Artistic Research Syndrome

In this essay, I present a heuristic construction that I call “artistic research syndrome”, a constellation of loosely associated cultural symptoms that all have to do with displacement of sense. My aim is to open a new perspective on artistic research practices in a wider cultural, theoretical frame. The approach is informed by the hypothesis that there is an on-going destabilisation of the culturally conditioned hierarchies between different dimensions of sense (in all senses of the word “sense”) and that artistic research practices play a significant role in this destabilisation. “Artistic research syndrome” indicates a crisis of theory-driven models of research and the revival of pragmatogonic research settings. It is signaling the radical relativisation of human-centered conceptions of the world and the recognition of non-human agencies. It provokes the recognition of previously underestimated forms of cognition. It holds sway on the neuralgic points of today’s economies and ecologies of knowledge.I will address some key aspects of “artistic research syndrome” through a set of interrelated questions concerning the relation of aesthetics and arts research. I will formulate these questions in terms of “cultural techniques”, “displacement of sense” and “boundary work”.