Adrian Piper – What, exactly, is the Idea of Artistic Research?
Post Digital Cultures, 4-5.12.2015, Lausanne Symposium presented by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC), Switzerland and Les Urbaines. What, exactly, is the idea of artistic research? In the traditional academic context, the term “research” has a shared meaning across different disciplines. The term is used here in this traditional sense. When artistic research is the topic, the term is not used in this sense, because the very idea of “artistic research” is a recent one. There is a tendency to try to make the term mean whatever one wants it to mean. The method of exegesis and analysis usually practiced in philosophy shed light on two recent texts that express consensus on some ways in which the term “artistic research” is presently being used: one by Prof. Hans de Wolf and a second by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Both raise questions as to whether it should lead artists to revise their practice to conform to it; or whether it instead captures a previously unnoticed part of artistic creativity as traditionally understood. If the former, then art academies are obligated to instill the additional skills that help artists to make this transition. If the latter, then there is no general program that can teach the ways in which artistic research enters into a particular artist’s creative process. In fact, artistic research in this sense is a precondition for traditional academic research, not on a par with it. Descartes’ and Kant’s comments on their respective creative processes provide good evidence. In the end, the distinction between artistic and traditional research is based on misguided assumptions each field has about the other.
Post Digital Cultures, 4-5.12.2015, Lausanne Symposium presented by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC), Switzerland and Les Urbaines. What, exactly, is the idea of artistic research? In the traditional academic context, the term “research” has a shared meaning across different disciplines. The term is used here in this traditional sense. When artistic research is the topic, the term is not used in this sense, because the very idea of “artistic research” is a recent one. There is a tendency to try to make the term mean whatever one wants it to mean. The method of exegesis and analysis usually practiced in philosophy shed light on two recent texts that express consensus on some ways in which the term “artistic research” is presently being used: one by Prof. Hans de Wolf and a second by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Both raise questions as to whether it should lead artists to revise their practice to conform to it; or whether it instead captures a previously unnoticed part of artistic creativity as traditionally understood. If the former, then art academies are obligated to instill the additional skills that help artists to make this transition. If the latter, then there is no general program that can teach the ways in which artistic research enters into a particular artist’s creative process. In fact, artistic research in this sense is a precondition for traditional academic research, not on a par with it. Descartes’ and Kant’s comments on their respective creative processes provide good evidence. In the end, the distinction between artistic and traditional research is based on misguided assumptions each field has about the other.