Content

1. Message from SAR’s President
2. SAR International Forum on Artistic Research 2024
   15th International Conference on Artistic Research
3. SAR International Conference on Artistic Research 2023
4. RC Best Exposition Prize 2022
5. SAR General Assembly 2023
6. New Institutional Members and Portal Partners
7. Individual Members
8. Research Catalogue (RC) Portal Partner Meeting 2023
9. Portal Partner Meeting 2024: Porto June 17th – 18th
10. Portal Partner Thematic Seminars and RC Webinar
11. Changes in the RC Managing Team.
12. HUB – New Journal Launched on RC
13. New SIG Co Agency Endorsed
14. Executive Board Meeting Schedule
15. Following SAR on LinkedIn
16. Become a Research Catalogue Portal Partner with SAR
    Including the option of an internal learning and examination platform.

 

 

1.        Message from SAR’s President

There are many and varied reasons why artistic research becomes increasingly relevant today. For example, exploring the impact and value of practice-based forms of knowledge production through the arts could allow us to engage with the complexities of multiple or permanent crisis situations without reducing them to oversimplified messages.

Countering resentment-driven narratives and conspiracy theories requires much more than accurate information and correct data. It is not enough to raise awareness through exclusively cognitive forms of knowledge production. Artistic research can generate insight into complex relationships through practices and processes based on the creation of affects and the realisation of a power to be affected.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that these practices not only have a potentially huge impact on behavioural patterns, social cohesion and even individual well-being; they also generate new knowledges that will be highly relevant in the climate transition or the digital shift.

 

It is certainly safe to assume that the policy frameworks for higher education in the arts will need to adapt and evolve at a similar pace and at all levels. Rapidly changing conditions for artistic research require adequate opportunities to meet and share experiences, analyses and value propositions across the different artistic disciplines, institutional and regional backgrounds.

The next SAR conference will be a forum to discuss the new challenges and opportunities for artistic research in a rapidly changing world. We want to continue the dialogue started at the last conference and the General Assembly in Trondheim and discuss next steps and the way forward. For SAR and its continuously growing membership, for a diverse and open artistic research community, for new forms of collaboration between art, science and innovation.

 

2.        SAR International Forum on Artistic Research 2024
15th International Conference on Artistic Research

Save the dates April 10^th to 12^th 2024 for the SAR International Forum on Artistic Research 2024, hosted by Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts in Tilburg.

The next SAR International Conference will be a pilot for a format that shall alternate with the established conference format every two years. Next year’s annual event puts a stronger focus on the framework conditions for artistic research and a more prominent role for the SAR Special Interest Groups. The working title of for this revised meeting format is: “SAR International Forum on Artistic Research”. The General Assembly will be integrated into the event on the second day. On the third day there will be a special meeting for the RC Portal Partnerships stakeholder representatives. More information will be available after the summer break but mark your calendars now!

 

3.        SAR International Conference on Artistic Research 2023

This year's International Conference on Artistic Research took place in Trondheim from 19-21 April. It was attended by some 230 registered participants and featured more than 50 presentations from 27 countries in many parts of the world. Both the logistics and the technical support worked very well - and we received a lot of positive feedback. The SAR Executive Board would like to thank the entire NTNU community for both the financial support and the organisational enthusiasm during these days!

Two keynote speeches were given by Pierluigi Sacco and Anjalika Sagar. Recordings of their presentations, as well as all the contributions produced in the video studio, are available at: https://sar2023.no/videodocumentation

For the first time, submitted abstracts of conference presentations were peer-reviewed prior to final selection by the conference committee. This experience provides very valuable input for future conference events.

 

4.        RC Best Exposition Prize 2022

At the end of the SAR conference 2023, the winner of the Research Catalogue Best Exposition Prize 2022 was announced: In circles leading on - created by Andreas Berchtold:

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1571956/1574288

Andreas Berchtold accepted the prize in person, gave a short introduction to his work on the RC and expressed the great honor he felt in receiving this award. Andreas is an assistant professor of folk dance and a doctoral candidate at Stockholm University of the Arts.

5.        SAR General Assembly 2023

SAR’s General Assembly (GA) took place on the second day of the conference. During the GA the membership approved the 2022/23 Annual Report, the 2022 Financial Report and the 2024 Operating Budget. There were no elections this year, as elections are now held every two years. A number of new portal partners and institutional members made presentations about their organisations, focusing on their artistic research activities.

 

After the formal part of the meeting, there was a constructive session looking to the future, based on a presentation by SAR’s President on the challenges and tasks ahead of us.

 

6.        New Institutional Members and Portal Partners

The Executive Board welcomes the following new Institutional Members:

• Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts
• Fundación Genalguacil Pueblo Museo, Málaga
• Joseph Haydn Konservatorium, Eisenstadt
• University of the Arts, Philadelphia
• Vilnius Academy of Arts

 

The Executive Board also welcomes these new Portal Partners:

• Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University
• Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Agder
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• RIAM Royal Irish Academy of Music

 

7.         Individual Members

The number of individual members increased significantly in the weeks leading up to the Trondheim conference, reaching around 90 just before the conference. In the following two months there were also a number of new applications for membership.

