Expositions in the Research Catalogue

Summary

The Research Catalogue (RC) and the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) are related projects with very different aims and purposes. The RC is a free, online, collaborative and mostly private workspace that also allows for the (self-)publication of artistic research. JAR is an academic, peer-reviewed and open access journal for the publication and dissemination of artistic research. JAR functions as the first in a series of planned, specialist portals to selected research published on the RC that utilises the latter's technology, including the design interface and the integrated submission and publication workflow. JAR's editorial policy and peer-review procedures are based on the concept of ‘expositions’ – online objects on the RC that are meant to expose practice as research – which the journal actively promotes (cf. Schwab 2011). While the RC supports the generation of such expositions, it neither limits its users to disseminating their research as expositions nor enforces a particular approach to publication – as long as this is not outside the legal confines of the licence agreement, as will be discussed later. When talking about ‘expositions’, it would thus appear natural to focus on JAR's editorial policy, since – it may be assumed – this is where the concept must most clearly be defined. At the same time, such a focus potentially misses the less explicit conceptual space that the RC software provides, which both enables and limits expositions in JAR. Since JAR's editorial approach may be traced on its website and the editorials that introduce past issues, this chapter focuses on the RC and the particular solution that it offers to the problem of how to expose practice artistically as research in an online environment. To do this, I will discuss the technical reality of the RC as part of an enterprise that investigates how artistic research can be published in academia rather than suggesting tight definitions of what may or may not count as exposition.

In general, the exposition of artistic practice is an everyday occurrence – whether in exhibitions, concerts or theatre performances. In fact, one may say that ‘exposition’ is what artists essentially do, since there is no art without the presentation and the setting forth (from the Latin exponere) of their work.3 At the same time, artists have found it very difficult to expose their practice in ways that are acceptable as research.