The Conflict of the Faculties

Front matter

Henk Borgdorff of the Facultie

Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia

Leiden University Press

Introduction

Artistic Research and Academia: An Uneasy Relationship Artistic Research within the Fields of Science Where Are We Today? The State of the Art in Artistic Research

The Production of Knowledge in Artistic Research Boundary Work: An Interview

Artistic Practices and Epistemic Things Ingredients for the Assessment of Artistic Research

Index

VIII

104 128 140 174 184

Acknowledgements and Provenance of the Chapters

My earliest thoughts about research in the arts began to take on more tangible form ten years ago when I was involved in developing the masters programme in music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and in setting up the practice-based doctorate programme docarTEs. This book can be read as a written account of an expedition that has occupied a good deal of my working life ever since — the exploratory and preparatory work for the artistic research agenda, and its eventual realisation. During my expedition, I have known and met many people who were working along with me towards those goals or who have supported, encouraged, or redirected my efforts. My heartfelt thanks is due to all of them.

Starting in 2002, the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK) gave me the opportunity to put research on the agenda in terms of both content and infrastructure, in an environment that was not yet fully equipped for that purpose. It was a pleasure to lead the Art Research, Theory and Interpretation (ARTI) research group, where staff and graduates from several AHK faculties and different artistic disciplines worked together in a broad array of research projects, both practice-based and more theoretical and conceptual. I have particularly good memories of those times, which were an inspiration to me and to many others along with me. Carel Alons and Marianne Gerner were the people in the AHK administration who supported my efforts. ARTI members Scott de- Lahunta and Sher Doruff were more than just discussion partners over the years. On the theoretical and political rationale of research in an arts education framework, I had many enlightening exchanges with my immediate colleagues Folkert Haanstra, Marijke Hoogenboom, and Peter van Mensch, and also with Michiel Schuijer in an intellectual dialogue that has continued ever since the founding of the Dutch Journal of Music Theory (DJMT) in 1996.

Such exchanges also took place within the Forum of Professors at Arts Schools (LOK), in which I participated from its founding in 2002. Early discussion partners were Joost Smiers (Utrecht School of the Arts, HKU) and Joep Bor (Codarts, Rotterdam), about a national school for practice-based research in the arts (which has still not materialised). Later productive dialogues were with Jeroen Boomgaard (Gerrit Rietveld Academie and University of Amsterdam, UvA) regarding the Artisx The Conflict of the Faculties tic Research masters programme at the UvA; with Geert Lovink (UvA and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, HvA) on art in a contemporary culture that is networked through new and social media; Bart van Rosmalen (Royal Conservatoire, The Hague) on the conferences we organised together; Henk Slager (Utrecht School of the Arts), whom I regularly meet at conferences everywhere in Europe, but never in the city we both live in; Peter Peters (Zuyd University), who recently, given our shared backgrounds, inspired me to explore the field of science and technology studies; and Peter Sonderen (ArtEZ Institute of the Arts), with whom I recently edited a volume of essays entitled Denken in kunst: Theorie en reflectie in het kunstonderwijs. Like my ARTI research group, the LOK also provided an environment where I could regularly ‘try out’ my papers and presentations.

My involvement in docARTES was vital to my explorations in the field of artistic research. Together with Peter Dejans, Johan Huys (Orpheus Institute, Ghent) and Frans de Ruiter (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University; then also of the University of the Arts The Hague), I worked on the development of the docARTES programme. Their leadership and unflagging energy ultimately resulted in the creation of an international doctorate programme for musicians that is now regarded as exemplary far beyond the Low Countries. The exchanges of ideas I had with the doctoral students, and with Peter, Johan, and Frans, during the monthly two-day sessions were for me a hands-on learning experience in practice-based research in music. It was my privilege to moderate the student discussions and conduct seminars on the theory of science. I also better got to know Marcel Cobussen (Leiden University), who teaches aesthetics and philosophy at doc- ARTES. For quite some time, we facilitated the collegia, where doctoral candidates reported on and discussed their ongoing research projects. Marcel and I spoke continuously about the rationale of artistic research. Although I was not always persuaded by his poststructuralist take on the subject, the exchanges heightened my need to eventually come to terms with that strand of philosophy. Marcel and I collaborated in 2007 as editors of a special issue of DJMT on practice-based research in music, to which he contributed a fine essay explaining his perspective on artistic research and academia.

