Vision Statement - carpa

Aside from colloquial communication and creative expression, writing is the main apparatus for the production and assessment of knowledge and the preservation of human memory. Since the emergence of artistic research, the problem of writing has been one its most actively debated issues. When understood as a form of knowledge production, artistic research has both utilised and questioned the known forms of scientific writing in portraying the artistic undertakings inherent to it. Even the necessity to include any explanatory text in artistic research has been argued against in an effort to substantiate the arts’ own most aesthetic and epistemological qualities. In appreciating these qualities, artistic research appropriates forms of conventionalised writing by disputing, disrupting and playing with their institutionalised practice and creates completely new forms of reflective articulation. 

Artist-researchers increasingly work with multi-media formats to creatively utilise, challenge and supplement words and written texts, and to integrate reflective appraisal into artworks themselves. The technologies of writing, including digital ones, offer opportunities for exploring the potentials and limits of the materials, media and approaches to writing in artistic research. The conference Elastic Writing in Artistic Research invites participants to introduce and explore extended forms of writing that critically substantiate the aesthetic and creative features and diverse knowledges involved in artistic research. It brings together artistic doctorates and other artist-researchers to examine together how to carve, tear, scratch, score, sketch, draw, trace, design and outline artistic research in performing arts in the post-Anthropocene, pandemic era.

The conference addresses its thematic through a threefold grid: Forms of Writing (with No Hands), Dis(guised) Writing and Techno-Writing. To introduce timely perspectives on each strand, they each will be addressed by an invited presenter with experience in issues related to writing in, with and about art and artistic research. The conference days will begin with an exploratory writing workshop involving both embodied and digitally-mediated approaches to collaborative writing. Additionally, continuous feedback, exchange and collaborative writing opportunities are offered for the conference participants via shared digital platforms. The overall set up of the conference will allow participants to envision approaches to writing in artistic research by different writing agents through different media, as well as writing for different audiences.   

Elastic Writing in Artistic Research, CARPA7, is arranged in a online format. Owing to the COVID19 pandemic, we will continue to monitor closely and act on the advice of the World Health Organization as well as authorities in Finland and other countries.