Artistic Research
Artistic Research at College Arts Association
In academia Artistic Research (A/R) (also known as arts research and practice-led research) is considered one of the most significant emerging areas of intercultural discourse in the arts. A/R interfaces the artist with experiences that build new narratives around the subject.
What is Artistic Research
Artistic Research can be defined as activities focused on research processes and methodologies, rather than only outputs and activities that define a series of research questions. Artistic Research specifies methodologies for addressing and answering the research questions, issues or problems and particularly addresses other relevant research and how will make to the advancement of creativity, insights, and knowledge. (Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK).
Inherently interdisciplinary, it engages methodologies and modes of process to construct new forms of inquiry and the production of new knowledge incorporating the artist’s creative experience one of its principle outcomes. As a research discipline A/R engages multiple disciplines and artist’s experience as a form of reflection to construct narratives and discourse around a subject. "The knowledge for which artistic research strives is a felt knowledge." (Journal For Artistic Research, Internet, Accessed 6 June 2019)
Context: The Artistic Research Working Group was Initiated at at College Arts Association in 2017 in a dialogue between by Les Joynes PhD and Hunter O’Hanlon, Executive Director (2016-2021) as a space for CAA members and attendees to discuss Artistic Research as an area changing how we make and perceive the arts. As a working group CAA conference attendees have explored:
Evolving Definitions on Artistic Research across cultures.
Artistic research and Higher education - the development of curricula design in universities that supports artistic research.
How A/R can inspire new dialogues on gender, LGBTQ, and new meanings on diversity and equality.
Ideas of ways forward to building education programs that enable artists, researchers and educators to engage new forms of practice, writing and contributions to knowledge.
Who do we serve? The working group welcomes all members and attendees of CAA conferences including artists, teachers en route to becoming professors, interdisciplinary researchers as well as college administrators searching for ways to enhance art educatiEssentially artistic research is research by artists that expand knowledge through practice. As a member of CAA I wanted to share this area with our members.
Today, artists need to be in-conversation (Lippard, 2010) to foster mutual understanding and progress the field and to learn how visual cultures are connected to local cultural heritages.
First CAA Artistic Research meeting (New York 2018) with special guest Gerry Sneider, Dean of the Pratt School of Art. Artistic Rsearch meeting, (CAA Chicago, 2020) with special guests from the Getty Fellows Program.
The advancement of rapid communications and cultural exchange has caused the erosion and disappearance of important traditions through which cultures identify themselves. International art fairs, biennials and blockbuster museum exhibitions systematically reduce art into mere homogenized products made for global consumers. Artists, today need to be in-conversation (Lippard, 2010) with local cultures to foster mutual understanding and progress the field.
What does this mean? Artistic Research one of several approaches to the art student. It expands on and builds upon the studio practice approaches that exist and have been reinforced by media-focused academic approaches. Today, university art educators are now expected to bring a fluency in not only the art of doing but also to the thinking about art as a form of prolonged interdisciplinary engagement and research. The educator is furthermore expected to be familiar with critical theory, being an active arts practitioner, fluent with a multiplicity of materials and understand how to fit within an expanded interdisciplinary environment that combines art making, interdisciplinary cross-over and scholarly research and writing. As demonstrated by the conference Evolution: Art and Design Research and the PhD – at Parsons School of Art and Design/ The New School the New School in New York in 2010, university educators are aware that Artistic Research is an educational development that has transformed the topography of post-secondary art learning and teaching. Artistic Research opens up college arts curricula on three levels: 1) engaging art-making and criticality with scholarship and Interdisciplinarity; 2) creating new methodologies to create new forms of knowledge in and around the arts, and 3) fostering new forms of synergy parallel with human achievements (new technologies, cultural developments).
Artistic experience is a form of reflection.
Julian Klein (2017) Posted in: Reflection Journal for Artistic Research
Artistic Research does not merely de-code art; it develops new creative approaches to explore human creativity. It is a mode of integrative and parallel creative activity that engages art making more profoundly and through the lens and methodologies of other disciplines and fields. Without experiment art tends not to ask open-ended questions - collaboration and working with unknown variables creates a zone of continuous creative challenge. Artistic Research is growing in universities particularly those which foster interdisciplinary experimentation and intercultural exchange and creates new channels to learn about each other’s cultures and ways of making and perceiving art. In addition to curating artists now contribute to critical writing. conferences and university program development. If “art” is but a mode of perception, “artistic research” must also be the mode of a process. Therefore, there can be no categorical distinction between “scientific” and “artistic” research – because the attributes independently modulate a common carrier, namely, the aim for knowledge within research. Artistic research can therefore always also be scientific research (Ladd 1979). For this reason, many artistic research projects are genuinely interdisciplinary, or, to be more exact, indisciplinary (Ranciery in Birrell 2008, Klein & Kolesch 2009). {Journal for Artistic Research, London]
About Les Joynes (New York/New Delhi)
Active with CAA since 2005, Les Joynes (PhD) examines artistic research and curriculum design at Columbia University. He is 2022 Fulbright Senior Scholar and Fellow at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi and Visiting Professor of Art History and Practice at Renmin University, Beijing and Fulbright Visiting Associate Professor at Visva Bharati University, West Bengal.
He began engaging in artistic research in 1992 at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Building on his research on critical theory and practice at Goldsmiths, London, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, during his PhD from the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, and Post-Doctorate in Fine Art from the School of Art and Communications at University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was 2015 Research Fellow at University of the Arts London (UAL) Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and now conducts research on the futures of artistic research on the Columbia University Visiting Scholar and Scientist Program in New York.
He contributes arts criticism and writing to Art in America, Flash Art, the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) and is an editor and board member of ProjectAnywhere a journal on site specific research in Australia and founder of FormLAB. As a multimedia artist Joynes leads Public Diplomacy projects that explore indigenous cultures, languages, art traditions, and music and recently creates projects in Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, China, Brazil and upcoming India. He was Fellow at the University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and is a contributing editor to Projectanywhere, a journal at University of Melbourne and Parsons School of Design.
He has exhibited at the Barbican in London, Art Gallery of New South Wales Australia, Norimatsu Museum Japan, Museu de Arte Brasileiro São Paulo, Brazilian Museum of Sculpture São Paulo, Fenberger Museum Japan, Welsh Museum of Modern Art Wales, Åmotgård Museum Norway, Beijing Inside-Out Art museum, Art Fair Tokyo, Mizuma Gallery Tokyo, Maejima Art Center, Okinawa, Japan and is represented by Thomas Jaeckel Gallery in New York.