XI Acknowledgements and Provenance of the Chapters

Working from the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, the site of doc- ARTES, Peter Dejans has built a strong international network that facilitates the exchange of knowledge and experiences relating to practice-based doctoral programmes. I learned a great deal from the critical dialogues in MIDAS (Musical Institutions with Doctoral Arts Studies) and the think-tank EMPaR (Enquiry into Musical Practice as Research), and later I also profited from Peter’s efforts for the third-cycle working group within the Polifonia project of the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC). I also hope to benefit from his current work for the Polifonia working group on artistic research and for the European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM), both under AEC auspices. This international network enabled me to meet Darla Crispin and Jeremy Cox (London/Ghent), Brinley Yare (London), Henry Stobart (London), Jonathan Cross (Oxford), Celia Duffy and Stephen Broad (Glasgow), Harold Jörgenson (Oslo), Magnus Eldenius and Eva Nässen (Gothenburg), Johannes Johansson (Stockholm), Hakan Lundström (Malmö), Kari Kurkela (Helsinki), Urve Lippus (Tallinn), Yves Knockaert (Leuven), Hector Perez (Valencia), as well as other people, all of whom helped me develop my thinking about research.

After a presentation I made in Berlin in October 2005 at the ‘RE:SEARCH in and through the Arts’ conference, convened by the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA), I came into contact with many people who, in conversations and correspondence, were to support and critically accompany my expedition in the years to follow: Efva Lilja (University College of Dance and Circus, Stockholm), Søren Kjorup and Nina Malterud (Bergen National Academy of the Arts), Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir (Iceland Academy of the Arts), Christoph Schenker, Corina Caduff, and Anton Rey (Zurich University of the Arts), Christopher Bannerman (Middlesex University), Martin Tröndle (Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen), Michael Biggs (University of Hertfordshire), Henrik Karlsson (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stockholm), Janet Ritterman (Royal College of Music, London, and Austrian Science Board), and many more. With Johan Haarberg (Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme), an intellectual exchange about the agenda of artistic research began which has developed into a friendship.

XII The Conflict of the Faculties

Since 2009, my post at the University of the Arts The Hague has allowed me to devote myself to the further exploration and realisation of the programme of artistic research. The appointment has brought me back to a familiar environment in the Royal Conservatoire (KC) and Leiden University. I had taught music theory and musical aesthetics at the Kc from 1990 to 1994, and earlier I had studied in both institutions. In The Hague I met my colleague Janneke Wesseling, who had just launched PhDArts, a new doctorate programme for visual artists and designers; and in Leiden I got to know Kitty Zijlmans, who, with Frans de Ruiter, has supported me in completing this book project. I hope to be able to continue my expedition with Janneke, Frans, and Kitty in The Hague and Leiden for many years to come. I am also grateful to Henk van der Meulen and Martin Prchal (Royal Conservatoire) for the latitude they have permitted me to finish the book project, as well as to the members of the research focus group at the KC for the critical dialogue about the hows and whats of research in music education settings.

My work since 2009 with Michael Schwab (Royal College of Art, London) and Florian Dombois (then of the Bern, now of the Zurich University of the Arts) has been of tremendous influence on the final leg of my expedition that I report on in this book. We have collaborated in planning and establishing the Journal for Artistic Research and the Society for Artistic Research, as well as on the Artistic Research Catalogue (ARC) project. Altogether, these have generated an active discursive field in which the programme of artistic research is being explored and brought to fruition, in both theory and practice. The concluding chapter of my book is a written account of that effort. My almost daily contacts with Michael about the conceptual and material aspects of those undertakings have helped to sustain me in my expedition. Michael has not only become a partner in crime; he is also one of those people with whom one connects strongly at an intellectual level. Innumerable conversations in the Editorial Board of the Journal (with Annette Arlander, Barnaby Drabble, Mika Elo, Nicola Foster, Julian Klein, and Michael Schwab) and in the Executive Board of the Society (with Barbara Bolt, Darla Crispin, Florian Dombois, Gerhard Eckel, Kim Gorus, Rolf Hughes, Anna Lindal, George Petelin, and

XIII Acknowledgements and Provenance of the Chapters

Stephen Scrivener) have deepened my understanding of the dynamics of the new field of research. At the University of Gothenburg, where I have been spending part of my time since 2010, I have enjoyed support and critical guidance from Anna Lindal, Johan Oberg, Sverker Jullander, Anna Frisk, the members of the research council of the Academy of Music and Drama, and many others.

