Journal for Artistic Research
About this portal
The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) is an international, online, Open Access and peer-reviewed journal for the identification, publication and dissemination of artistic research and its methodologies, from all arts disciplines. With the aim of displaying practice in a manner that respects artists' modes of presentation, JAR abandons the traditional journal article format and offers its contributors a dynamic online canvas where text can be woven together with image, audio and video. These research documents called ‘expositions’ provide a unique reading experience while fulfilling the expectations of scholarly dissemination.
The Journal is underpinned by the Research Catalogue (RC) a searchable, documentary database of artistic research. Anyone can compose an exposition and add it to the RC using the online editor and suitable expositions can be submitted to the editorial board for peer-review and publication in JAR. Read more about submissions or start composing expositions straight away by registering for an account, which is free of charge.
JAR is published by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR).
url:
http://www.jar-online.net/
Recent Activities
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Structures for Freedom: In-performance communication in Traditional musicians in Scotland
(2022)
author(s): Lori Watson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition articulates tacit knowledge in processes associated with contemporary Traditional music practice in Scotland. Using a case study experiment and a series of workshop performances recorded in 2008, I examine the processes, communication and performance strengths of four leading Traditional and cross-genre creative musicians. In particular, examples of in-performance communication and collaboration emerge.
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Curating as graphic design research
(2022)
author(s): Sara De Bondt
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
In 2019, I curated and designed Off the Grid, an exhibition on post-war Belgian graphic design at Design Museum Gent. The show included public events (Design Museum Gent, 2019–20) and led to a publication (De Bondt, 2022), all of which have been elements of my practice-based doctoral research at KASK School of Arts and Ghent University.
Curating Off the Grid allowed me to define my own research area, namely the investigation of graphic design from a specific country and period. The process also raised broader questions around naming, authorship, and canon-formation, which in turn have enriched my practice as a designer and educator. The curatorial thus became a methodology that allowed me to bring the two sides — my historical research and my graphic design practice — together. In this article, I discuss my engagement with graphic design via the curatorial, and how the latter can be deployed for practice-based graphic design research in and beyond exhibition spaces.
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A topian artistic methodology
(2022)
author(s): Kevin Walker
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition details a methodology for artistic research based on the book Utopia as Method by sociologist Ruth Levitas. It involves specific methods at three levels of analysis: archaeological, architectural, and ontological. Practical work is produced using archaeological and architectural methods, aimed at triangulating onto contemporary ontological issues. The term ‘topian’ was chosen in order to incorporate both utopian and dystopian perspectives — this term, from the Greek ‘topos’ meaning place, frames an artistic practice in relation to one or more sites of investigation.
The methodology was applied in a residency project split between London and Athens, focused on sculptures from the Parthenon that link the two cities. Museums in both cities served as sites of archaeological and architectural investigation. Work included speculative site mapping and stratigraphy, drawing and photography of artefacts, printmaking, and 3D modelling. Works were exhibited in a group exhibition in Athens, ‘Contemporary Archaeologies’.
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A Performative Response to Sites of Surveillance: The Gorilla Park Project
(2022)
author(s): Shauna Janssen, Katrina Jurjans, Eduardo Perez Infante, christian scott
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The key interlocutor for this project is Gorilla Park, an irregular shaped parcel of land located on a disused railway track, in a Montreal neighbourhood called Marconi-Alexandria, currently a rapidly gentrifying quarter of the city. The uneven development in this part of the city is, in part, due to the increasing presence of Big Data and Smart City start-up companies.
The politics of the smart city discourse are deeply entangled with ideas of the ‘right to the city,’ and brings into question: who is the smart city for? What is a smart city? Current trends towards connectivity and mediated urban environments are generally predicated upon a ‘digital agenda,’ wherein the privileged position of smart and intelligent technologies is being furthered. In this exposition one of our aims is to problematize urban sites of surveillance through performative and sonic experiments.
Due to the global pandemic, however, we began to collaborate remotely and work with the documentation of our temporary occupation and in-situ exploration of Gorilla Park. As such, this exposition foregrounds an unfolding and iterative approach to artistic research that focuses on performative methods of urban research taking place in contested city sites; foregrounding the experimental use of bespoke sound devices and 360˚ video recordings, to situated methods such as walking, and hacking Google Earth imagery.
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Biopoéticas: convergencias artísticas interespecie
(2022)
author(s): ANA LAURA CANTERA
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Español
En la propuesta se reflexiona sobre las implicancias de concebir obras artísticas en conjunto con seres vivientes no-humanxs y las problemáticas y particularidades que esto conlleva. Asimismo, se propone la terminología de biopoética como alternativa nominal al concepto antropocéntrico y problemático del bioarte desde una concepción más locativa y contextual. Se pretende visualizar las metodologías y los accionares de la materia viva desde el arte contemporáneo latinoamericano y repensar tanto las prácticas como los modos de exhibición.
English
The proposal reflects on the implications of conceiving artistic works in conjunction with non-human living beings, as well as the problems and particularities that this entails. It proposes the biopoetics terminology as a nominal alternative to the anthropocentric and problematic concept of bioart from a more locative and contextual conception. It is intended to visualize methodologies and actions of living matter from contemporary Latin American art rethinking both practices and modes of exhibition.
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Performing the ecstasis: An interpretation of Katharine Norman’s Making Place for instrument/s and electronics
(2022)
author(s): Jean Penny
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Katharine Normans’ work Making Place for instrument/s with live electronics (2013/16) combines recorded sounds, images, text, live interactive processing and instrumental music performance to create a unique experience of place. As the performer, I can choose a location, collect photographic images and recorded sounds, and interpret and re-create the score. The score is semi-improvisatory, consisting of many composed and freely pitched musical gestures which trigger text, visual animations and sound processing. This exposition traces the re-conceptualization, adaptation and performance of Making Place for alto flute. A multi-layered experimental methodology evolved that encompassed practice, discussion, description and reflection, with the performance itself forming the pivotal event, the epoché. To begin I share pre-performance thoughts – ideas of re-conceptualization and the construction of method. I follow with an account of pre-performance activities – the walk, collecting materials, transposing the music for alto flute, inserting new artefacts into the software, and rehearsals. Next come descriptions of the performance, and finally, I offer a reflective conclusion to the project. This project illuminated the quotidian through sound, image and text, transforming the everydayness of a walk along a disused railway track, turned walking/cycling track, in Victoria, Australia, into an extraordinary musical work, creating a shift from a knowing about to a knowing from within, from playing and doing to reflective awareness.