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Notes on ARTISTIC RESEARCH DOES NOT EXIST... AND HOW SHE MANAGED TO NOT BE AFRAID

JULIAN KLIEN

R E S I D U E

Fear No. 1: Artistic research just tries to pass ordinary art off as research

  • How do you quantify ‘ordinary’ art

  • Separating layers of reality, contextualisation, looking deeper at something, finding layers and attempting to label them.

 

Fear No. 2: Artistic research produces art and is hence not research

  • Artistic research must yield results. What are these results?

  •  Its about production, producing research, producing art work

 

Fear No. 3: Artistic and scientific research preclude one another

  • "everything that can rightfully be called artistic is completely unscientific merely because it is artistic” The stem of researching coming from science surfaces here, there always seems a comparison to science when talking about research.

  • Art can and does exist within science and scientific research

 

Fear No. 4: Artists want use the term “research” to upvalue their art so they can unrightfully seize hold of research funding

  • There is hardly any funding for arts research so this tears down this remark.

  • To receive funding you still need to do research and write articles etc.

  • It’s a bad strategy purely for the form of making artistic work

 

Fear No. 5: Artistic research pursues not research but rather artistic development

  • There is a distinction in the industry between development and research

  • Artistic development is a broad field but relates specifically to the artist themselves

 

Fear No. 6: Artistic research is research of the arts and hence self-referential

  • The artistic research of artistic research – is this what we’re doing now?

  • Artistic research can include research on anything, it just need to ’overlap’ or connect with the arts or specific art in some manner.

 

Fear No. 7: Artistic research is only undertaken by (less gifted) artists

  • Research can be seen as a tool for gaining new insights. It can be argued that tis is what all artists are interested in.

Fear No. 8: Artistic research is just trying to look scientific

  • Artistic research is trying to be artistic research not scientific research. Why does all research have to be scientific?

 

Fear No. 9: Collaborative interdisciplinary research between the scientific and artistic disciplines is impossible

  • It was earlier stated in this article that Art can and does exist within science and within scientific research.

  • Artistic research is centred on discussing artists and artforms,

  • Scientific research is more centred on observations that can be seen as objective whereas artist research can only exist within frameworks of  the subjective. This doesn’t mean that these two research forms should be divided however, infrastructure and sufficient thought needs to be in place before such interdisciplinary researches.

 

Fear No. 10: Art would have to undergo fundamental changes in order to be called research

  • “Artistic research can also be scientific or scholarly research, just as scientific or scholarly research can also be artistic research.” There is great overlap between these research practices therefore art does not need to change insofar as science doesn’t need to change.

 

Fear No. 11: The term “artistic research” is only needed to distract attention from the deficient quality of the artistic work

  • …” being driven by the motivation of gaining insights,’ This is the distinction between artistic research and art making. Research is rooted in gaining insights whereas art making in rooted in a more primal creativity.

  • The term ‘quality’ is also subjective when talking about the art pieces.

  • Artists continue to research in order to make their artworks, therefore art research will always exist whether labelled as such or not.

 

  • I have an idea for a project called ‘Body Clock’, it will involve two performers lying on the floor physically recreating the hands of a clock. The performers will move as if the hands of a clock in real time for a duration of 3, 6, 12, 24 hours. The idea being that audiences, onlookers will be able to read the performers as an actual clock. I mention this concept because it will take some research to realise, both research in the sense of researching movements of clocks, looking at how clocks came into existing, their wider political and sociological context. I will then use of form of previous research on a project I made called 11 minutes about a specific clock in Bristol. The third research I will conduct is through doing, trying out the concept with bodies and noting what we learn from these experiences. This is artistic research, I may never write a journal about it, it may have no academic uses but research will have happened in order for the project to be realised.

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Words I didn’t know

 

Demarcate: verb (used with object), de·mar·cat·ed, de·mar·cat·ing.

to determine or mark off the boundaries or limits of: to demarcate a piece of property.

to separate distinctly: to demarcate the lots with fences.

 

 

Exigency: noun

  • exigent state or character; urgency.

  • Usually exigencies . the need, demand, or requirement intrinsic to a circumstance, condition, etc.: the exigencies of city life.

  • a case or situation that demands prompt action or remedy; emergency: He promised help in any exigency.

 

 

Hermeneutics:

noun (used with a singular verb)

  • the science of interpretation, especially of the Scriptures.

  • the branch of theology that deals with the principles of Biblical exegesis.

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