MODE05

I just want to throw in a reference that I came across not too long ago. It’s a publication titled Artistic Research (Annette W. Balkema & Henk Slager (Eds.), Amsterdam & New York 2004, Lier en Boog Series of Philosophy of Art and Art Theory Vol. 18). Somehow it was hard to get it in Germany.

The book includes a documentation of a workshop and a symposium (I couldn’t find out the exact dates but it must have been 2003/2004). The workshop on Art and Method took place in De Rijksakademie voor Beldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, where a number of philosphers and artists exchanged thoughts on the concept of research as such. The results of the workshop were the launch pad for an international two-day symposium on Artistic Research, where methodological questions were addressed specifically on the institutional domain. I quote some of them: How could the developing research paradigm in topical visual art be part of the curriculum for advanced art institutions in Europe? And, vice versa, how could an advanced art institution promote a progressive, artistic research paradigm? Would that be in the form of an institutional introspection? After a reformulation of the institutional framework? Or by an exploration and modification of existing teaching criteria and artist-in residence programs?

So the context is visual arts, focused on postgraduate programs, triggered by the European community’s decision that from 2009 on the art sector will be squeezed into a standardized system of BA/MA/PhD degrees. It’s a heterogeneous collection of short statements, drafts, reports and discussions on the relation between artistic and scientific research, on the possibility of combining artistic practice and theoretical strategy, on art and its context of critique and market, on the role of arts schools, on new institutional models for art education, on form, method and content of programs (necessity of grants, curricula, exams)…

Sometimes the whole thing falls back into the cliché of scientification of art education at the expense of the “essence” of art, but there is a striking parallel to our concerns and it might be interesting to connect with some of the people who were involved in it. Maybe one of the Dutch mode05 participants was even there and knows more about the outcome of the symposium?