Thinking Back, Making Forward – Artistic Research in Practice

In the last three decades, creative practice disciplines, such as art, design, architecture, creative writing, fashion, and others, have undergone a ‘research turn’, strongly stimulated by doctoral programmes to deepen artists’ reflections on the roots, relevance and urgencies of their work. There are many reasons why an individual practitioner might decide to undertake a PhD: a desire to uplift one’s practice, to contribute to the intellectual artistic climate, to teach, to pursue an academic career, or some combination of these, or other reasons.

The rise of artistic research or practice-based research is subtly transforming these disciplines. The integration of research into practice, however, has not always been smooth, and the transformations not unequivocally positive.

For this book an open call was issued to ask artists how PhD research has influenced their making and thinking. The questions were: What are the impacts, urgency, and significance of the PhD for creative practitioners? How are these understood, captured, communicated? How did it change your practice? They were even asked: should creative practitioners undertake a PhD in the first place?
Through its thirty contributions Thinking Back, Making Forward tackles these questions in an open way, to acknowledge, equally, the advantages and disadvantages of the creep of the PhD into artistic practice. At the same time, this book shows a wide range of possibilities of what research in artistic practice can entail.

Contributors: Annie Bellamy; Nicholas Boyarsky; Jeremie Brugidou; Jessica Bugg; Carla Cruz and Nina Hoechtl; Lionel T Dean; Anne Douglas; David Gates; Ismini Gatou; Joost Grootens; Graeme Harper; Andrew Hodgson; Alexander Hunter; Jessyca Hutchens, Naomi Vogt and Nina Wakeford; Åsa Johannesson; Eduardo Kairuz; Roger Kemp and Anthony Fryatt; Ilona Krawczyk; Victoria Lynn; Clare McCracken & Pia Johnson; Fraser Muggeridge; Yogan Muller; Libby Myers; Gerrie van Noord; Kateřina Olivová; Alvin Pang; Cecilie Sachs Olsen and Matthew Dalziel; Benjamin Sheppard; Alice Twemlow with Anja Groten, Maya Rasker and Andrea Stultiens; Chanda VanderHart
Partner: RMIT University, Melbourne