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\begin{document}

\hypertarget{artistic-research---dead-on-arrival}{%
\section{Artistic research - dead on
arrival?}\label{artistic-research---dead-on-arrival}}

\hypertarget{research-practices-of-self-organized-collectives-vs.-managerial-visions-of-artistic-research}{%
\subsection{Research practices of self-organized collectives
vs.~managerial visions of artistic
research}\label{research-practices-of-self-organized-collectives-vs.-managerial-visions-of-artistic-research}}

\hypertarget{abstract}{%
\subsection{abstract}\label{abstract}}

{[}My lecture will compare the practices of multidisciplinary
art/research collectives to the definition of ``A.R.'' (``Artistic
Research'') in the 2020 Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research written
by European art schools. The material, cultural and community-oriented
research of artist collectives such as Display Distribute and Jatiwangi
Art Factory sharply contrast with the ``A.R.'' that art schools now
claim to own and legitimize through standard means of academic
validation. Can these two forms of artistic research still be
reconciled? - My examples and arguments draw on the NWO research project
`Bridiging Art, Design and Technology through Material Practices' and a
critique of the ``Vienna Declaration'' I co-wrote with Nienke Terpsma
from Fucking Good Art (to published in OPEN!).{]}

\hypertarget{intro}{%
\subsection{Intro}\label{intro}}

My thanks to Henk Slager and BAK for inviting me. I changed the title of
my presentation to ``Artistic research - dead on arrival?'' because this
puts the issue more clearly on the table.

I am here because of my involvement in two different and seemingly
unrelated efforts. {[}slide{]} The first is a four-year research project
with Leiden University, Waag Society, Het Nieuwe Instituut and West Den
Haag called ``Bridging Art, Design and Technology through Material
Practices'', which has been funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO as
part of its `Smart Culture' program (to which this conference is
related). Two months ago, we organized the conference `Making Matters'
{[}slide{]} with a number of international artist-research collectives,
among them the Otolith Group, Feral Atlas, Display Distribute and
Jatiwangi Art Factory. I will talk about the work of the last two groups
as contemporary artist-run research practice - but also need to clarify
here that here and today, I am purely speaking as an individual, not on
behalf of our research project.

{[}slide{]} Secondly, with Nienke Terpsma from the Rotterdam-based
collective Fucking Good Art, I wrote a critical response to a European
policy paper on artistic research, the so-called ``Vienna Declaration on
Artistic Research''. {[}slide{]}

These two subjects may seem different yet are profoundly interrelated -
since I can't think of a bigger discrepancy than the one between the
concept of artistic research put out in the ``Vienna Declaration''
versus the practice of, among others, Display Distribute and Jatiwangi
Art Factory. (I could also mention the ruangrupa collective here which
is now well-known after its appointment as curators of the upcoming
Documenta.)

\hypertarget{what-is-research}{%
\subsection{What is research?}\label{what-is-research}}

But, before I go into these details, please allow me to zoom out and go
back to the question of what we are talking about - namely, what is
being understood as ``research''. ``Research'', like ``art'', strikes me
as the case of a word whose semantics rely on a superficial consensus
that evaporates on closer inspection.

{[}slide{]} Even when staying only within Western languages and
cultures, we're not speaking about the same thing. If I only take the
three neighboring languages and cultures that are my own daily
languages, German, English and Dutch, not even the words are the same:
``research'' in English, ``Forschung'' in German and ``onderzoek'' in
Dutch. {[}slide{]} In German everything that a scholar publishes is
``Forschung''. This includes for example interpretations of Shakespeare
poems by a literary scholar, but also the mere publishing of those poems
in a critical edition. {[}slide{]} Anglophone academia differentiates
between ``research'' and ``scholarship'' (which wouldn't be
differentiated in Germany). {[}slide{]} Here in the Netherlands the term
``onderzoek'' has a strong semantic bias towards empirical research. It
can even refer to investigative journalism and police work. This bias
among others manifests itself in the fact that you have to specify data
management in every Dutch research funding application.

