1. The SAR elections 2022
2. A few words from the new President
3. SAR International Conference on Artistic Research 2023
4. RC Webinars Autumn 2022
5. RC Portal Partners Thematic Seminars Autumn 2022
6. New Institutional Members and Portal Partners
7. SIG # 6 – “APARN – Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network” endorsed
8. Call for Establishing SAR Special Interest Groups – SIGs
9. SAR’s 2021 Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition: Rationale
10. Call: SAR’s 2022 Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition
11. The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research / Proposed adjustments to the Frascati Manual
12. Opportunity for RC Portal Partnership

1.   The SAR elections 2022

The SAR General Assembly gathered in Weimar Bauhaus-University on the 4^th of July 2022.

For the first time in the history of SAR there were two candidates running for presidency, the sitting president Deniz Peters and Florian Schneider competing for the place. Geir Ström was running for re-election as vice president, and Blanka Chládková and Esa Kirkkopelto were running for the board membership. Unlike the previous election committee, the current one (Paula Crabtree, Florian Dombois and Jaana Erkkilä-Hill) decided not to make preferences between the candidates but to endorse all of them as competent for the roles they were willing to be elected. The decision making about how to vote was left to members of the SAR without further influencing from the committee.

The voting for a president was exciting, the votes going first 24/24 and one vote was not counted representing no name for a president. On the second voting round Florian Schneider won by 1 vote: 25/24. This result shows that the new the President together with all the members of the Executive Board have to present visions and aims for the future that can keep the society united.

2. A few words from the new President

The elections at the SAR General Assembly in Weimar, resulting in a new President of our Society, could not have been tighter. I have accepted the outcome of the elections and the challenges connected to it, with gratitude and honor.

As the new President of SAR, my understanding of a beneficial board culture is deep-rooted in collaboration and teamwork, based on transparency, diversities, and constructive interactions. The previous board has developed many ideas and initiatives which need to be assessed collectively and I look very much forward to follow up on them. 

Furthermore, I sense a certain need to reform and further strengthen structures with a clear commitment to reach the next level of development. SAR is in a process of maturing. It has grown steadily over the last years and this growth is supposed to continue. This requires an increasing professionalization of services and activities. SAR needs to expand and in doing so, it will face new barriers and requirements which will demand much more from us than business as usual.

But change is not a goal in itself and the urgency to reframe our objectives and ambitions is by no means limited to the field of artistic research. Our societies are currently characterized by a growing awareness that change on system levels is necessary to prevent at least the worst from happening. I am convinced that artistic research is not exempted from this challenge but, in all its multiplicity, shows a capacity to at least contribute, if not drive necessary changes.

With my capacities, passion and energy, I want to explore and examine how SAR can advocate and ensure a vital role for artistic research in the societal and institutional transformation processes of the coming years. My aim is to achieve these goals in close collaboration with all colleagues in the Executive Board, as well as the current and future, individual and institutional members.

Florian Schneider

 

3.   SAR International Conference on Artistic Research 2023

The 14th International Conference on Artistic Research is co-organised by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). It takes place on-site from April 19 to 21, 2023, in Trondheim, Norway.

The conference brings together leading practitioners, scholars and policymakers, showcasing exemplary artistic research projects, while focusing on key issues through critical debate.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

What kind of artistic research practices would enable us to reflect and respond effectively to the urgencies of our moment? 

A moment when it becomes increasingly clear that bug-fixing and incremental improvement cannot be enough. Rather than decoration and further embellishment, our world requires substantial, systemic change more urgently than ever before.

We are seeking examples and models of artistic research that, more than merely negotiating disciplinary divides, actively embrace them — as spaces of conceptual freedom, of creative agency, and of societal imagination.

What does it mean to create something new?

While everyone talks about innovation, we see a need to emancipate the concept and value of novelty towards circular or cyclic modes of creativity.

What is artistic research responsible for? 

While everyone talks about impact, we seek a capacity of artistic research to participate in transition processes, through sharing methods, questioning ownership, and creating confidence.

What is the right time and form?

While everyone talks about solutions, we look for artistic research challenging both its own temporality and formats of documentation, as well as anticipating future forms of value.

We call for proposals for presentations of artistic research projects in two formats:

• Short format: 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes discussion
• Long format: 40 minutes followed by 40 minutes discussion

We encourage experimental presentation formats.

