RESEARCH 3 introduction structure & objectives artistic research “drs.� Korneel Bernolet korneel.bernolet@ap.be
› Preparation for Research 4 = master paper
RESEARCH 3 1/10: Korneel Bernolet 15/10: Kevin Voets (NL)
22/10: Jeroen Billiet 19/11: Umut Eldem 26/11: Nico Couck
3/12: Frank Agsteribbe & Bob Selderslaghs 17/12: Korneel Bernolet 18/2: assignment deadline 21/4, 28/4, 12/5: exam
– Summary of Style Guide Research (last session) – Short individual presentation = exam (info during last session) – Overview of artistic practices:
› Guest lectures by artistic researchers in several domains › Digitap: – – – –
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› (visitation last year)
RESEARCH 3 purpose?
› Research
› Reflection
› (visitation last year)
RESEARCH 3 purpose?
› Research
› Reflection › Artistic research?!
RESEARCH 3 purpose?
› Research
› Reflection › Artistic research?! › Article:
BORGDORFF, Henk:
The debate on research in the arts. Amsterdam, AHK, 2006.
[Introduction]
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
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The crux of the matter is whether a phenomenon like research in the arts exists – an endeavour in which the production of art is itself a fundamental part of the research process, and whereby art is partly the result of research. More particularly, the issue is whether this type of research distinguishes itself from other research in terms of the nature of its research object (an ontological question), in terms of the knowledge it holds (an epistemological question) and in terms of the working methods that are appropriate to it (a methodological question).
[…] One of the issues figuring prominently in the debate about research in the arts is: When does art practice count as research? (and its possible corollary: Doesn’t all art practice count as research to some extent?) Can criteria perhaps be formulated that can help to differentiate art practice-in-itself from art practice-as-research? And a concomitant question is: How does artistic research differ from what is called academic or scientific research?
I. The debate
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
2/11
As a result of higher education reforms in many European countries, research has now become part of the primary function in higher professional schools as well as in universities. [...] [This is] the so-called Bologna Process – the ambition of the various member states of the European Community to forge a single framework for higher education, in three ‘cycles’ made up of bachelors, masters and doctorate degree courses. […] As a rule, ‘pure’ or fundamental scholarly or scientific research (if indeed that exists) is and remains the province of the universities. Research at theatre and dance schools, conservatories, art academies and other professional schools of the arts is therefore of a different nature to what generally takes place in the academic world of universities and research institutes. [...] Many contenders on one side are inclined to entrench themselves in established institutional positions, portraying themselves as defenders of quality standards on which they seem to have a patent. Some on the other side put up resistance against any form of ‘academisation’ (as it is sometimes scornfully called) – afraid of losing their own distinctiveness, wary of the perceived ‘stuffy’ confines of academia.
II. On terminology
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
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(a) Research on the arts is research that has art practice in the broadest sense of the word as its object. It refers to investigations aimed at drawing valid conclusions about art practice from a theoretical distance. Ideally speaking, theoretical distance implies a fundamental separation, and a certain distance, between the researcher and the research object. [...] (b) Research for the arts can be described as applied research in a narrow sense. In this type, art is not so much the object of investigation, but its objective. The research provides insights and instruments that may find their way into concrete practices in some way or other. [...] (c) Research in the arts is the most controversial of the three ideal types. [...] It concerns research that does not assume the separation of subject and object, and does not observe a distance between the researcher and the practice of art. Instead, the artistic practice itself is an essential component of both the research process and the research results. [...] Concepts and theories, experiences and understandings are interwoven with art practices and, partly for this reason, art is always reflexive. Research in the arts hence seeks to articulate some of this embodied knowledge throughout the creative process and in the art object.
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
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Obviously this overarching differentiation of three types of art research does not yet say very much. In the case of ‘research in the arts’, to which we are confining ourselves here, we still have to answer the question of when art practice qualifies as research. What do we mean here by ‘research’, and what criteria can we formulate to distinguish art practice-initself from art practice-as-research? [footnote:] The idea that all art practice is by definition research might sometimes be useful for underlining the reflexive nature of art, and it may arise in the uncertain quest contained in the creative process, but it is not fruitful for bringing clarity into the debate about research in the arts. If everything is research, then nothing is research any more. […] In the debate about art research, it has proven fruitful to employ a different distinction – that between object, process and context. Object then stands for the ‘work of art’: the composition, the image, the performance, the design, as well as for the dramatic structure, the scenario, the stage setup, the material, the score. Process stands for the ‘making of art’: creating, producing, rehearsing, developing images and concepts, trying out. Context stands for the ‘art world’: the public reception, the cultural and historical environment, the industry etc. […] It makes quite some difference whether one exclusively examines the results in the form of concrete art objects, or whether one also looks at the documentation of the process that has led to those results or at the context which is partially constitutive of the meaning of both the object and the process.
II. Research definitions
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
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The definition of the R[esearch] A[ssessment] E[xercise] is briefly: ‘original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding.' If we also take this broad definition of research as a benchmark for research in the arts [...] then we can use it to derive the following criteria. (1) The investigation should be intended as research. Inadvertent (fortuitous) contributions to knowledge and understanding cannot be regarded as research results [...] (2) Research involves original contributions – that is, the work should not previously have been carried out by other people, and it should add new insights or knowledge to the existing corpus [...] (3) The aim is to enhance knowledge and understanding. [...]