 

8.        Research Catalogue (RC) Portal Partner Meeting 2023

The second on-site portal partner meeting after the end of the pandemic took place in June, hosted by Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts in Tilburg. It was a great success with more than thirty representatives from most of our portal partners attending in person. The programme included new updates from our RC Managing Officers, Casper Schipper and Tero Heikkinen, as well as presentations from a number of portal partners on their specific use of the RC.

The latest RC features were introduced, including a new referencing tool for the expositions and further developments of the application module. Potential new RC developments were discussed at the meeting, and during the event we also had a detailed presentation of the 2022 Best Exposition Prize by its creator, Andreas Berchtold.

 

9.        Portal Partner Meeting 2024: Porto June 17th – 18th

We have already received an invitation from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto for the next Portal Partner Meeting 2024 - so mark your calendars for the 17th and 18th of June!

 

10.        Portal Partner Thematic Seminars and RC Webinar

The RC Management Team and the RC Monitoring Group have organised several online thematic seminars for our portal partners and a webinar for new and inexperienced RC users this spring. The webinars are open to anyone affiliated to one of our member institutions, as well as to our individual members. The schedule for these events next autumn will be announced in the second half of August.

 

11.    Changes in the RC Managing Team

Luc Döbereiner has been a very important resource in the development of the Research Catalogue since he became RC Managing Officer in 2015. Over the last year and a half, he has had to reduce his role due to other commitments, including a professorship.
In November 2021, Tero Heikkinen joined the team and Casper Schipper took over the role of team coordinator. Lula Romero stays on managing our public RC Support Desk.

The Board has now appointed Daniele Pozzi as the new Managing Officer of the team. Luc will remain close to the team in an advisory capacity, and a similar agreement has been reached with Jonas Sjøvaag.

 

12.    HUB – New Journal Launched on RC

HUB Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society is a new peer-reviewed and open access research journal for reporting on art, design, and performing arts. The journal is published twice a year by i2ADS – Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, University of Porto and hosted on the Research Catalogue platform.

Visit HUB at: https://i2ads.up.pt/hub

 

13.    New SIG Co Agency Endorsed

There is now seven Special Interest Groups (SIGs) endorsed by the Executive Board, and several of them arranged meetings and had presentations on the first day of the Trondheim conference.

 

The last one (so far) started up this spring:

Co Agency – Artistic Research as Transformative Practice

This SIG will address the question of what role artistic research plays and could play in the context of contemporary, social-ecological transformation processes.

This refers in particular to the potential for shifting perceptual dispositives and regimes of relevance through artistic-research modes of thought and practice, and the associated opening up and activation of actionable futures.

The aim of the SIG is, on the one hand, to create a platform within SAR for the exchange of researchers interested in the topic and to network ongoing and planned projects in this field. On the other hand, it also aims at conceptual work: Here, fundamental questions are to be considered, such as the characteristics of an epistemology of transformation through artistic research processes in the context of debates about the future. But also, the question of the integration of artistic research into concrete research contexts such as transdisciplinary sustainability research should also be addressed - not least with a view to shaping suitable framework conditions and policies.

 

The SIG will also serve as an interface to ongoing initiatives such as the New European Bauhaus, the new, creative KIC: EIT Culture & Creativity (namely the Strategic Topic Group “Just innovation”), the European creative skills alliance Cyanotypes (namely the task force “Urgent skills needs”) and the COST Action "European Forum for Advanced Practices" and strengthen the importance of artistic research in these contexts.

 

14.    Executive Board Meeting Schedule

The SAR Executive Board is scheduled to hold three meetings this autumn. One will be held online on 20 October and two on site: Berlin on 21 and 22 September and Prague on 23 and 24 November.

15.    Following SAR on LinkedIn

Since a couple of months SAR operates a dedicated LinkedIn page. It serves as an additional channel to increase the visibility of SAR, its profile and activities among the members, within professional communities and beyond. We invite you to share your thoughts, promote activities and engage with colleagues at:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/society-for-artistic-research/

 

16.    Become a Research Catalogue Portal Partner with SAR
Including the option of an internal teaching, learning and examination platform

The Research Catalogue (RC) is an academic, non-commercial, and collaborative publishing platform for artistic research offered by SAR.

For artistic research, the mode of presentation of research results is essential. The RC provides a platform for the dissemination of artistic research where sound, image, video and text can be combined in an integrated format for presentation, and where the visual disposition and focus on different media formats can be decided by the author. Images and sounds are not subordinate to the text, but on an equal footing, and the linear narrative structure can be broken.

The RC is available as a portal partner option for institutions, online peer-reviewed journals and research projects. For these purposes, the RC hosts public portals for the documentation, presentation and archiving of research processes. Research outcomes and results are peer-reviewed according to the portal's own criteria. Portal partners have the opportunity to present externally funded research projects within the RC's main project page.

For our portal partners, the RC provides internal portals as collaborative workspaces and learning platforms for staff and students, or as a research management tool. Collaboration, supervision, student assessment and peer review can take place within the portal and users can be organised into different groups for workshops, courses or projects. The institution can decide what part(s) of the results of such activities should be archived and/or displayed on its public portal.

Both public and internal portals can be used to organise and present conferences, seminars, sub-projects, etc.

To date, about thirty institutions have subscribed to own and run such a portal - not all of them are publicly active yet. For further information, please contact SAR Executive Officer Johan A Haarberg: johan.haarberg@uib.no