Re: What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?

[Florian Cramer]

s to
> institutional myopia, or the gadfly as it were.
>
> As always of late, I see many parallels to the work and time of Leonardo
> in which the same person would design both military fortifications and
> costumes for wealthy patrons' parties.  Machiavelli clearly took one
> approach to the ethics of "AR," i.e. to use art and science for power
> without regard for morality or "the golden rule."  However, there were
> other more cooperative and trust-based ethics as well during that time,
> many of which hoped to directly counter the Machiavellian system so
> obviously in the ascendant (both then and still now).  One such example is
> Leonardo's, which I believe to have been an evolution into the modern age
> of Dante's poetics of virtue as beauty and truth symbolized by Beatrice.
> Leonardo modernized the guiding ideal of all art and science still further
> as "Esperienza" or Experience, a female personification with many
> attributes in common with Beatrice.
>
> Leonardo expert Martin Kemp of Oxford University wrote in his book *Mona
> Lisa* (2017) that "A full study of Leonardo and poetry would be highly
> rewarding -- and very demanding" (p.143).  Perhaps such a study would fall
> under the rubric of Artistic Research?  In any case, it has quite possibly
> not yet been done.
>
> Full disclosure, I co-lead a research group studying the relationships
> among meditation, neuroscience, and all the arts (including literature).
>
> All best,
>
> Max
>
>
> --
> *From:* nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org 
> on behalf of Florian Cramer 
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 24, 2021 8:48 AM
> *To:* a moderated mailing list for net criticism 
> *Subject:*  What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic
> Research'?
>
> With Nienke Terpsma from "Fucking Good Art", I wrote this response to
> the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research', a policy document written
> by seven European art school umbrella organizations, two accreditation
> bodies, a public arts sector organization and the Society for Artistic
> Research (SAR). Although the Vienna Declaration will likely become a
> future constitution and framework for artistic research in European art
> schools - and thus affect the life and work of many people subscribed to
> this mailing list -, no public debates of its content seem to have taken
> place in the six months after its publication. To get an idea of its
> contents
> and rhetoric, see the "Found Footage" section below. We thought that it
> was time to speak up.
>
> The piece has first been published by/on OPEN!, Platform for Art, Culture
> and the Public Domain,
>
> https://www.onlineopen.org/what-is-wrong-with-the-vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research
>
>
> # What Is Wrong with the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?
> by Florian Cramer & Nienke Terpsma
>
>
> ## Found Footage
>
> > 'Artistic Research [AR]) is practice-based, practice-led research in
> > the arts which has developed rapidly in the last twenty years globally
> > and is a key knowledge base for art education in Higher Arts Education
> > Institutions (HAEIs).'
> >
> > 'AR is well suited to inspire creative and innovative developments in
> > sectors such as health and wellbeing, the environment and technology,
> > thus contributing to fulfilling the HEIs' "third mission". AR must be
> > seen as having a unique potential in the development of the "knowledge
> > triangle."'
> >
> > 'Within this frame, AR is aligned in all aspects with the five main
> > criteria that constitute Research & Development in the Frascati
> > Manual.'
> >
> > 'HAEIs operate predominately within a research context and have
> > a responsibility to conduct AR. It is also common for HAEIs to
> > interact with related enterprise Research & Development, and to
> > contribute directly to the creation of intellectual property in arts,
> > entertainment and media through research practice.'
> >
> > 'This environment requires funding for: educating the next generation
> > of researchers through doctoral programmes; ensuring appropriate
> > physical and virtual infrastructures as well as archiving and
> > disseminating means; building links with business and enterprise in
> > order to stimulate the impact of research.'
> >
> > 'AR is validated through peer review covering the range of
> > disciplinary competences addressed by the work. Quality assurance
> > is undertaken by recognised indepen

Re: What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?

[Max Herman]

Hi Florian,

Interesting policy paper and commentary, many thanks for posting!

One oddity that caught my eye in the Declaration was the omission of literature 
and writing from the list of "all art practice disciplines."  Your mention of 
"conceptual poetry" perhaps relates to this.  Why exclude literature but 
include architecture?  To be sure, art schools generally omit literature from 
their definition of Art but the exclusion seems all the more arbitrary here in 
the context of "research."

