Thematic Residency: Making Artistic Inquiry Visible

Making Artistic Inquiry Visible (MAIV) brings together a group of artists, writers, curators, and other creative and cultural producers to explore the relationships between research and artistic practice. Much has been said and written about research on visual arts, but there is relatively little about research for visual arts (the array of practices that both inform and constitute artistic production) or research through visual art (where artistic practice becomes a vehicle for producing and presenting new knowledge).

Residency participants will consider the various contemporary conceptualizations of artistic research including practice-led research, research creation, artistic inquiry, and art practice as research. This will be achieved through their work which employs, involves, enacts, or questions research as a key element of the creative practice or creative practice as a vehicle for research. While working on individual and collaborative projects (including artist-community interventions), participants will be encouraged to engage in a process of visible listening, an individual and collective process seeking public representation of the research activities and attitudes that inform artistic and creative critical practices. Workshops on modes of documentation and self-reflection will be led by artists to help develop the sharing, representation, and critiquing of artistic research practices.

This residency raises questions that will inform the investigations of the participants: If research, traditionally defined, promises the creation of new knowledge, what kind of knowledge does artistic inquiry produce? What are the implications of making knowledge claims for artistic creation? How does the increasing academic and institutional recognition of artistic research affect the artistic community? How does the practice of artistic research affect academic culture? How does the practice of making art in the public realm affect the community’s capacity for research? What can non-artists and communities learn from artist-researchers—in terms of developing alternative research methodologies, attitudes, and patterns of inquiry?

This residency is a collaboration with Mapping Quality of Life and the Cultural Future of Small Cities, an interdisciplinary Community-University Research Alliance (Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops) that has championed the role of artists as both researchers and agents for social inquiry.
This program is partially supported with assistance from Communities – University Research Alliances (CURA) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).