The voices of philosophers who held the Spinoza chair at the University of Amsterdam in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can be discerned now and then throughout the book. Seminars and staff colloquia conducted by Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam, and Hubert Dreyfus made a lasting impression on me and have had some ramifications for my explorations. In some chapters, the voices of Theodor W. Adorno and Ludwig Wittgenstein can also be heard. At the UvA I had a far too brief encounter with Ruth Sonderegger that enabled me to exchange some thoughts with her about the promise of the artistic research programme. Her move to Vienna has occasioned a pause in our dialogue, but hopefully not an end to it.

This book is about transformations — the transformation of artistic practices to artistic research, and the transformation of academia to a domain that also provides a place for non-discursive forms of knowledge, unconventional research methods and enhanced modes of presentation and publication. Yet the book could never have been written without the transformations made by my translator, Michael Dallas. His translations, often accompanied by intensive consultations, helped me better understand what I did and did not mean to say. If the published articles have had a certain impact, then that owes in large part to their articulate English. I thank Michael for his devoted, conscientious work.

Chapter 1, “The Conflict of the Faculties’, has not been published before in its present form. Parts of it appeared as ‘On Theory, Practice and Research in Professional Art Academies’ in The Reflexive Zone: Research into Theory in Practice, edited by Anke Coumans and Helen Westgeest (Utrecht: Utrecht School of the Arts), 2004, pp. 117-24; and in Dutch as ‘De strijd der faculteiten: Over zin en onzin van onderzoek in de kunsten [The Conflict of the Faculties: On Sense and Nonsense of Re-

XIV The Conflict of the Faculties search in the Arts] in Boekman (special issue, Kunst en Wetenschap), 58/59 (Spring 2004), pp. 191-96. The final part of the chapter was published in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad as ‘Emancipatie “faculteit der kunsten” nodig’ [Emancipation of ‘Arts Faculties’ Needed], 29 September 2005, Opiniepagina section, p. 9.

Chapter 2, “The Debate on Research in the Arts’, was published in 2006 in the Sensuous Knowledge series, 02 (Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts), and reprinted in 2007 in the Dutch Journal for Music Theory, 12.1, pp. 1-17. It was published in Dutch as “Het debat over onderzoek in de kunsten’ in De theatermaker als onderzoeker, edited by Maaike Bleeker and others (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 2006, pp. 21-39. It was published in German as “Die Debatte über Forschung in der Kunst’ in Künstlerische Forschung: Positionen und Perspektiven, edited by Anton Rey and Stefan Schöbi (Zurich: Institute for the Performing Arts and Film, Zurich University of the Arts), 2009, pp. 23-51. A Spanish translation ‘El debate sobre la investigaciön en las artes’ appeared in CAIRON: Revista de estudios de danza [Journal of Dance Studies] (Madrid: Universidad de Alcala), 13 (2010), pp. 25-46.

Chapter 3, Artistic Research and Academia: An Uneasy Relationship’, was published in Autonomi och egenart: Konstnärlig forskning söker identitet [Autonomy and Individuality: Artistic Research Seeks an Identity], Ärsbok KFoU 2008 [Yearbook for Artistic Research and Development] (Stockholm: Swedish Research Council), pp. 82-97.

Chapter 4, Artistic Research within the Fields of Science’, was published in its present form in 2009 in the Sensuous Knowledge series, 06 (Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts). Parts of the article were published earlier in German as ‘Der Modus der Wissensproduktion in der künstlerischen Forschung’ in Wissen in Bewegung, edited by Sabine Gehm, Pirkko Husemann, and Katharina von Wilcke (Bielefeld: Transcript), 2007, pp. 73-80; and in English as ‘Artistic Research and Pasteur’s Quadrant’ in GRAY Magazine, 3 (special issue, Artistic Research) (Amsterdam: Gerrit Rietveld Academy), 2007, pp. 12-17; as well as in Close Encounters: Artists on Artistic Research, edited by Erna Grönlund and others, Rapportserien Dans: Forskning och utveckling [Dance: Research and Development Series], xv Acknowledgements and Provenance of the Chapters

2 (Stockholm: University College of Dance), 2007, pp. 12-17. The entire chapter was published in Dutch as ‘Artistiek onderzoek in het geheel der wetenschapper in Krisis: Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie, 1 (2009), pp. 65-70.

