Research Catalogue: international database for artistic research
"The Research Catalogue (RC) is a searchable database for archiving artistic research. RC content is not peer reviewed, nor is it highly controlled for quality, being checked only for appropriateness. As a result, the RC is highly inclusive.
The open source status of the RC is essential to its nature and serves its function as a connective and transitional layer between academic discourse and artistic practice, thereby constituting a discursive field for artistic research.
The RC creates a link between (1) elaborated documentation of the work; and (2) expositions and comments that engage with the contribution of the work as research.
Given that the RC is a site for artistic research, to add a work is to make a claim that the work can be seen as research; through expositions, comments and articles the initial claim is transformed into an argument. It is believed that the reflective space provided by the RC can become an essential part of the research process by providing a suitable structure in which to develop the relationship between documentation and exposition, whilst also retaining congruence with art itself.
Clearly, the RC is the backbone of JAR: potential JAR expositions emerge from the range of the artistic research activities taking place in it for peer-review and development within the RC space itself. Authors may nominate or JAR editors may select expositions for development as JAR contributions.
If you believe that RC software might also support your research database needs then explore the possibility of using the RC as your repository, by contacting us."
(Society of Artistic Research)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Journal for Artistic Research: a focal point for diverse artistic voices
"Introducing a high-quality journal in the field allows an ever-increasing number of artistic researchers to partake in what for the sciences and humanities are standard academic publication procedures. Given that artistic research has become a worldwide movement with many local activities, JAR can serve as a focal point, bringing together diverse voices, facilitating the discourse and thus improving the artistic research community.
In the context of JAR, artistic research is doubly defined: insofar as it is research, it enhances knowledge and understanding; because it is artistic, however, the mode of presentation is essential. This definition excludes works of art that share modes of presentation with artistic research, but do not enhance understanding. It also excludes research that is not dependant on an artistic mode of presentation. Thus, the development of epistemological as well as artistic criteria for the exposure of artistic research is a key ambition of the Journal; part of JAR's mission is to re-negotiate art's relationship to academia and the role and function of research in artistic practice. Furthermore, JAR embraces research practices across disciplines, thereby emphasising the transdisciplinary character of much artistic research.
JAR's unique presentation of artistic research as 'weaves', instead of 'pages', facilitates multi-modal exposition, thereby meeting the desire of artistic researchers to have their work displayed and documented in a manner that demonstrates a respect for modes of presentation. By introducing, together with the RC, a standard for documentation, the Journal is responding to the international artistic and academic communities, which demand high quality referencing and documentation. Moreover, the Journal meets the need of art institutions such as museums, galleries and collections for artistic research to be more easily accessible."
(Michael Schwab)
Fig.1 Deborah Harty and Phil Sawdon (2010). "humhyphenhum: Still 5".
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
dOCUMENTA (13)
"dOCUMENTA (13) is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory. These are terrains where politics are inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges, both ancient and contemporary. dOCUMENTA (13) is driven by a holistic and non-logocentric vision that is skeptical of the persisting belief in economic growth. This vision is shared with, and recognizes, the shapes and practices of knowing of all the animate and inanimate makers of the world, including people. (C. Christov-Bakargiev)"
(dOCUMENTA)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Towards a critical discourse of practice as research
"A problem confronting many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis, The outcomes of such research are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate objectively, methods processes, and conclusions that emerge from an alternative logic of practice and the intrinsically subjective dimension of artistic production. Moreover, conventional approaches and models of writing about art generally fall within the domain of criticism, a discourse that tends to focus on connoisieurial evaluation of the finished product. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on one hand, what has been referred to as 'auto-connoisseurship', the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description (Nelson 2004)?
In this paper, I suggest that a way of overcoming such a dilemma is for creative arts researchers to shift the critical focus away from the notion of the work as product, to an understanding of both studio enquiry and its outcomes as process. I will draw on Michel Foucault's essay 'What is An Author ' (Rabinow, 1991) to explore how we might move away from art criticism to the notion of a critical discourse of practice-led enquiry that involves viewing the artist as a researcher, and the artist/critic as a scholar who examines the value of artistic process as the production of knowledge. As I will demonstrate, in adopting such an approach, practitioner researchers need not ignore or negate the specificities and particularities of practice - including its subjective and emergent methodologies which I have argued elsewhere, constitute the generative strength that distinguishes artistic research from more traditional approaches Barrett, 2005). In elaborating the relationship between a these aspects and the more distanced focus made available through Foucault's elaboration of author function, I will draw on Donna Haraway's (1991, 1992) notion of 'situated knowledge' and her critique of social constructivism which reveals how the scientific method is implicated in social constructivist accounts of knowledge. It is this alignment, suggests Haraway,that results in the effacement of particularities of experience from which situated knowledges emerge. In order to ground and illustrate the arguments and ideas presented in this paper, I will also refer to Pablo Picasso's, Demioselles d''Avignon and a selection of critical commentaries on this work by Leo Steinberg (1988), William Rubin (1994) and Lisa Florman (2003)."
(Estelle Barrett, 2006)
Barrett, E. (2006) Materializing pedagogies. Working Papers in Art and Design 4 Retrieved
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Studies in Material Thinking: a research communication platform
"Studies in Material Thinking is an international journal that reports on the peer reviewed work of artists, designers and writers. It is a vehicle to support the communication and critique of artistic and design research from the vantage point of both the materiality and the poetics of creative research. Studies in Material Thinking aims to develop a series of divergent positions, critical approaches and contestations around the term 'material thinking', centred as it is on an understanding of making, invention, design, creative practice and research methodology."
(Nancy de Freitas, Studies in Material Thinking)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
