The Merz Akademie, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Württembergischer Kunstverein, and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen are pursuing a cooperative project on artistic research in order to address the possibilities for new forms of aesthetic knowledge and their social function and influence.

Artistic research is understood to be a way of producing knowledge that considers both the arts’ potential for knowledge and the aesthetic conditions of thought. This cooperative project will focus on the independence of such art-based research and its specific difference from scientific research in order to encourage processes of knowledge formation in the medium of art and design, to describe them epistemologically, to work out their ontological implications, and to specify their status in society today and in the future. Artistic research is far more than implementing or imparting scientific information. It aims at another, independent knowledge produced in and by means of artistic strategies and forms of aesthetic representation, which is imparted in forms, means of presentation, and structures of reception different from those used by the sciences, produces different evidence, and affects life and society in a very specific way.

The origins of artistic research can be traced back to the 1960s, and it has evolved into a term that accords with the most advanced practices in the arts. At the same time, the intertwining of art and research raises a series of questions that are currently being debated heatedly in university politics in the context of adequate aesthetic and artistic education. The relevance of new forms of knowledge developed in the arts is, however, all too limited by this focus on its academic acceptance. This cooperative project seeks to abandon this restriction to questions of university policy and the discussion of a doctorate in the arts and instead take seriously forms of artistic knowledge as a challenge to today’s knowledge society and above all to the sciences and their claim to valid acquisition of knowledge. It is based on the assumption that the role of the arts in today’s knowledge society has to be redefined, and it seeks to determine the social range of the knowledge arts. For the formation of knowledge in the arts does not just claim to entail an implicit critic of the sciences but also aims at social effectiveness. It produces an immediate public, seeks to intervene in the routines of life, and is often connected to the ambition to change social conditions.

The following questions should be discussed: What opportunities does the redefinition of the borders between art and research offer? What epistemological and ontological consequences result from an artistic knowledge that is still to be defined? How can the arts contribute to the reformation of today’s cultures of knowledge? What intercultural range do knowledge-based art forms have? How does the knowledge of the arts affect society? What concept of design can be formulated with an eye to the social, political, cultural, and intercultural relevance of artistic knowledge?

The authors of the project are:
Kathrin Busch, Markus Merz / Merz Akademie, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart Hans D. Christ / Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
Felix Ensslin, Hans Dieter Huber / Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart
Jean-Baptiste Joly / Akademie Schloss Solitude
Elke aus dem Moore / Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Stuttgart