Chapter 5, “Where Are We Today: The State of the Art in Artistic Research’ was first published in Forskning och kritik: Granskning och recension av konstnärlig forskning [Research and Criticism: Reviewing Artistic Research], Arsbok KFoU 2010 [Yearbook for Artistic Research and Development] (Stockholm: Swedish Research Council), pp. 17-31. A slightly altered version was published in Kunst und Forschung: Können Kiinstler Forscher sein?, edited by Janet Ritterman, Gerald Bast, and Jürgen Mittelstraß (Vienna: Springer), 2011, pp. 57-79. A German translation, “Wo stehen wir in der künstlerischen Forschung?’, was provided in the same volume, pp. 29-55.

Chapter 6, ‘Artistic Research as Boundary Work’, was published in Art and Artistic Research, edited by Corina Caduff, Fiona Siegenthaler, and Tan Walchli, Zurich Yearbook of the Arts 2009 (Zurich: Scheidegger und Spiess), pp. 72-79. It was published in German in the same yearbook as "Künstlerische Forschung als Grenzarbeit’, pp. 78-87.

Chapter 7, “The Production of Knowledge in Artistic Research’, was published in The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, edited by Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson (London: Routledge), 2011, pp. 44-63. Parts of the chapter were published in German as ‘Künstlerische Forschung und akademische Forschung’ in Kunstforschung als ästhetische Wissenschaft: Beiträge zur transdisziplinären Hybridisierung von Wissenschaft und Kunst, edited by Martin Tréndle and Julia Warmers (Bielefeld: Transcript), 2012, pp. 69-90.

Chapter 8, “Boundary Work: An Interview’, was published as ‘Boundary Work: Henk Borgdorff interviewed by Michael Schwab’ in Intellectual Birdhouse: Art Practice as Research, edited by Florian Dombois, Ute Meta Bauer, Claudia Mareis, and Michael Schwab (London: Koenig Books), 2012, pp. 117-23.

Chapter 9, ‘Artistic Practices and Epistemic Things’, will be part of a volume entitled Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Michael Schwab, Orpheus Research Centre in Music Series (Leuven: Leuven University Press), forthcoming in 2013.

XVI The Conflict of the Faculties

Chapter 10, ‘Ingredients for the Assessment of Artistic Research’, was written for the present volume and is not to be published elsewhere.

Chapter 11, “The Case of the Journal for Artistic Research’, forms the basis for a chapter in The Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia, edited by Michael Schwab and Henk Borgdorff (Leiden: Leiden University Press), forthcoming in 2012.

Amsterdam, January 2012

XVII The Conflict of the Faculties

Introduction

You wont, for example, tell us, nor could you possibly tell us, what the criteria are by which we know which uses of ‘know in the future will be legitimate or rational ....

Hilary Putnam

The content of a science [is] the reconfiguration of the world ... through practical engagement with things, people, and prior patterns of talk.

Joseph Rouse*

* Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 32. Joseph Rouse, ‘Vampires: Social Constructivism, Realism, and Other Philosophical Undead’, History and Theory, 41 (2002), 60-78 (p. 73).

This book is about artistic research — what it is, or what it could be. And it is about the place that artistic research could have in academia, within the whole of academic research. It is also about the ways we speak about such issues, and about how the things we say (in this book and elsewhere) cause the practices involved to manifest themselves in specific ways, while also setting them into motion. In this sense, the book not only explores the phenomenon of artistic research in relation to academia, but it also engages with that relationship. This performative dimension of the book is interwoven with its constative and interpretive dimensions. If the book succeeds in its aims, it will not only advance knowledge and understanding of artistic research, but it will further the development of this emerging field. Such an articulation of artistic research, in which thinking and doing are enmeshed, implies a certain engagement. Though that might seem to stand in the way of an objective assessment, there are good reasons to defend the intertwinement of theoretical and practical agency, as I shall make clear below.

The field of endeavour that I articulate and analyse here is, as mentioned, artistic research in its relationship to academia. It is a field of research under study, and my investigation can therefore be regarded (to use an old expression) as metatheoretical, as metascientific, as foundational research. It thereby situates itself in the domains of philosophy of science and science policy, in a field currently known as science and technology studies (sts). I would not go so far as to claim that the research I present here forms a significant contribution to various STS standpoints, nor that it adopts a stance in the sts debate. It can, however, be regarded as an extensive case study in which I sometimes partake of insights developed in the sts context. A thoroughgoing study from an STS perspective has yet to be undertaken; a whole territory awaits exploration.

