Contemporary Research
(2023)
author(s): Michael Schwab
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
Artistic research is a comparatively recent development. Outside institutional definitions little work has been carried out to situate the phenomenon in a wider history of art as well as knowledge. This speculative article describes the present moment of artistic research as result of two developments: (1) a shift from notions of knowledge to notions of research, and (2), a shift from major to minor forms of making. At the same time, in line with understandings of contemporary art and as contemporary art, artistic research is not understood as historical project that unifies art and science; rather, artistic research is pitched as providing a transdisciplinary ground in which different disciplines and knowledges can enrich each other. On a historical scale, this development is seen as driven by the increased speed and complexity of our current world for which conventional knowledges offers only partial insights arriving often too late for decision-making. Building on Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of experimental systems and his notion of graphematic space, the paper suggests research to create sets of traces as proto-forms underdetermined in their aesthetic and epistemic status and, hence, beyond specific disciplinary contexts. Such space for research is understood as fundamentally artistic, also in opposition to notions of research as output-oriented types of investment. It is suggested that representation as epistemic form has been losing relevance, certainly for the arts and increasingly for the sciences. Artists are tasked to invent new, expositional forms of knowledge over and beyond representation to remain epistemically engaged in today’s fast and complex world.
Nietzsche 5 : The Fragmentary
(2016)
author(s): Michael Schwab, Paulo de Assis
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
‘Nietzsche 5 : The Fragmentary’ is a collaborative research exposition, which presents a number of compositions by the young Friedrich Nietzsche (organised top to bottom) as well as various layers of reflection, interrogation, and speculation (organised left to right). It focuses on a moment of transformation around 1872 when Nietzsche moved from a serious interest in music composition to a career as a writer and philosopher. This period also coincides with the breakdown of Nietzsche’s friendship with Richard Wagner. The exposition suggests that Nietzsche’s own music as well as that of Wagner serves as a (negative) point of reference for the later Nietzsche, whose work, following Maurice Blanchot amongst others, can be characterised through the notion of the fragmentary, which places it also in relation to early Romanticism, in particular the writings of Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, and Friedrich Hölderlin. While Nietzsche’s more monumental compositions, such as his unfinished Mass (1860) and the symphonic poem Ermanarich (1861), may be more problematic, the exposition suggests that in some smaller pieces – in particular in So lach doch mal (1862) and Das ‘Fragment an sich’ (1871) – a sense of the fragmentary in Nietzsche may already be constructed.
Beyond interpretations that focus more narrowly on Nietzsche’s work, this research exposition sets out to render the notion of the fragmentary productive for the wider context of artistic research. It does so with reference to Nietzsche’s notion of the untimely as a way to challenge both the dominant instrumentalisation of research and the notion of contemporaneity that seems central to present-day artistic practice. This not only provides perspectives into artistic epistemologies but also, more concretely, provides the methodology by which the research itself and its exposition have progressed. The overall mode is, thus, also that of the fragmentary, in which various media including text and image as well as audio and video recordings are distributed across a two-dimensional grid allowing multiple relationships and readings to emerge. The research exposition aims not only to discuss but ultimately also to employ the fragmentary so as to touch upon a specific artistic and intellectual motivation that we have come to identify with Nietzsche and which we suggest is also relevant today.