Contemporary Condition - Collateral Concepts - A Provisional Vocabulary for Artistic Research

On the conditions of artistic research and related discourse via twenty significant concepts.

What are the key discussions, presentations, and publications that have shaped the recent discourse of artistic research? In search of some answers, this book departs from twenty research projects developed by the author over the past decade at venues including BAK Utrecht, Bucharest Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial, Havana Biennial, Kuanda Biennial, Nottingham Contemporary, Research Pavilion Venice/Helsinki, and Seoul Media City. The conceptual frameworks of these projects are resituated here, drawing on the critique of the alphabetical order articulated in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. From Diderot’s Encyclopedia to the current form of online lexicons and vocabularies, alphabetical order has long been a conventional mode of organizing knowledge. Barthes, however, shifted the mode entirely when he started to arrange his texts alphabetically based on concepts that emerged while rewriting them.

Alphabetical order then functions as a non-chronologizing anti-structure that prevents the different fragments from sliding into a single linear narrative. The twenty concepts developed here adopt a similar, essayistic approach to the heteronomous practices of artistic research: each one is a new point of departure from which to explore this nascent field in a provisional way. Rather than advancing definitive assertions, theories, or conclusions, Collateral Concepts is an assemblage of productive hints that invite the reader to reflect on the meaning, role, and position that ideas emerging from creative practices play in further articulating artistic research as an idiosyncratic mode of inquiry.

Published in partnership with the Centre for Research in Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions at Aarhus University and HKU University of the Arts Utrecht.

Henk Slager has played a significant role in the development of the emerging field of Artistic Research over the past twenty years. He achieved this through various professorships (Uniarts Helsinki; MMU Manchester; Nottingham Trent University; HKU Utrecht), curatorial projects (Bucharest Biennale; Guangzhou Triennial; Havana Biennial; Kuandu Biennial; ATM Manchester; Seoul Media City; Shanghai Biennale; Research Pavilion Venice; BAK Utrecht), networks (he co-initiated EARN European Artistic Research Network; ELIA/SHARE), and publications (MaHKUzine; MaHKUscript. Journal of Fine Art Research; the leading monograph The Pleasure of Research). Henk Slager is an Artistic Research Advisor for the European Research Council in Brussels.