The area covered by this book is limited. The focus is on artistic research — that is, on an endeavour in which the artistic and the academic are united. The field of artistic research thereby sets itself apart from other encounters between the arts and academia. It is important to draw a clear distinction between artistic research and other forms of art-science collaboration, where artists are outsiders, visitors, or participants in scientific practice (cf. Zijlmans, Zwijnenberg, and Clevis 2007: 33- 34). Such relations between artists and scientists remain outside the scope of this book, though I do refer to them in several chapters. My present study focuses on an undertaking in which artistic practices contribute as research to what we know and understand, and in which academia opens its mind to forms of knowledge and understanding that are entwined with artistic practices.

A further delimitation concerns the book’s orientation. As the subtitle announces, it is about artistic research and academia. Although artistic research is positioned at the interface of art and academia — at the place where the art world and the world of academic research meet — the book concentrates not primarily on the art world, on issues in the domain of the arts, but on the relationship artistic research might have to academic research. Obviously such topics cannot be viewed in isolation from one another, and developments and critical issues arising in the art world will certainly come under discussion in various chapters. But the relationship between artistic research and the art world still needs to be explicitly investigated by other studies. A historical study of artistic research, which is likewise yet to be written, will not only have to uncover what factors — or better still, actors — have contributed to the rise of this research field, but it will also need to show what developments immanent in art practice have fuelled its emergence.

The fact that I am confining myself to artistic research and academia may perhaps justify my slightly undifferentiated, or sometimes ostensibly uncritical, use of the term ‘art’ in various chapters. Though I do distinguish here and there between different art practices and disciplines where relevant, and though I do realise that, since the historical avant garde, ‘nothing concerning art goes without saying’ (Adorno 1997 [1970]: 12), I do not pretend to make a sophisticated contribution to the history, theory, or criticism of art. At the same time, I am also aware that the advent of artistic research does potentially influence how we think about ‘art’ (as well as about ‘academia).

Besides being a field that is strongly proliferating, artistic research is also a controversial matter. It is important to underline its disputed status from the start, even before I discuss this with varying degrees of emphasis in later chapters. Whether in the art world, in the arts education sector, or in the world of academic research, there are always people who react to artistic research with reserve, if not with scepticism or outright rejection. As we shall see, their motives and arguments for so doing differ greatly. I will highlight one such viewpoint straightaway, since it could recently be heard once again in distinguished art circles. It involves the presumed disciplining effect of ‘academic’ artistic research. In contrast to disciplined academic research, it was argued, the unregulated field of research in the arts exempts itself, as a matter of principle, from standards, restrictions, and criteria — which naturally could never arise out of the autonomous work of artists. The artistic

1. Kathrin Busch, ‘Generating Knowledge in the Arts: A Philosophical Daydream’, Texte zur Kunst (special issue, Artistic Research), 20.82 (2011), 70-79. Cf. Michael Schwab's commentary in Schwab 2oub. See also Peter Geimer, ‘Das große Recherche-Getue in der Kunst. Sollen Hochschulen “Master of Arts”-Titel und Doktorhüte für Malerei verleihen?’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 April 2011, Forschung und Lehre section, p- Ns. <http://www.hkb.bfh.ch/uploads/media/Das_grosse_Recherche-Getue_in_der_ Kunst.pdf>. Cf. Elke Bippus’s commentary in Bippus 2011.

production of knowledge was seen to have potentially more in common with speculative philosophy and the knowledge criticism it practises than with scientific knowledge production. The institutionalised field of artistic research was also accused of leaning strongly on an obsolete concept of science or scientific rigour and of failing to take into account recent insights from the sociology of science. It was warned, moreover, with recourse to Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Levinas, that true artistic research should resist, as an independent form of knowledge production, any kind of academisation. Through its focus on the singular, the aesthetic-affective, the transgressive, the unforeseen, artistic research should exemplify an alternative culture of knowledge.

The problem with this type of criticism is that it fabricates its own object of criticism. It begins by constructing a caricature of artistic research in academia — it is disciplining, homogenising, restrictive, conformist, naive. After that, it is no longer difficult to field a whole line-up of post-Nietzschean witnesses to lambast those pernicious practices, which are inimical to art and which, under pressure from an equally maleficent education policy, are seen to have infected the art world under the label ‘academisation’ in order to subject art practices to their disciplining forces. Such argumentation often follows the same pattern: first you create an antithesis between (inadequate) academic research and the liberating cognitive practices of artists, and then you go on to defend the latter from unwarranted institutionalisation and normalisation.

