Deleuze, Judgment and Artistic Research [article]

Spencer Roberts, UH Research Archive, UH Research Archive
2016
The debate concerning the legitimacy of artistic research that has taken place over the last two decades is notable for the way in which it has drawn attention to rival 'representational' and 'performative' conceptions of thought. In the early stages of the debate, critics such as Durling, Friedman, Elkins and Biggs employed broadly representational arguments in a quasi-legal context of judgment to suggest that processes of artistic research were in some sense unrecognisable when attempts were
more » ... ade to see them through the conceptual lens of 'research'. In contrast to this, advocates of artistic research, such as Haseman, Bolt, Sullivan and Slager proposed that research arising out of artistic practice possessed distinctive qualities - conjoining interests in the experimental, the experiential, and the non-representational, with a set of predominantly transformative aims. Haseman et al have likewise suggested that the concerns of the practitioner-researcher, at least in the context of the arts, are mainly ontological as opposed to epistemological in character - seeking to explore, reframe, or contest existing states of affairs in a broadly performative fashion. Whilst supporters of artistic research often stress the requirement for new ways of thinking to accommodate the specificities of practice-led research, many of the concepts that are employed in an attempt to understand the aims and concerns of artistic research have a long 'process-philosophical' lineage. Process philosophy has been present as a minor current in Western philosophy since as early as 540 BC and through the influence of luminaries such as Dewey and Langer, it has long been associated with education in the arts. Process philosophers typically emphasise both the ontological priority of change and the relational constitution of entities. From the perspective of process philosophy, the world of stable and enduring things arises out of a differential play of interacting forces that admit of multiple and contingent patterns of relation. With this in [...]
doi:10.18745/th.17224 fatcat:k42hczderbhkpefukiw277i7m4