The Conference Committee plans to organize a single-blind peer-review process before the final selection of the presentations for the program. Therefore, the committee issues a separate call for peer reviewers. Peer reviewers will be excluded from submitting proposals by themselves. The criteria of the evaluation process are transparent and publicly available.

The aim is to make the result of the peer reviews available to each submitter. Further information on this pilot procedure will be provided in October after the submissions have been received.

Deadline for submission is at 13:00 CET, on November 14, 2022.

Please follow the guidelines to submit a proposal for a contribution!

4.   RC Webinars Autumn 2022

As you will know, we have already conducted an

Intro Webinar for Submission to the SAR Conference 2023

This Webinar had a special focus to support submissions to our next conference, where an exposition is part of the demanded input from the Conference Committee

See the recording from the Webinar here: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/shared/5d5a2109c8b2f767692b067bf6f1cc91

18.10 - 13:00 CEST

Follow-Up Support Webinar for the Conference Submissions

Due to high amount of response, the short period to the first set deadline as well as many requests for further support on how to create the Research Catalogue exposition as part of the submission procedure, the Conference Committee has decided to prolong the submission period.

The New Deadline for Submission is set to Monday 14. November at 13:00 CET.

On 18.10, the RC Management Team will arrange a second support session on how to submit a proposal, concentrating on Q&As. This event will be open to all interested parties.

 

17.11 – 16:00 CET:

Intro Webinar for New Users of the RC

This Webinar aims at new users at the RC and should be relevant for all who want to use this platform to deviate from the standard format of academic presentations, journal articles and/or research repositories. It is also a very useful platform for bringing together a number of researchers or students for project development, teaching and training.

As usual, these Webinars are open for all SAR Individual Members as well as student and staff from all our Institutional Members. The Webinar will be conducted by the RC Managing Team

See the recording from one of the previous Webinars here:

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1380657/1554589

5.   RC Portal Partners Thematic Seminars Autumn 2022

SAR will arrange the following Thematic Seminar for our RC Portal Partners during this autumn (these seminars are open for all representatives from within these institutions):

 

14.10 – 10:30 CEST:

Portal’s Promotion Strategies

Following up on the many relevant experiences that was shared in our Portal Partner Meeting in Vienna this June: In this seminar we will present strategies for recruitment and support towards staff and students from three different institutional partners:

• Ulla Havenga,  Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts
• Casper Schipper, Music Conservatoire The Hague University of the Arts
• Tero Heikkinen, Uniarts Helsinki

Input from other partners will be welcomed during the discussions

 

03.11 – 10:00 CET:

RC and Accessibility

How can the RC meet and maximise on the accessibility expectations.

Executive Director Peter Pettersson at WCAG Networks, who is a Swedish specialist on web accessibility, will join us. The RC Management Team will outline which steps are already under way, and how developments may be in a longer perspective.

 

13.12 – 10:00 CET:

New Reference/Bibliography Feature in the RC

The RC Management Team will present the promised developments of better-referencing options at the RC.

The new reference integration will make it easier to manage references to external sources in your RC expositions. The feature will provide RC users with new possibilities, such as:

 

• Automatically generate a correctly formatted bibliography, in common styles

(MHRA, MLA, APA, Chicago etc.)

• Easily set an online reference style for the whole exposition
• Create a centralised repository of previously used references
• Import/export your references using BibTeX format, from tools like Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote
• Reference resources like artworks, events and other expositions and media within the RC.

 

6. New Institutional Members and Portal Partners

The Executive Board welcomes the following new Institutional Members:

• Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln
• UmArts, Umeå University
• Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin

The Executive Board also welcomes these new Portal Partners:

• AMU-Academy of Performing Arts, Prague
• AVU-Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
• UPRUM-University of Architecture, Arts and Design, Prague

 

7. SIG # 6 – “APARN – Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network” endorsed

The Executive Board recently endorsed the SIG proposal for „APARN – Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network“ organised by Danny Butt (University of Melbourne, Australia), Kurniawan Adi Saputro (Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta, Indonesia), and Gunalan Nadarajan (University of Michigan, US). The founding group further includes SAR Members Kiran Kumar (Independent Researcher) and Libby Myers (Griffith University, Australia), along with Dr Helly Minarti (LINGKARAN | koreografi, Indonesia).