In film terminology, ``research'' could therefore be called a McGuffin:
a package that is passed along and shared between different parties who
may not even have the same idea of what its content is. {[}slide{]} It
is a word on which two or more parties can reach seeming consensus while
having something different in mind. It is thus prone to become a subject
of transactions rather than of discourse, or of pragmatics instead of
semantics. Here I'm thinking of a semi-famous McGuffin sequence in the
1972 Italian gangster b-movie \emph{Milano Calibro 9} in which a
suitcase is handed from person to person. The suitcase initially
contains money but ultimately turns out to be a bomb that kills the last
people receiving it. (I made a timelapse of that five-minute sequence as
an animated GIF.)

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/mcguffin.gif}
\caption{timelapse of the opening sequence of \emph{Milano Calibro 9}}
\end{figure}

{[}slide{]} The first \emph{literal} mention of ``artistic research'' I
am aware of is in Asger Jorn's 1957 \emph{Notes on the Formation of an
Imaginist Bauhaus}. This text was written in Switzerland, first
published in French and later translated into English, so we do not know
whether Jorn departed from the word ``forskning'' in his native Danish
(which is derived from the German word ``Forschung'') or from French
``recherches'', and to which extent his text reflected the prior use of
the word ``recherche'' in, among others, the French Surrealism and its
`Bureau de recherches surréalistes' in the 1920s, as well as post-war
experimental music groups such as Pierre Schaeffer's \emph{Groupe de
Recherches de Musique Concrète} founded in 1951.

{[}slide{]} Even in this early, geographically and culturally limited,
stage, `artistic research' was a speculative and semi-dubious affair,
with simultaneous roots in poetic-absurdist science and laboratory
experimentation, manifesting itself in such artistic research
disciplines as pataphysics and psychogeography .\footnote{Jorn reflected
  on both, in the psychogeographic ``atlases'' he jointly made with Guy
  Debord, and a critical essay on pataphysics as ``a new religion in the
  making'' for the journal of the Situationist International.}

\hypertarget{display-distribute-jatiwangi-art-factory}{%
\subsection{Display Distribute, Jatiwangi Art
Factory}\label{display-distribute-jatiwangi-art-factory}}

If my historical examples have been Eurocentric, this is structurally
tied to the linguistic Eurocentrism of the word ``artistic research''.
(A word, btw., that is a literal Eurocentrism since the term ``artistic
research'' is much less common in anglophone countries than in
continental Europe. I have been told by co-workers of mine from the UK
that the word ``artistic'', as an equivalent of
``artistiek''/``artistique'' in French and Dutch or
``künstlerisch''/``kunstnerisk'' in German and Danish, is much less
commonly used in English and even avoided by many artists.)

But how could we characterize today's artist-run research practices?
With Jatiwangi Art Factory (from Indonesia) and Display Distribute (from
Hong Kong), I am taking two groups as cases, or traces, of a global
phenomenon of self-organized, commons- or community-oriented collectives
whose practices are highly localized and internationally connected at
the same time, often involve people with mixed backgrounds as artists,
researchers, activists, journalists, and often focus on specific
material practices that simultaneously function as social experiments.

Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) calls itself a ``community-based
organization focused on examin{[}ing{]} how contemporary art and
cultural practices can be contextualized with the local life in rural
area, both form {[}and{]} ideas''.

\includegraphics{images/mpv-shot0007.jpg}
\includegraphics{images/mpv-shot0008.jpg}

Jatiwangi art Factory combines a residency program with several local
festivals. Ismal Muntaha, a founding member of the project, explained at
our conference how the JaF's activities tie into the village's history
as Indonesia's post-colonial industrial production site for roof tiles,
because it is rich with clay or ``tanah'' which means soil, ground and
clay. Jatiwangi art Factory's work investigates the history and culture
of tanah and reactivates it in new forms; ``digging again the memories,
spiritual value, ritual, proudness, cultivating attitude from our Tanah
as local material as a tool of subjectivity''.

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/mpv-shot0010.jpg}
\caption{JaF, material subjectivity}
\end{figure}

{[}video clip Ismal explaining subproject{]} - The full video
presentation can be seen on the website of Het Nieuwe Instituut in the
archive of our conference. {[}slide{]}

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/mpv-shot0003.jpg}
\caption{Display Distribute, screenshot from `Making Matters'
presentation}
\end{figure}

