Unesco defines research as any creative systematic activity intended to increase the stock and the use of knowledge. Often called a “trouble-maker” in the academic realm, artistic research is not a discipline, nor an approach, and it doesn’t have a definable set of methods.
All this makes it odd in terms of the traditional understanding of university disciplines.
“Artistic research is a transformative frame, a utopian moment, a hope that it doesn’t petrify itself into a discipline,” argues Mika Elo, professor of artistic research and Head of Doctoral Programme at Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts.
The key to defining artistic research is to answer a question: what is art about? Making art is always related to self-reflection.
“When the question of use and production of knowledge becomes central for the artist in one way or another, they might be engaging in research. Today Leonardo da Vinci would most likely identify as an artist-researcher,” Elo says.
CAN ANYONE DO ARTISTIC RESEARCH?
The most commonly accepted understanding of artistic research is that it is done by an artist within an institution. A more liberal interpretation implies that it is a frame for considering the epistemic, knowledge-related potential of art, and it can involve artist researchers working outside universities. There are many examples of artist groups and collectives realizing artistic research independently.
A basic requirement, besides the institutional aspect, is that research should have a connection to artistic or pedagogical practice, without making it the object of research. Understanding the difference from research about arts is crucial, says Esa Kirkkopelto, Professor of Artistic Research at the Theatre Academy.
“Artist researchers don’t work the way they used to in their artistic career. Their artistic medium is transformed into the medium of research. Artistic research is an intermediary area; it cannot be counted among the humanities – in contrast with arts research.”
CONTEXT MATTERS
With more than 200 universities worldwide offering doctoral education in art, there is a vivid discussion on how artistic research should be framed. In the Nordic countries, it is closer to artistic practice, whereas in the UK it is more discursive.
In the UK, education costs money, which raises the pressure towards formalizing processes; thus, doctoral programs in art copy certain academic models from the scientific research environment. It makes it easier for the whole field to drift towards a discursive approach.
In the Nordics, funding structures and university politics are in many ways more favourable: there are even a number of foundations that offer funding for art and research, higher education is free and timelines for completing research are more flexible.
“It is our strength, because people can combine artistic practice and artistic research,” Elo says.
Finland has been a pioneer country in artistic research since the early nineties, partly due to favourable legislation that promotes the right to give doctoral degrees to artists. Another reason for this early development is that since the 1990s, Finland has been investing in innovations and the creative economy.
“Artist-researchers in Finland are in quite a good situation. They can touch upon sources that are not available to other artists. However that also raises different expectations regarding the results of their work,” Esa Kirkkopelto points out.
AN INVITING FRAME
The understanding of artistic research may vary a lot within the same university. At the Academy of Fine Arts, research is seen as an inviting frame. It engages in dialogue with other areas of research and participates in an interdisciplinary setting. This dynamic doesn’t work the other way around, and it has to do with professional identities, especially for musicians.
For Päivi Järviö, Head of Doctoral Programme at Uniarts Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy and a singer herself, the term artistic research is quite problematic.
“Defining artistic research for me is a utopia, as it often seems to mean talking against existing definitions.”
In music, artistic research mostly starts from an interest in finding grounds for one’s own playing or practice, often in historical sources.
“What I began to question was what the singers do when working on and performing music. Studying this demands that the researcher is inside the subject, doing it. Moving away from my own live experience means moving further from the material that has all the answers.”
In performing arts – for example dance, theatre, sound, and light design – corporality and pedagogical aspects directly affect humans and their behaviour.
“We are dealing with a ‘distribution of the sensible’ in Rancière’s words, or ‘reinstitution’ of the reality. Artistic research is a very concrete way of studying it,” Esa Kirkkopelto says.
Kirkkopelto, whose background is in theatre, mentions that disciplinary definitions and borderlines mean less and less in dance, theatre, music and fine arts.
“The problems that we are facing are methodologically and ethically similar.”
Päivi Järviö agrees on that vision:
“Many artists are thinking of borders, questioning modes of thinking, exploring new ways of doing, the space where you perform, and the human body.”
Both Kirkkopelto and Järviö see artistic research as means of developing the art field and conventions of display and presentation. Performance and practical work are always there.
A PLACE IN ACADEMIA
In the 1990s and 2000s, the main challenge consisted of establishing quality education in artistic research. Now it’s available for postdoctoral students, research groups and research environments that independent artists can be part of.
What do the doctors of Fine Arts become? Half of them will continue making art. Of the other half, 25% will be teaching at universities or other educational institutions. The rest will follow the research profile. Mika Elo believes that there are many ways for artists to find their own voice.
“An artist in the 1990s was somebody who doesn’t talk but shows. Now artists actively take part in critical discussions demonstrating the relevance of their work.”
As an example, he mentions the strong voice of German artist Hito Steyerl, who is actively using research and essay documentaries to tackle the topics of militarisation, migration and globalisation.
Why did artistic research gain prominence only recently? One of the reasons is the major shift in a traditional understanding of disciplines in universities, explains Mika Elo.
“Disciplines and disciplinarity are necessary for research, but institutionalised forms of disciplines are not very productive in today’s world, as too many things are becoming very urgent, and supporting frames for new, fresh ideas are needed. Artistic research serves as a framing condition for experimental research, which implies that the outcome might take surprising forms, for instance, mathematical innovation. In many cases artistic research fosters thinking about socially engaged art, and aims at demonstrating how artists can moderate social processes.”
Elo acknowledges problems that interdisciplinary research entails.
“There is scarce competence in evaluating interdisciplinarity. Academic panels remain very traditional.”
FROM ARTIST TO RESEARCHER
For musicians, writing publications might feel unfamiliar, but as musician–researchers they have to learn and follow certain principles.
