What's artistic research?
Artistic research is at the heart of this project, and it’s a contested term to describe – particularly for the field of Modern Languages.
Borgdorff (2010) defines artistic research as a process that seeks not so much to make explicit the knowledge that art is said to produce, but rather to provide a specific articulation of the pre-reflective, non-conceptual content of art.” He goes on to conclude that artistic research invites ‘unfinished thinking’; it initiates “border violations” between art and academia – and it broadly refers to research “in and through art practice”. That is, using the medium of art to conduct research.
Julian Klein (2017) would add to this that “[a]rtistic experience can be prescribed […], as the perceptory mode of the sensed interference of frames”; it acts as an interdisciplinary state of ‘not-yet-knowing’. In this sense, it is important to note that research “is not artistic when or even only when it is carried out by artists (as helpful as their participation may often be) but rather earns the attribute “artistic” – no matter where, when or from whom it was undertaken – on its specific quality: the mode of artistic experience.”
Boeck (2022) would further argue that during the process of artistic research, our own creative practices are invariably "examined and put in relation to the works of other artists, scientists and theorists in order to extract the components of which they are made.”
We would argue that – for the field of Modern Languages – artistic research can be all the things above. But it is important to stress that it does not have to be. Colleagues in Modern Languages and related fields have worked on a whole set of topics in recent years, ranging from translation and performance-related projects to short films, art installations, creative writing, poetry, photography, music and others.
Equally, we would like to point out that Artistic Research in our field(s) tends to be interdisciplinary by nature. But this does not exclude those of us who concentrate more on language-specific aspects or on linguistic matters alone. As Julian Klein states above, it is of little importance, when, where or by whom artistic research is undertaken – it is the mode of artistic experience that defines this particular kind of research. Our research project is interested in the intersection of creative assessment and artistic research, that is, using artistic research methods for students’ assessment in Modern Languages. We aim to exemplify examples of good practice and make them available on a future open access hub. We aim to inspire colleagues and students to find new ways of researching and assessing in Modern Languages – through the medium of art production.
Dr. Sarah Pogoda and Dr. Alex Mangold organised a conference on Artistic Research in Modern Languages & Culture at Bangor University in 2021. This event suggested that there is a significant number of examples of good practice that we aim to make visible through this project.
For this, your collaboration is vital. We have created a questionnaire to compile examples of creative assessment in Modern Languages.
How can you help?
If you have used Creative Assessment or Artistic Research Methods in your teaching – please, take some time to fill in the questionnaire and share it with other colleagues. We have set an initial deadline for the 30th of June.
Share this project with like-minded colleagues. We also aim to create a conversation around language teaching and artistic research, for which a diverse number of voices would be very beneficial.
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Contact us for proposals, questions or ideas. You can reach us via mail (cmlp@aber.ac.uk) or DM on Twitter