Display Distribute calls itself a ``now and again exhibition space,
distribution service, thematic inquiry, and sometimes shop in Kowloon,
Hong Kong''.\footnote{https://displaydistribute.com/} When interviewed
for a Chinese multi-disciplinary arts magazine and asked about her
working definitions of ``open platform'', ``architectures of commerce''
and ``documentary gesture'', Display Distribute member Elaine W. Ho
replied:

\begin{quote}
``Together, these questions refer to a socio-politics of syntax
informing various paths of artistic research. For example, the Light
Logistics project with Display Distribute instigates a series of
encounters based around the act of reading. We want to support
independent publishers whose work contributes to the discourse on
grassroots, radical, and critical practices in East and Southeast Asia.
Considering the power of reading as a 1:1 form of exchange, there is
still something to be said for kindling these small moments of encounter
between individuals with similar interests or that can support by way of
coincidental mobility. Setting up this albeit crude infrastructure of a
logistical operation makes use of slow couriers' movement to physically
and immaterially transport art, ideas, and practices in ways that may be
difficult for independent practitioners otherwise. By playfully
highlighting the banal details of this circulation, we want to lay bare
the systems of production as they are embedded within the everyday and
trace new possibilities for a distributed but self-organized
community.''\footnote{An Invitation to Describe Elaine W. Ho, Bajia
  Issue 2, July 2018, p.~80}
\end{quote}

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/mpv-shot0002.jpg}
\caption{Display Distribute, screenshot from `Making Matters'
presentation}
\end{figure}

This screenshot documents one of the transactions or transports within
Display Distribute's courier system. At our conference, the collective
performed a live online theater play ``Packaging as Propaganda - On
Circulation, new psychogeographies and the discursiveness of boxes''.
This video is publicaly available in the conference archive, too, and
(as with Jatiwangi art Factory's presentation) I recommed watching it in
its entirety. By literally referencing psychogeography, Display
Distribute continue developing the artistic research disciplines that I
mentioned before. Their practice is thus also meeting the proposition
text for this conference and its characterization of ``artistic
thinking'' as ``open-ended, speculative, associative, non-linear,
haunting, thinking differently''.\footnote{https://www.hku.nl/en/study-at-hku/hku-college/pre-phd-programme/the-postresearch-condition}

\hypertarget{vienna-declaration}{%
\subsection{Vienna Declaration}\label{vienna-declaration}}

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/vienna_declaration.png}
\caption{Head of the \emph{Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research}}
\end{figure}

Since half a year, however, this type of thinking is no longer what is
necessarily being expected from artistic research, at least not if we
are speaking about its official framing for European higher education.
In June 2020, the ``Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'' was
published by seven European umbrella organizations for higher art
education (representing art schools, conservatoires, architecture and
film schools), two art school accreditation bodies, the public arts
sector organization \emph{Culture Action Europe} and the \emph{Society
for Artistic Research} (SAR). According to its authors, the Vienna
Declaration addresses ``political decision makers, funding bodies,
higher education and research institutions as well as other
organisations and individuals catering for and undertaking AR
{[}artistic research{]}''.(footnote:
https://cultureactioneurope.org/news/vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research/).
Since I don't have the time to read the ``Vienna Declaration'' in its
entirety - although this would be a worthwhile conceptualist performance
of capitalist-realist poetry -, I will just quote a few core passages:
{[}slide{]}

\begin{quote}
``Artistic Research (AR) {[}\ldots{]} has developed rapidly in the last
twenty years globally and is a key knowledge base for art education in
Higher Arts Education Institutions (HAEIs).'' ``AR is well suited to
inspire creative and innovative developments in sectors such as health
and wellbeing, the environment and technology, thus contributing to
fulfilling the HEIs' `third mission'. AR must be seen as having a unique
potential in the development of the `knowledge triangle.'\,'' ``Within
this frame, AR is aligned in all aspects with the five main criteria
that constitute Research \& Development in the Frascati Manual.''
``HAEIs operate predominately within a research context and have a
responsibility to conduct AR. It is also common for HAEIs to interact
with related enterprise Research \& Development, and to contribute
directly to the creation of intellectual property in arts, entertainment
and media through research practice.'' ``This environment requires
funding for: educating the next generation of researchers through
doctoral programmes; {[}\ldots{]} building links with business and
enterprise in order to stimulate the impact of research.'' ``AR is
validated through peer review covering the range of disciplinary
competences addressed by the work. Quality assurance is undertaken by
recognised independent, international QA bodies and assures the
standards described in the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG 2015)
for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area.''
``{[}T{]}he establishment of AR as an independent category within the
Frascati Manual, establishing the opportunity for harvesting research
data and statistics from the AR field''.
\end{quote}