The SIG group intends to work through issues of decolonising artistic research and proposes to map artistic research initiatives and activities in the Asia Pacific region, to provide a regional framework for practical collaboration between individuals and institutions, and to develop an understanding of local cultural dynamics influencing artistic research activities in the Asia Pacific region.

As a first step the group will develop a call for additional participants from the SAR community, so watch out for further information soon.

8. Call for Establishing SAR Special Interest Groups – SIGs

The Executive Board calls for expressions of interest to establish further SAR Special Interest Groups (SIGs). On the opening day of the conference, we will provide meeting venues for already established SIGs as well as opportunities to introduce and discuss new plans and proposals for setting up new SIGs.

SAR Special Interest Groups (SIGs) serve the purpose of lasting in-depth peer exchange, activity, and productivity on any topic or focus area of special interest in relation to artistic research, its practice, education, and institutionalisation. New SIGs may be suggested, founded, organised, and moderated by any SAR member (i.e., individual members or employees/students of SAR member institutions) with the aim of conducting a particular activity, theme or focus area and promoting the activity and its results within the SAR community. Endorsement of SIGs is handled by the Executive Board on the basis of a short proposal, including names of the group coordinator and of at least three confirmed group members who are also SAR members.

If you’re interested in initiating such a SIG, please get in touch with the Executive Board‘s contact persons for SIGs: Jaana Erkkilä-Hill (jaana.erkkila-hill@uniarts.fi) and Michaela Glanz (m.glanz@akbild.ac.at).

For the detailed call including information about already existing SIGs, see: https://societyforartisticresearch.org/events/events/sar-special-interest-groups/

9. SAR’s 2021 Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition: Rationale

The Executive Board of SAR is delighted to announce the winner of the Annual Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2021. The prize aims to foster and encourage innovative, experimental new formats of publication and to give visibility to the qualities of artistic research artefacts. We received eleven innovative submissions for the prize. The jury consisted of Paulo Luis Almeida on behalf of the Portal Partners, Ernie Roby-Tomic as one of the prize winners 2020, and Gabriele Schmid on behalf of the Executive Board of SAR.

We felt that the exposition “Minuting. Rethinking the Ordinary Through the Ritual of Transversal Listening” by Jacek Smolicki met these conditions to an exceptional high level. He is followed by Alexandra Crouwers with her exposition “Plot, the Compositor, Mourning/Mistakes” on the second place and Timo Menke with his exposition “DARK MATTER(S)” on the third place.

1. Jacek Smolicki

The jury was impressed by the quality of the intimate and coherent dialogue between images, text, hypertext and sound in Jacek Smolicki’s exposition “Minuting. Rethinking the Ordinary Through the Ritual of Transversal Listening” https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/883787/895793 . The togetherness of these elements makes the viewer feel like walking into a complex and well-structured landscape.

The layout is attractive also in means of the integration of the sound bars as graphical elements. The mouse-over elements produce an extra layer that is nevertheless integrated into the aesthetic appearance of the exposition.

Smolicki's research is wide and deep with the collection of samples spanning years presenting a compelling premise in the research. The concepts and narrative threads are emergent through the design and activation of the exposition through the Research Catalogue platform.

2. Alexandra Crouwers

The exposition “Plot, the Compositor, Mourning/Mistakes” https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1057314/1273089 by Alexandra Crouwers represents a speculative and non-linear design approach to the concept of exhibition. It creates an intricate network between visual pieces of evidence of the ecological collapse of a forest and a reflexive review of the artist’s grief.

Crouwers’ work thesis immediately resonated with the pandemic times experiencing virtual dislocation and complex mimeticism of nature in response to lockdowns. The work presented is timely as virtual workers and artists experience the technological takeover as physical communal spaces become increasingly rare. Alexandra's background in virtual and technical art vibrates on the Research Catalogue platform as items that function to deliver information on the topic often also serve an aesthetic purpose supporting their thesis.

3. Timo Menke

Timo Menke’s exposition DARK MATTER(S) https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/829675/1122602 combines different exhibitions on the same subject in an innovative way, offering the experience of different navigation modes as an analogue of thinking.

