Paper short abstract:

How can we understand the craft of artistic research without resorting to dichotomous positions of autonomy vs. discipline, making or thinking? My thought experiment elaborates artistic research as an experimental ethnography in which appropriate forms of rigour emerge along the way.

Paper long abstract:

Artistic practice is both strongly associated with craft as well as defined in opposition to it. Particularly with the rise of artistic research with its emphasis on process, and the various ways in which the art world relates to the increasing dominance of our knowledge society, the craft of art often seems more and more irrelevant and anachronistic. Instead, debates about artistic research are steeped in a different opposition: that of the autonomy versus the necessary relevance of art. In my contribution, I use the common STS manoeuvre of sidestepping these foundational questions and focus instead on the practical craft of artistic research. How can we understand what artistic researchers do? And what kind of appropriate rules or local rigour emerge in the process? Building on the work of Stefan Hirschauer, Tim Ingold and Annemarie Mol, my thought experiment elaborates artistic research as experimental ethnography: A research practice in which the embarrassingly underdetermined artist/researcher again and again attunes and calibrates herself as a strict and sensitive research instrument. An instrument, moreover, aiming at immersion as well as intervention, at understanding as well as relevant and radical distortion. The notion of craft helps to find ways of thinking about the quality of such a practice without having to resort to dichotomous and jaded positions of artistic autonomy or methodological discipline, doing or knowing, making or thinking.