These quotes may be self-explanatory for my diagnosis of artistic
research being dead on its institutional arrival. I mentioned before
that Nienke Terpsma and I wrote a critique of this pamphlet that has
been published online by the arts journal OPEN!,\footnote{https://www.onlineopen.org/what-is-wrong-with-the-vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research}
so I will just summarize our core points: In the Vienna Declaration,
artistic research turns into ``AR'', and from a speculative and poetic
endeavor into a ``peer-reviewed'' and ``validated'' affair. ``Data and
statistics'' can be ``harvested'' from it, which feeds into ``enterprise
Research \& Development''. In other words, the ``Vienna Declaration''
mainstreams artistic research, respectively ``AR'', into in almost
comically exaggerated neoliberal technocratic agenda (in a way that
reminded us of the Soviet-era conceptualist poetry that exaggerated
Soviet bureaucratic language).

Even more importantly, and not coincidentally, the Vienna Declaration
does not contain a single mention of ``artist'' or ``artists''. Nienke
and I thus read it as ``land-grabbing'' by art schools ``to own and
define artistic research''. The idea of artistic research as an
artist-run, self-organized, non-institutional practice simply does not
exist in the Vienna Declaration. Instead, the European art school system
constructs its own, parallel art world through ``A.R.'' where research
projects are no longer defined by artists, but by the institutions
themselves. {[}We wrote that it ``reframes artistic research as a
top-down practice where projects, subjects and research questions are
formulated by academic institutions and artists need to fit into
pre-defined projects and calls, forms, formats and methods''.{]}

\hypertarget{clash-of-cultures}{%
\subsection{Clash of cultures}\label{clash-of-cultures}}

``A.R.'' thus seems to perfectly fit the vision of the New European
Bauhaus that has been recently declared by the EU (see images), and
whose logo is the following {[}slide{]}:

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{images/new_european_bauhaus.png}
\caption{``New European Bauhaus'' logo}
\end{figure}

Both in language creates a stark if not grotesque contrast to the
practice of, for example, Display Distribute which defines its artistic
research as ``crude infrastructure'', ``playfully highlighting
{[}\ldots{]} banal details of {[}\ldots{]} circulation'' in order to
``trace new possibilities for a distributed but self-organized
community''. If we compare the research practice of Display Distribute,
Jatiwangi Art Factory and other mixed-disciplinary self-organized
collectives with ``A.R.'' as defined in the ``Vienna Declaration'', the
question actually is whether we are still talking about the same thing
at all.

One could imagine a sitcom with representatives of an Indonesian DIY
collective in dialogue with European art school managers, with both
perfectly misunderstanding each other while seemingly talking about the
same subjects.\footnote{Riffing on the plot of Johann Peter Hebel's 1808
  short story \emph{Kannitverstan}.} At this point, not only is
``research'' a McGuffin. Its subset ``artistic research'' has turned
into a McGuffin, too: a floating and merely transactional signifier (and
thus a potential object for, but not longer a characterization of
Display Distribute and its ``light logistics'').

But on a more fundamental critical level, ``research'' - which from
Jarry's pataphysics to Display Distribute's Light Logistics was an
\emph{emancipatory} project for artists and non-artists - now needs to
be revisited in the same way as other enlightenment and modernist tropes
such as ``autonomy'': namely, as concepts that are broken, and in the
worst case even ``toxic and beyond reappropriation'' (to quote from Sven
Lütticken's critical review of the term ``autonomy'').\footnote{Lütticken,
  Sven. ``Neither Autocracy nor Automatism: Notes on Autonomy and the
  Aesthetic.'' Cultural Revolution, Sternberg Press, 2017, p.~59:
  ``Autonomy has also gotten a bad name in the field of art. In the
  United States in particular, the association of the concept of
  autonomy with Clement Greenberg's restrictive understanding of
  modernism has made term seem toxic and beyond reappropriation''.} Then
indeed, the ``post-research condition'' would become a very practical
matter.

On the other, one could argue that from pataphysics to light logistics,
artistic research has never constituted anything but a ``post-research
condition''. When institutions retrofit it into a mainstream research
epistemology, they are only pretending to emancipate the arts. In
reality, they are busy with emancipating themselves \emph{from} the
arts, because that field has become too small to support them.

\end{document}