It seems pretty clear that this Declaration is designed for administrative 
control, or coherence, whichever one wishes to call it.  The goal seems to be 
mainly to define the funding, career path, standards and practices, etc.  This 
would probably only warrant policy attention if there was something undesirable 
about lack of control or the consequences of such lack.  What are they trying 
to pre-empt, and why?  I would imagine that splintering and extremism in the 
European Project are on their list, as well as economic stagnation.  In a way, 
are these not the longstanding goals of the Union?  They're far from perfect 
goals, drably mundane in many ways actually, but understandable and not 
necessarily always highly malevolent.  The art world, like many spheres of 
society, loves novelty but detests instability.

If one takes a skeptical view of intellectual institutions, along the lines of 
Thomas Bernhard's Woodcutters say, the role of artists in AR will clearly 
involve some irony and "programming the programmers."  There will probably be 
all kinds of AR along various spectrums -- conservative and liberal, corporate 
and local, traditional and reformist, free and for-profit, etc. -- and lots of 
camps and factions within the field.  Maybe this Declaration is a statement of 
"minimum and preferred qualifications"?  Artists may find their role to be 
acting as counterbalances to institutional myopia, or the gadfly as it were.

As always of late, I see many parallels to the work and time of Leonardo in 
which the same person would design both military fortifications and costumes 
for wealthy patrons' parties.  Machiavelli clearly took one approach to the 
ethics of "AR," i.e. to use art and science for power without regard for 
morality or "the golden rule."  However, there were other more cooperative and 
trust-based ethics as well during that time, many of which hoped to directly 
counter the Machiavellian system so obviously in the ascendant (both then and 
still now).  One such example is Leonardo's, which I believe to have been an 
evolution into the modern age of Dante's poetics of virtue as beauty and truth 
symbolized by Beatrice.  Leonardo modernized the guiding ideal of all art and 
science still further as "Esperienza" or Experience, a female personification 
with many attributes in common with Beatrice.

Leonardo expert Martin Kemp of Oxford University wrote in his book Mona Lisa 
(2017) that "A full study of Leonardo and poetry would be highly rewarding -- 
and very demanding" (p.143).  Perhaps such a study would fall under the rubric 
of Artistic Research?  In any case, it has quite possibly not yet been done.

Full disclosure, I co-lead a research group studying the relationships among 
meditation, neuroscience, and all the arts (including literature).

All best,

Max



From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  on 
behalf of Florian Cramer 
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2021 8:48 AM
To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism 
Subject:  What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?

With Nienke Terpsma from "Fucking Good Art", I wrote this response to
the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research', a policy document written
by seven European art school umbrella organizations, two accreditation
bodies, a public arts sector organization and the Society for Artistic
Research (SAR). Although the Vienna Declaration will likely become a
future constitution and framework for artistic research in European art
schools - and thus affect the life and work of many people subscribed to
this mailing list -, no public debates of its content seem to have taken
place in the six months after its publication. To get an idea of its contents
and rhetoric, see the "Found Footage" section below. We thought that it
was time to speak up.

The piece has first been published by/on OPEN!, Platform for Art, Culture
and the Public Domain,
https://www.onlineopen.org/what-is-wrong-with-the-vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research


# What Is Wrong with the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?
by Florian Cramer & Nienke Terpsma


## Found Footage

> 'Artistic Research [AR]) is practice-based, practice-led research in
> the arts which has developed rapidly in the last twenty years globally
> and 

What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?

[Allanmini2]

Hello Florian
Apropos of this subject - which is important right now - I draw yourt 
attetion to the following programme that starts next week (it also is 
problematic):



 best

allam

The Postresearch Condition 




 Proposition

After an omnipresent “Research Decade,” the concept of artistic research 
currently seems to be in need of a recharge. Pressing questions are: 
Should we talk about a postresearch situation or a postresearch 
condition? Could this be compared with how poststructuralism relates to 
structuralism as its philosophical comprehension and the elaboration of 
its consequences? And how could a postresearch condition address 
contemporary art practices?


To answer these questions, it is important to start from the three 
conceptual spaces that fundamentally determine what we mean by research: 
/creative practice/ (experimentality, art making, potential of the 
sensible); /artistic thinking/ (open-ended, speculative, associative, 
non-linear, haunting, thinking differently); and /curatorial strategies/ 
(topical modes of political imagination, transformational spaces for 
encounters, reflection and dissemination) – and to comprehend these 
spaces in their mutual, dynamic coherence as a series of indirect 
triangular relationships.


