Notes on Media Sensitivity in Artistic Research

Summary

Art can be research in so far as it is exposed as such. The question of what might be at stake in such an exposition is not just a matter of research politics. As I will argue, the question concerns the very medium of research.

The inception of artistic research can be seen as a symptom of an extensive cultural shift that has led to a situation where the non-discursive conditions of knowledge production are gaining currency. This shift has been described from different points of view in terms of various turns, such as ‘medial turn’ (Munker 2009: 12-13). In terms of ‘medial turn’ we can observe a shift in the main focus of cultural theories away from the symbolic structure of languages and ‘symbolic forms’ towards an examination of their material-sensory structure (ibid.). Using Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, ‘The medium is the message’, we could say that the ‘medial turn’ implies the recognition of the medial embeddedness of all forms of communication as well as a certain destabilisation of hierarchical relations between different media or modes of signification. On the level of research institutions, this shift is manifested in a destabilisation of the structure and status of modern disciplines and faculties, among others those of art and aesthetics. The cognitive model on which the division of academic labour depends is under transformation, and the search for a legitimate frame for artistic research is part of this process.

This cultural shift makes up something of a precondition for the discursive emplacement of artistic research. Artistic articulations that are not based on propositional statements can gain the status of research only in a situation where the instrumental supremacy and functionality of the most widely established medium of research – the verbal language – has become questionable. As regards exposing art as research, the term ‘exposition’ would thus not only concern the institutional frame; it would also name a particular mode of presentation, that is, presentation of artistic work as research.

How might one develop, assess and facilitate appropriate forms of such exposure? I will suggest that the debates concerning the question can be described as ‘the touch of the faculties’ – in terms of colliding interests and critical confrontation as well as contamination and crossbreeding.