Ståle Stenslie
Professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway
Good Research, Crap Art
Through telling the story of my own, ongoing PhD project “Erotogod”, the presentation will investigate why artistic research seemingly never produces the same quality of art as art practice without formalized academic research. If the purpose of artistic research is to produce better art, why burden artistic creativity with rigid thinking? And if it is so, what are the reasons for this? How can it be changed?
Throughout my presentation I will touch upon several widespread opinions that artistic research is met with, like why are the artists who enter artistic research often seen as 2nd class artists? Why is it that no artistic research project has ever made it to any big time art event? Spending three years on one project with more funding than most artists can dream of should really produce some amazing art works.
Despite the more than thousand practice based PhD’s worldwide, and even more in the making, artistic research hasn’t really made it so far. One fairly obvious explanation could be that artistic research so far has been more about research into the arts, ie art-historical rather than being practical, that is for the arts. Artistic research therefore appears to be mostly about producing textual material and intellectual reflections, rather than making valuable, substantial manifestations of art.
To use Sir Christopher Frayling three different notions* of i) research into art, ii) research for art and iii) research through art, current research traditions are seen to only produce knowledge about art. How can this be changed? If artistic research produce less interesting, that is crap art, how can one then assess the quality of artistic research without reference to good art works? How can we facilitate for artists to do artistic research that produce valuable artistic expressions – without the artists becoming art historians?
