Beyond Validity

Claiming the Legacy of the Artist-Researcher

Abstract

In this paper we argue that it is essential for artistic research to develop an epistemo logy and methodology that is responsive to modern society’s demands to move towards a decolonized and ethically grounded paradigm. The positivist belief in a value-free, ‘objective’ science has already been decisively countered by a subjectivist turn. In this context, the artistic researcher can be a vanguard representative of an autoethnographic and politically aware counter-reaction in which the space for subjectivity in research in general is expanded – an expansion that goes 'beyond validity'. Rather than being understood as a non-academic and independent research discipline, we claim that artistic research is situated in a space principally defined by four non-conformal fields of gravitation: the subjective, the academic, the experimental, and the field of the art world. The complexity of this picture should not prevent the development of frames and methods for artistic researchers to use or depart from, while still maintaining an experimental perspective. Drawing on theoretical currents in the social sciences and cultural studies as well as method development in the artistic research field, our argument builds on the conviction that artistic practices have always constituted a source of dissemination of particular kinds of knowledge. These non-discursive forms of transmission of knowledge constitute a foundation for artistic research.