[Conclusion:] We can [...] speak of research in the arts only when the practice of art delivers an intended, original contribution to what we know and understand.
ARTICLE
The A[rts and] H[umanities] R[esearch] C[ouncil] [...] works with a different set of criteria to assess research proposals. This stems from the fact that the AHRC, [...] looks primarily at what the research is to involve and how the study is to be designed [...]. Four criteria are set as parameters.
Borgdorff, 2006.
(1) The research must address clearly articulated research questions or problems.
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(2) The importance of these questions and problems for a specified research context must be explained, including the contribution the project will make and how the study will relate to other research in the area.
(3) One or more research methods are to be specified that will be applied to address and possibly answer the questions and problems. (4) The results of the research study and the research process are to be appropriately documented and disseminated.
[‌] [Conclusion: ] Art practice [‌] begins with questions that are pertinent to the research context and the art world, and employs methods that are appropriate to the study. The process and outcomes of the research are appropriately documented and disseminated to the research community and to the wider public.
III. Intrinsic nature of research in the arts a) The ontological question
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
7/11
Artistic practices are at once aesthetic practices, which means that matters such as taste, beauty, the sublime and other aesthetic categories may be at issue and could form part of the subject matter for study. In addition, artistic practices are hermeneutic practices, because they always lend themselves to multiple or ambiguous interpretations and even invite them [...]. Artistic practices are performative practices, in the sense that artworks and creative processes do something to us, set us in motion, alter our understanding and view of the world, also in a moral sense. Artistic practices are mimetic and expressive when they represent, reflect, articulate or communicate situations or events in their own way, in their own medium. By virtue of their very nature, artistic practices are also emotive, because they speak to our psychological, emotional life. So whenever we have to do with artistic practices, all these perspectives could be at work. Not every artistic investigation will deal with all these points of view at once, but theoretically any of them could figure in the research. As noted above, the focus of research in the arts may lie on the artwork itself or on the creative, productive process, in both of which cases the signifying context also plays a role. [‌] Research in the arts will remain naive unless it acknowledges and confronts this embeddedness and situatedness in history, in culture (society, economy, everyday life) as well as in the discourse on art.
b) The epistemological question
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
8/11
[The] opposition […] between ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’, between knowledge and skill. [...] […] The knowledge embodied in art, which has been variously analysed as tacit, practical knowledge, as ‘knowing-how’ and as sensory knowledge, is cognitive, though nonconceptual; and it is rational, though nondiscursive.
c) The methodological question
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
9/11
Taking the broad classification into three academic domains as a reference, we can make the following rough generalisations about the different methods associated with them. As a rule, the natural sciences have an empirical-deductive orientation; that is, their methods are experimental and are designed to explain phenomena. Experiments and laboratory settings are characteristic of natural science research. The social sciences are likewise empirically oriented as a rule; their methods are usually not experimental, however, but are primarily designed to describe and analyse data. Quantitative and qualitative analysis exemplify social science research. [...] The humanities are as a rule more analytically than empirically oriented, and they focus more on interpretation than on description or explanation. Characteristic forms of research in the humanities are historiography, philosophical reflection and cultural criticism. [...] Pure mathematics is generally an exact, universally valid and nonexperimental science. The natural sciences likewise seek to generate exact knowledge that corresponds to universal laws or patterns, but which, contrary to mathematical knowledge, is often obtained by experimental means. These can be contrasted with art history (to cite just one example from the humanities), which is not primarily interested in formulating precise, universal laws, but more in gaining access to the particular and the singular through interpretation. Experimentation plays virtually no role there at all. [...]
ARTICLE Borgdorff, 2006.
10/11
One distinction from more mainstream scholarly research is that research in the arts is generally performed by artists. In fact, one could argue that only artists are capable of conducting such practice-based research. But if that is the case, objectivity then becomes an urgent concern, as one criterion for sound academic research is a fundamental indifference as to who performs the research. Any other investigator ought to be able to obtain the same results under identical conditions. Do artists have privileged access to the research domain, then? The answer is yes. Because artistic creative processes are inextricably bound up with the creative personality and with the individual, sometimes idiosyncratic gaze of the artist, research like this can best be performed ‘from within’. [...] Hence, the answer to the question of art research methodology is briefly that the research design incorporates both experimentation and participation in practice and the interpretation of that practice.
[Conclusion:] Art practice – both the art object and the creative process – embodies situated, tacit knowledge that can be revealed and articulated by means of experimentation and interpretation.
[GENERAL CONCLUSION & DEFINITION]
ARTICLE
Art practice qualifies as research if its purpose is to
Borgdorff, 2006.
expand our knowledge and understanding by conducting
an original investigation in and through art objects and
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creative processes. Art research begins by addressing questions that are pertinent in the research context and
in the art world. Researchers employ experimental and hermeneutic methods that reveal and articulate the tacit knowledge that is situated and embodied in specific
artworks and artistic processes. Research processes and outcomes are documented and disseminated in an appropriate manner to the research community and the
wider public.