Artistic research: Coordinates for rethinking knowledge production at the university

Abstract

Artistic research emerges as a field that questions the ways of feeling, speaking, thinking, and validating knowledge in the face of hegemonic forms consolidated in academia. From this premise, the article first develops a thematic review that serves as an epistemological framework for artistic research, articulating debates around the academic legitimation of the arts, the tensions with the scientific-positivist paradigm, its decolonizing political dimension, and the vindication of subjectivity and embodiment as legitimate sources of knowledge. Secondly, these coordinates intersect as analytical approaches for understanding the improvised musical work Ozu’s Dream (Simon Rose 2017), drawing on the contributions of situated knowledge, the philosophy of the body and movement, and the notion of the emancipated spectator to consider musical improvisation as a scene of situated artistic research. It is argued that this double operation —epistemological and analytical-performative— shows how artistic practice as research poses challenges that transcend traditional paradigms, opening paths towards embodied, relational and tacit knowledge that recognizes research-creation as a legitimate mode of knowledge production in the university.

Artistic Research, Research-Creation, Tacit Knowledge, Practice Artistic as Research