Research methods are often relied upon as fundamental tools in the quest for knowledge. This first session will address the relationship between artistic research methods and knowledge. It will conduct a case-by-case exploration on the ways in which research methods take place in different knowledge-production contexts. Processes of artistic research will be compared to those of the physical and social sciences, accounting for the singular nature of each of these cases claim to knowledge.
This session will be articulated by a dialogue between Anke Haarmann and Henk Borgdorff with the presence of three doctoral or post-doctoral researchers
Methods of artistic research have proliferated in recent decades, in ways that question previously assumed disciplinary boundaries. This session will explore how such methods become useful across different realms. What happens when the method originates in the arts and the problem exceeds it? Are these methods transferable? How do they lay the foundation for a non-disciplinary form of research?
This session will include presentations by Donato Ricci, faculty member of the SPEAP interdisciplinary Master Programme in Political Arts at Sciences Po (Paris) and Chris Salter, Professor of Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
Departing from the basic premise that art and society are permeable and entangled, this session asks how methods of artistic research reconceive and transform the protocols, actors and infrastructures that define the articulation of art in a societal milieu. For example, by looking into the ways in which performance, audience, artwork, exhibition or the value of art are understood. Art becomes then an engine for the production of social practices.
This session will include presentations by performance maker, researcher and Fontys Academy faculty Danae Theodoridou, artist, filmmaker and Gerrit Rietveld Academie faculty Zachary Formwalt and Juliana Hodkinson, composer, researcher, and associate professor at the Royal Acadmy of Music in Aarhus.
Prof. Dr. Anke Haarmann is a philosopher, artist, and design theoretician. The main focus of her work is artistic research, design research, visual culture, and public space. She is Program Director of PhDArts at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Professor of Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts and Research Lector Art Theory and Practice at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. She founded the Centre for Design Research at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, is co- head of the German Society for Artistic Research and leads the research project "Speculative Space (SpecSpace): Labor zur Erprobung und Erforschung epistemischer Designpraktiken".
Prof. Em. Dr. Henk Borgdorff is a philosopher and music theorist. He is Professor emeritus of Theory of Research in the Arts at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts and former director of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA). He was professor in Art Theory and Research at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, visiting professor in Aesthetics at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of Gothenburg and editor of the Journal for Artistic Research.His has published widely on the theoretical and political rationale of research in the arts. A selection of this work was published in May 2012 as The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia.
Christine Rafflenbeul is an artistic researcher with a background in Fashion, Costume and Textile Product Design. She is a laureate of Ausgezeichnet, the award for outstanding, research-related Master‘s Theses by the Centre for Design Research, HAW Hamburg (2021) and grant recipient of the Peer to Peer-Academy (2021) in Bremen.
Dr. Patrick Emonts is a postdoctoral researcher in the Applied Quantum Algorithms group at Leiden University. His research is focused on numerical algorithms, especially tensor networks, and spans different fields ranging from quantum information to lattice gauge theories. He is a PhD in Physics from the Max-Planck Institute of Physics at TU Munich.
Paulina Morales is a PhD in Philosophy Candidate from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, currently in a research stay at Leiden University with Professor Susanna Lindberg. Her work focuses on the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy and starts from an approach to the aesthetical phenomenon of sports from a Merleau-Pontian proposal of bodily expression.
Dr. Donato Ricci is a designer and researcher. He specialises in the use of Design Methods in Human and Social Sciences. He followed the design aspects of Bruno Latour’s AIME project with whom he co-curated the Reset Modernity! exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe and at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum. He is part of the SPEAP Programme in Political Arts within SciencesPo School of Public Affairs and is Assistant Professor of “Representação e Conhecimento” (Knowledge and Representation) at the Universidade de Aveiro.
Prof. Dr. Chris Salter is an artist, researcher and author. He is Professor of Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), as well as Professor Emeritus in Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, former Co-Director of the Hexagram network for research-creation in arts, cultures and technology in Montreal and Co-Founder of the Milieux Institute at Concordia. His artistic work has been seen all over the world and he is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (2010), Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (2015), and Sensing Machines (2022), all from MIT Press
Dr. Juliana Hodkinson is a composer working with instruments, objects, electronics, text, voice, visual formats, field recordings, foley and audience participation alongside abstract concepts and social relations. She is Associate Professor in Classical and Electronic Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. She has received major accolades such as the Carl Nielsen Prize, the Stuttgart Composition Prize, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship. Her work has been commissioned by ensembles, festivals and arts organisations worldwide including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Borealis Festival, Klangspuren and Transmediale among many others.
Dr. Danae Theodoridou is a performance maker and researcher. Her work focuses on social imaginaries, the practice of democracy and the way that art contributes to the emergence of socio-political alternatives. She teaches in Fontys Academy of the Arts (NL), curates practice-led research projects, and presents and publishes her work internationally. She is the co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and the author of PUBLICING: Practising Democracy Through Performance (Nissos, 2022).
Dr. Falk Hübner is research professor (lector) of Artistic Connective Practices at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Academy of the Arts in Tilburg, The Netherlands. With a background as composer, theatre maker, researcher and educator, he is active in a diversity of collaborations within and outside of the arts. His research focuses on the social-societal potential of artistic research, research methodologies, and the relation of the arts and art education to society. In 2019-2021 Falk conducted a post doctoral research at HKU University of the Arts on artistic research methodology and ethics. He is member of the board of Forum+, journal for research and arts, based in Antwerp.
Zachary Formwalt is an artist and filmmaker based in Amsterdam. His work explores relations between media technologies and economic processes, with a particular focus on the aesthetic circumstances of capital accumulation. He has presented solo projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan; Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien; Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; VOX Centre de l‘image contemporaine, Montreal; Kunsthalle Basel and elsewhere. He teaches theory in the Graphic Design Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, is a tutor in the Design Department and a member of the Research Group on Algorithmic Cultures at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam.
The international symposium on Artistic Research Methods will take place at the Textile Museum in Tilburg the Netherlands on 9 April, starting time 13.00. It is organized by Leiden University’s Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) and the Platform for Arts Research in Collaboration, in coordination with Fontys Tilburg and SAR. The symposium is an initiative of Route Kunst – Art Route, one of the 25 Routes of the Dutch National Research Agenda (NWA).
The symposium has been curated by Gabriel Paiuk
Production Assistance: Lenani Antar
Design: Katherina Gorodynska