“You might not know where you are going in artistic research, but there has to be a conscious question being asked, a problem to solve, an interest in understanding something. All research has to be rigorous and transparent enough,” Päivi Järviö says.
Peer review is the main tool for artistic research evaluation.
“Artist researchers are people who are able to continue working together, to cooperate,” Kirkkopelto says.
He is part of the collective Other Spaces – Toisissa tiloissa, consisting of around 15 artists from several fields of arts. After completing his thesis on philosophy at Strasbourg University, Kirkkopelto was the one entrusted with creating Tutke – the Performing Arts Research Centre, which would unite doctoral studies and artistic research at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. By then he had had a full-scale artistic career, as a theatre maker, dramaturge, director and actor.
Tutke was built in collaboration with many colleagues involved with research, notably Leena Rouhiainen and Annette Arlander. The research centre, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, has always been a community of students and researchers, which allowed fast development and close collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts and Sibelius Academy, as well as with the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University.
ENCOUNTER WITH THE AUDIENCE
They say that without an audience, there is no art. What about the audience in artistic research?
“The audience should be informed about taking part in the research process, and it can be done in many ways. Handing out a brochure is a rudimentary method. When an actor engages in research, their performance is logically changed. It doesn’t mean it will be harder to understand, but it can become more pedagogical, there can be more shared curiosity, and it can involve deep questions and discoveries,” Kirkkopelto says.
Involvement or encounter with the spectator is a utopian idea, having routes in the avant-garde movement, but it is made closer to implementation by artistic research.
“Artistic research makes an attempt to overcome the gap between art and everyday life and provides a tool to do that, so that art can be a means for social, political and ethical change.”
ARTISTIC RESEARCH IN MUSIC – A LIVING UTOPIA?
In some countries, artistic research in music is quite advanced, the Orpheus Institute in Ghent being at the frontline. The Sibelius Academy, however, kept artistic research at a distance for quite a long time. When Päivi Järviö was working on her doctoral thesis on a singer’s sprezzatura, she didn’t at first consider it artistic research. Her goal was the emancipation of a musician’s point of view.
“In performing arts, what a musician wishes to say has not always been seen as something relevant. But a musician is not a transparent screen, or machine.”
The Sibelius Academy cherishes its long heritage of respecting the tradition of making and playing music, thus keeping it alive and reinterpreting it in the now. The conventions on which a classical musician’s training are based can, however, be quite limiting for students, while music technology, folk music, jazz and Early Music are closer in this sense to contemporary art and more open to experiment. For classical musicians, questioning the tradition and breaking out of it in the frame of their doctoral studies is a challenge. Musicians doing research might even be laughed at by their peers.
“Especially if you’re an established artist you might not want to question the basis of your own practice. For many musicians, research is a scary word, because they are not primarily trained to be artists with their own individual questions, projects and aims. It’s the craft they have to learn. If you play in an orchestra there is no room for such individual musicianship,” Järviö says.
“It may be characteristic for us that students do not necessarily set out to do artistic research. Commencing their doctoral studies might, however, be an early sign of their interest in questions that could be answered using methods akin to artistic research. This might entail that their original plan for the doctoral concert project, usually consisting of five concerts, evolves and transforms on the way. Doctoral studies seem to offer an environment that invites students to question the tradition. Especially some of the younger students often find artistic research a fruitful mode of detaching themselves from the tradition and asking their own questions.”
Research is not something a musician is expected to do – a prejudice that is hard to remove. Another challenge is the image of a musician as somebody slavishly executing music notated on the score. Experimentation is, however, one of the key modes of working for a musician – even though it might not be as conspicuous in philharmonics and concert halls as it is in festivals, clubs and smaller venues.
Nordic framework in Venice
By 2025, open access should be granted to all research funded from the public purse in the European Union. A threat or an opportunity? The Academy of Fine Arts, the Sibelius Academy and the Theatre Academy, closely cooperating within four programmes focused on artistic research at Uniarts Helsinki join forces with the Nordic and European universities to bring this question to the context of the Venice Biennale. The Research Pavilion is organised in Venice for the second time, and its programme raises issues of access to knowledge, topical in the world of alternative facts and fake news.
Since 1907, the Venice Biennale has been traditionally hosting pavilions reserved for national states, but the research aspect is largely acknowledged in Venice, points out professor Mika Elo.
“The Venice Biennale is a contemporary art exhibition, and artistic research doesn’t have any clear mandate within that frame. Having a pavilion, fully dedicated to artistic research in fine arts, performance and music, is a new challenge. Several educational institutions have joined forces in organizing a Research Pavilion, which makes it administratively heavy, but although the institutional ambitions that are very much present in Venice are somewhat shallow, the joint endeavour is promising.”
The five-month timeframe of the Research Pavilion will count three exhibitions and a series of Camino Events that includes a multifaceted music and performance programme, as well as various symposia and seminars.
Musicians going to the context of Venice Biennale are quite an exception, so for the doctoral schools in music it is a chance to emphasize their presence. Together with the Norwegian Academy of Music and the University of Gothenburg, the Sibelius Academy is preparing a Nordic music event that will take place during one weekend. The event will be one of the steps taken to create a Nordic community of musician-researchers and build a network of art and research in music in the Nordics.
Besides its pedagogical and interdisciplinary aspirations, artistic research serves the arts; it deepens the understanding of artistic possibilities, responsibilities and the role of the artist in society. The Research Pavilion organizers still have to find a distinct voice that will be heard in the massive choir of exhibitions and installations, but what matters for them is having freedom and space to develop their own profile.
This article has originally been published in the May issue of Uniarts Helsinki's IssueX magazine, this time a special edition dedicated to the Research Pavilion.