Today, both the practice and understanding of artistic research are encompassed by increasingly rigidifying forms of academization. This asks for a thorough conceptual reassessment of that originally artistic field. Indeed, many questions have been lurking in the wings for some time now. Does the present conceptual impact of artistic research still cover its original and radical drive? Is artistic research still related to processes of experimental thinking and creating? Or does a pervasive institutionalization urge to reset the ever-narrowing framework of artistic research?
The present publication intends to explore topical potentialities of an alternative and more strategic manner of dealing with artistic practices. Therefore, the texts deliberately refer again to the concept of aesthetics. Since contemporary thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière have initiated to redefine the aesthetic domain, aesthetics seems once again to point to extra-territorial frameworks able to avoid the production of instrumentalizing concepts. Indeed, a topical understanding of aesthetics appears to be astoundingly compatible with what was once advocated by artistic research, i.e. the self-reflexive and self-critical capacities of artists engaging in configurations of understanding and signification.
