell, using the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as a focal point.

The Cold Coast Archive project investigates and explores human beings’ efforts to preserve civilization and defy the inevitability of its demise. It investigates Svalbards Global Seed Vaults practical, political, historical and symbolic structure, its arctic location, as well as its infrastructure and cultural nuances expressed in the local environment.
The wide range of material collected is meant to form an archieve of human perception of time between the present and eternity.


Eternity...this intangible future often leads to ideas of a larger divine plan or might well feed a desire for quick profit and short term results, accelerated by technology and market-driven economies.There is a gap between the present and eternity, a distance we often call "future generations" or "our children and grandchildren" in an attempt to relate to the distant future. It is the distance between an intense present, with major political, social and climatic challenges and an elusive future hiding beyond the horizon of our understanding that The Cold Coast Archive is relating to.

www.coldcoastarchive.org

Guest lecture Esther Leslie

The latest guest lecture in the series connected to Re:place was given by Esther Leslie on 12. November. Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and is co-author of the blog Militant Esthetix. She has written several books and has contributed to numerous publications and journals. 

Her lecture was wide-ranging in scope and historical perspective, covering Baudelaire, Benjamin and Adorno, the aesthetics of urban culture in early modernism, constructivism and futurism, contemporary radical poetry that re-imagines texts of Baudelaire, and the current cultural landscape that she characterizes as a field of "liquid crystal". She raised many questions that are relevant to the discussions within the framework of Re:place and provided useful tools and terms for further investigation. We hope to have an ongoing exchange with Esther, and look forward to her forthcoming book on the liquid crystal condition.

Esther Leslie speaking, slide of Marinetti's futurist sound poetry

Text from Baudelaire's poetics of hashish

Tatlin's tower - a recurring ikon in our discussions of urbanity, art, imagination

"Instead of storming under a confused compulsion to the conquest of strange stars"

Re-generative poetry

From the middle ages to the 21st. century in one hour.