Menke's thoughtful intertwining of their exposition concepts and the Research Catalogue allows readers to accumulate concepts leading up to a wonderful collaborative performance.

10.   Call: SAR’s 2022 Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition 

The call by the Executive Board of SAR for the Annual Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2022 is now open. The prize aims to foster and encourage innovative, experimental new formats of publication and to give visibility to the qualities of artistic research artefacts. The Executive Board will appoint a jury to assess the submissions. The jury will consist of a member of the SAR Executive Board, a representative from a Portal Partner and a former prize winner. 

Facts and figures: 

• Deadline for submission: 31 Jan 2023.
• Publication period of submission: 1 Jan 2022 – 31 Dec, 2022. 
• Conditions: The publication/exposition must have been published (not only shared) on the RC platform.
• The language in the exposition must be English.

The submission must be identified by the metadata of the exposition:

• Author(s), Title, (Date), Research Catalogue URL (format: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/xxxxxx/xxxxxx where the x's are numbers).
• Address for submissions: prize@societyforartisticresearch.org, with SAR Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition 2022in the email subject heading.
• Prize Award: 500€

• Award Ceremony: 14th SAR International Conference, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, 19-21 April 2023.

Please note: previous winners of the prize cannot submit for three full years after receiving their award. 

 

11. The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research / Proposed adjustments to the Frascati Manual

The OECD document, the Frascati Manual, is widely used as the reference paper on what can be understood as research. The current version from 2015 mentions art for the first time, but still does not clearly recognize artistic research. Research for and on the arts is acknowledged, but the only direct reference to art practice leads to the conclusion that artistic expression will not normally be considered research.

In the late summer of 2019, a number of international umbrella organisations connected to higher arts education and research formed a consortium with the aim to have artistic research included in the manual’s overview of research fields, preferably as a separate category on a par with e.g. the humanities. As a first step for this goal, the members of this consortium agreed to jointly sign the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research in June 2020. This document had been developed by an editorial working group, overseen by a larger reference committee within the consortium. SAR was represented by our Executive Officer in the editorial group and by our President and First Vice President in the reference committee. The declaration can be downloaded from our website.

The next step in this process was to make concrete proposals for reformulations within the text of the Frascati Manual itself, and the editorial board has just completed this work, which has now been endorsed by all the organisations that are part of the consortium. The changes have their starting point in the statement of the 2015 edition of the manual, in which the arts are recognized for the first time by the manual as a separate domain of knowledge and include several reformulations in relation to this domain of knowledge.

Consequently, the consortium also proposes to change the name of the category 6 to Humanities, to change the subcategory 6.4 to Studies on the arts and to create a category 7 Arts, with a number of subcategories covering the multiple disciplines within this domain of knowledge.

 

12. Opportunity for RC Portal Partnership

Also, with the option as an internal teaching, learning and examination platform

The RC is available as a unique portal option for institutions and on-line journals.

As Portal Partner, the RC offers the partner a range of opportunities, such as:

• Public institutional portal to present your research results, displayed within the largest international environment for artistic research;
• An internal portal for teaching and research activities, which also enables you to organise users together in different groups for workshops, courses, projects etc (the same user can be connected to several groups). Co-working, supervision and examination/peer review takes place within this closed part of the RC.
• Institutional archive/repository, that can include non-published material such as student’s examination works etc.
• A research management module for handling research funding application within a closed portal – including assessment, decision making and storage, which can be further extended to handle applications for doctoral studies as well as doctoral supervision and examination for those parts of final results that shall be documented and stored.
• In addition, you may also create a public portal for an online journal, given that this journal is open for external submissions and has a peer review procedure.

For these purposes, the RC hosts a number of public portals for institutional presentation and archiving of research outcomes that are all peer-reviewed by that portal’s own criteria. At this stage close to thirty institutions have subscribed to such a portal – not all of them are yet publicly active.

For the SAR Portal Partners, we now also provide the option of an internal (closed) portal for student related activities at bachelor, master and/or doctoral level. This internal platform may be used for student’s presentation of work outcomes, for teaching and learning (including supervision) purposes and for online assessment of student examination work. The institution can decide what part(s) of such material should be archived and/or shown on its public portal.

For more information contact SAR Executive Officer Johan A Haarberg – johan.haarberg@uib.no