Alferi, Pierre

Does Artistic Research Mean Aping Scholarship? - 2015.


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This article reminds us of the fundamental distinction that places art outside knowledge, an irreducible kind of superfluity involving research with no utilitarian purpose. But what is research if the aim is not knowledge? To answer this question, we need to abandon the academic model that seeks to turn artistic research into the scholarly production of pedagogical and historical commentaries, and artists into virtuoso performers with new technologies and networks, or zealots of the “project” cult. To find a way out of the impasse, future artistic research institutions must develop ways of transmitting knowledge that keep faith with the singularity of the artistic experience. One of these ways is the production of artwork as a “memoir.”