Artistic Research: Context, Perspectives & A Definition (original) (raw)

Excerpt of the introduction: In the first part, I will dissect the term research, dipping into the everlasting dispute about art versus science, coming back to the initial term of artistic research and giving ideas of what it is and what it can contribute to scientific research. In the last part I will focus on the education reformation, elaborating detected challenges and chances it might bring. As literature, the essay draws – amongst others – from the book Artistic research published by philosopher, editor and curator Annette W. Balkema and philosopher, editor, curator and Professor for Artistic Research at the MaHKU, Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design Henk Slager, who is also leading the publication of the Journal of Artistic Research (JAR). It is a collection of essays and discussions from a two-day symposium on artistic research. Other sources are websites of art academies involved in the development of artistic research, different speeches on the topic and the Belgian philosopher, writer and critic Dieter Lesage’s text Who’s Afraid of Artistic Research? On measuring artistic research output (2009). As the evolution of artistic research is still ongoing, I found it important to include a variety of different opinions, in order to detect common tendencies.