From whatever conceptual space one departs, an artistic research 
practice could signify a transversal constellation – as a creative 
proposition for thought in action. Yet, that mode of research could 
never be reduced to a method of one of the three constituents. Thus, 
artistic research cannot be equated with creative innovation, 
disciplinary knowledge production, or political activism. It seems 
urgent now – and this is the starting point of this conference – to 
profoundly challenge and question the issue of how to articulate and 
present the condition of the intersection between the three conceptual 
spaces. For this purpose, an intensive program of workshops, 
presentations, propositions, screenings, and publications has been 
developed.
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

What is wrong the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?

[Florian Cramer]

With Nienke Terpsma from "Fucking Good Art", I wrote this response to
the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research', a policy document written
by seven European art school umbrella organizations, two accreditation
bodies, a public arts sector organization and the Society for Artistic
Research (SAR). Although the Vienna Declaration will likely become a
future constitution and framework for artistic research in European art
schools - and thus affect the life and work of many people subscribed to
this mailing list -, no public debates of its content seem to have taken
place in the six months after its publication. To get an idea of its
contents
and rhetoric, see the "Found Footage" section below. We thought that it
was time to speak up.

The piece has first been published by/on OPEN!, Platform for Art, Culture
and the Public Domain,
https://www.onlineopen.org/what-is-wrong-with-the-vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research


# What Is Wrong with the 'Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research'?
by Florian Cramer & Nienke Terpsma


## Found Footage

> 'Artistic Research [AR]) is practice-based, practice-led research in
> the arts which has developed rapidly in the last twenty years globally
> and is a key knowledge base for art education in Higher Arts Education
> Institutions (HAEIs).'
>
> 'AR is well suited to inspire creative and innovative developments in
> sectors such as health and wellbeing, the environment and technology,
> thus contributing to fulfilling the HEIs' "third mission". AR must be
> seen as having a unique potential in the development of the "knowledge
> triangle."'
>
> 'Within this frame, AR is aligned in all aspects with the five main
> criteria that constitute Research & Development in the Frascati
> Manual.'
>
> 'HAEIs operate predominately within a research context and have
> a responsibility to conduct AR. It is also common for HAEIs to
> interact with related enterprise Research & Development, and to
> contribute directly to the creation of intellectual property in arts,
> entertainment and media through research practice.'
>
> 'This environment requires funding for: educating the next generation
> of researchers through doctoral programmes; ensuring appropriate
> physical and virtual infrastructures as well as archiving and
> disseminating means; building links with business and enterprise in
> order to stimulate the impact of research.'
>
> 'AR is validated through peer review covering the range of
> disciplinary competences addressed by the work. Quality assurance
> is undertaken by recognised independent, international QA bodies
> and assures the standards described in the European Standards and
> Guidelines (ESG 2015) for Quality Assurance in the European Higher
> Education Area.'
>
> '[T]he establishment of AR as an independent category within the
> Frascati Manual, establishing the opportunity for harvesting research
> data and statistics from the AR field.'

This is not conceptual poetry; these are quotes from the _Vienna
Declaration on Artistic Research_ signed on 20 June 2020 by all
major organisations of European art schools. Of the many things
that rub one the wrong way, two stand out: next to the grotesque
neoliberal-bureaucratic language, art schools' land-grabbing claim to
own and define artistic research. Both, of course, done with the best
intentions to emancipate artistic research.

The _Vienna Declaration_ doesn't mention artists at all; they literally
don't exist in its text.


## From Artistic Research to AR; from Descriptions to Prescriptions

For future art education in Europe, the _Vienna Declaration_ may
become as influential as the _Bologna Declaration_ of 1999 (on whose
basis continental European higher education was reorganised into the
Anglo-American Bachelor and Master system). It dwells on the same shaky
grounds of not actually being a legal text or governmental policy
document. Factually, it is a manifesto for institutionalising artistic
research at European art schools, by intrinsically linking what in most
cases used to be two separate things: artistic research and doctoral
study programmes.[^1] Written in a language that reads like its own
parody, with its abundance of tacky logos reminiscent of spam messages,
the _Vienna Declaration _doesn't pretend any semblance to a manifesto
written by artists in support of artistic research. It is of course
(and, for its intended purpose, needs to be) a bureaucratic policy
document; but beyond that, it is a constructed foundation myth and
institutional power grab.

With the [research project job
openings](https://feinart.org/esr-programs/) associated with it, the
_Vienna Declaration_ reframes artistic research as a top-down practice
where projects, subjects and research questions formulated by academic
institutions and artists need to fit into pre-defined projects and
calls, forms, formats and methods.[^2] Artists ultimately won't have the
freedom of refusing to participate, because these programmes will be
among th