Expositionality is one of the key concepts of the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR). The term suggests that in the context of artistic research, practice may not only be seen as producing outcomes but also as the creation and communication of its own epistemologies. Thus, what ‘knowledge’ might mean in a specific project can become part of the aesthetico-epistemic labor of research.
Understanding artistic research through such ‘radical epistemology’ has two chief implications: (1) the relationship between artistic research and contemporary art can be redefined; in effect, it is through notions of ‘expositionality’ that artistic research can not only become contemporary, but also enter a productive tension with contemporaneity itself. (2) it challenges the major forms on which our contemporary episteme are build, both in art as well as science; it may be that, in particular, an interest in the situatedness and locality of knowledge drives the development of artistic research.
My keynote presentation argues for expositionality as form of writing. It explains this with reference to previous issues of JAR as well as JAR’s submission policy and peer-review process. In a more speculative and programmatic part, I sketch what is at stake when one is ‘writing up’ one’s research: the staging of a very particular relationship to knowledge, which has the power to challenge and destabilize exiting, dominant epistemological narratives.
