PRACTICES OF RESEARCH,
FORMS OF ARTISTIC ACTION

Round-table:Tuesday, April 11 2017, 18:00

Participans:Ionuț Cioană, Larisa Crunțeanu, Ruxandra Demetrescu, Maria Drăghici, Cătălin Gheorghe, Iosif Király, Ștefan Ungureanu

In a context in which the possibility to accept, in a wider institutional frame, the legitimacy of the notion of ‘artistic research’ is contested, a group of professors, theoreticians and artists engaged in doctoral studies is gathering into an encounter to argumentatively, exemplificatively and projectively sustain the reality of identification and operational justification of a thematic apparatus, a management framework, a special language, and an existence of research products. Starting from concrete examples, from case studies in which the creative process of artistic research is involved, there will be considered the distinction between the positivist paradigm, which is specific to the epistemology of the ‘hard’ sciences, and the constructivist paradigm, associated to artistic research. Also, the status of research will be questioned from the perspective of the educational instrumentalisation in the frame of the academic doctorate, from the perspective of the political opposition against creative industries, or from the perspective of aesthetic communication as artistic product. During the discussion, under consensual negotiations or antagonist disputes, questions of the structure of research experience will be approached: thematic identifications (the object of the research), modalities of appeal to the ‘invention’ of method (transversalities, intersectionalities), explorations of technical and practical knowledge through experimentation, interpretative reflections, contextualisations of the dissemination of the research outcomes and the possibility of generating ‘new’ forms or fields of knowledge.

Ionuț Cioană has graduated from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest and the “Ion Mincu” Architecture Institute. Enrolled in 2005 in the PhD programme at CESI Bucharest, he gave up academic research in favor of artistic practice, beginning with 2006 (under the alias of Mircea Nicolae). He is currently a PhD candidate at UNArte Bucharest. // Larisa Crunțeanu is an artist working at the intersection of video and performance, research and speculation, often collaboratively, creating contexts for the emergence of new practices and organisation. She is currently a PhD candidate at UNArte Bucharest. // Ruxandra Demetrescu is an art historian and theoretician, Professor at UNArte Bucharest. Between 2006-2012 she was the Rector of the same institution, at present being Head of the PhD Department. // Maria Drăghici is an artist and cultural activist, founder of the Generosity Offensive Initiative (2006) and laBOMBA Rahova-Uranus Community Base (2007-2011). She is currently a PhD candidate at UNArte Bucharest. // Cătălin Gheorghe is a theoretician, curator and editor who, as Associate Professor, teaches Aesthetics, Applicative Visual Studies, Theories and Practices of Artistic Research, and Curatorial Studies at “George Enescu” National University of the Arts in Iași. // Iosif Király is an artist and architect who, since 1980, has had an extensive international exhibition record, independently and in the subREAL group. He is a founder member of the Department of Photography and Time-based Media Art at UNArte Bucharest, where he is currently teaching. // Ștefan Ungureanu is an artist for whom painting is not a traditional medium, but rather a natural way of representation of the worlds he imagines. He is currently a PhD candidate at UNArte Bucharest, with the research project Mapping as a Visual and Conceptual Tool in Artistic Practice.

Image: 6714, Maria Drăghici & REDAKZIA, Skogen Gothenburg, 2014