This pattern is the mirror image of another sort of reasoning that likewise posits an antithesis between artistic research and academic research. It is deployed to protect the realm of the sciences against an invasion by unfounded ideas and strategies that cannot withstand systematic scrutiny, even if they might be of value in the enigmatic practices of artists. These defenders of science insist that the arts and sciences, though perhaps close together at some points in history, still remain two fundamentally different domains and practices, and that it would be highly inappropriate to lump them together in a single higher education and research framework.

It is one of my objectives in this book to counter some of these, in my eyes, needless oppositions between artistic and academic research, between art and academia. Clearly, these represent, at first sight, two domains and traditions of human activity that are institutionally and theoretically (and to some extent historically) segregated; no extensive research is necessary to confirm that. Nor are there many people who would claim that every expression of artistry is a form of scholarly research; those who do so tend not to be taken seriously in the discourse. All this notwithstanding, it is in this emergent field of artistic research that the domains of art and academia meet and intersect. At that very junction, something significant happens that could influence how we think, or might begin to think, about both domains.

At the same time, the warnings made by these critics ought to be taken seriously. If we near the point where institutionalisation of artistic research leads to curtailment or dilution of artistic practice, or to an erosion of academic values and conventions, it is time to step on the brake. And, now already, the way that institutionalisation has actually occurred in some places gives reason to watchfully monitor and criticise how the field is developing. At present, that development is characterised by a diversity of initiatives, models, and practices, not all of which will prove equally fruitful. Yet such heterogeneity is inherent in a field that is still in development and has not yet fully crystallised. Establishing a new research field simply takes time — as well as sparking a lot of conflict. My motivation in writing The Conflict of the Faculties is to contribute to that struggle. It is not helpful when people give up the struggle beforehand by ossifying the antithesis between artistic and academic research. The challenge lies in exploring whether and how artistic research could cohere with academic research.

So what is the current state of affairs in this research field, and how do I position my contribution? In chapters 2 and 5, I attempt to document the state of the art, but I can already disclose for now that there actually is no ‘state of the art’. Any effort to provide a current overview is undermined by the heterogeneity and dynamism of the research field. Owing to the stream of new developments, my own texts, as compiled here, were in danger of being obsolete at publication. To paraphrase Bruno Latour, it is a field in action. Viewed in a particular, mainly institutional light, the research field has already been established in some countries since the early 1990s. From a more theoretical perspective, however, the field is still in a continuous state of flux and some turmoil. The foundational debate has not yet led to a status quo. It may indeed be inherent to the field of artistic research that such a status quo cannot ultimately be achieved. I shall defend that possibility below.

A growing number of publications relating to the new field of research — journal articles, books, conference proceedings, policy papers — are now seeing the light. But the number of studies that explicitly examine the relationship between artistic research and academia is still scant. The voluminous ‘companion’ by Biggs and Karlsson (2011) therefore represents a milestone, though it still covers a limited number of viewpoints. If something can presently be said about a state of affairs, it is that there is a particular need for studies to illuminate the new research field from the perspectives of sociology of science and history of science. I would definitely endorse Helga Nowotny’s appeal (made in Biggs and Karlsson, p. xxii) to science and technology researchers to engage with the new field. I hope that my present volume will also contribute towards this.

My own contribution to the field of artistic research and the associated debate may be roughly described using the terms clarification, justification, and positioning. Particularly in the early chapters of the book, I try to create some terminological and conceptual clarity regarding the phenomenon of artistic research. The theoretical and political rationale of this type of research is a theme that pervades all chapters, and I also attempt to situate artistic research within the academic realm. The earlier publication of the articles incorporated here was also part of an effort to promote the concrete establishment of the new research domain (more on this below).

The principal theme addressed by this book is: What are the characteristics of artistic research? This general question breaks down into a series of more specific questions, explored in different chapters.

a. How can we differentiate artistic research practices from artistic practices?

b. What are the ontological, epistemological, and methodological attributes of artistic research?

c. How can the relationship between artistic research and academia be characterised?

d. What position does the artistic research programme occupy in science and technology policy and classification?

e. Under what terms does artistic research qualify as academic research? f. What are the similarities and differences between artistic research and other academic research fields and how does artistic research