The SARN workshop invites participants to join the debate on the function of speaking about/with the language of art research. A certain use of language is inevitably a commitment to a certain method and therewith often a discipline. Therefore, any discourse around art research projects forms the ways we can think (about) “art research.” Against this backdrop we think it is important to develop a more reflected use of language that wouldn’t simply append the languages of art research to existing disciplines. On the one hand: if we use terms that are historically situated and situated within a discipline we have to shed some light on how we look at them and on how we use them. On the other, the languages of art research can’t be as private as those of the arts, where every artist develops her or his own language.

The workshop features a brief introduction to the topic followed by round table discussions of two models at the intersection of art and research.

The journal “Formuler en Parlant” edited by artists Uriel Orlow and Andrea Thal [2009] proposes a conversational visual practice giving both an insight into different research processes and enabling stakeholders to participate. [1]

In her text “Letter to Janneke Wesseling” [2011] curator Vanessa Ohlraun proposes to reclaim a language that is intrinsic to artistic practice (for art research). [2]

These two examples may not be exemplary, but they fan out the problematics of accessibility, authorship, concept of work–concept of research, art and research methodology within the question of an individual and a common research language that we want to debate: How do we develop a language that is both “common” and emerges from the logic inherent to individual research practice? What kind of discursivity is intrinsic to both individual art research practices and comprehensible for the development of a larger research community?

The material behind the two examples will be sent to the participants as soon as they join the doodle (with email). All participants are expected to prepare a response to our two proposals that maps them onto their own art research practices by means of visualizations, diagrams, texts, etc. During the first round-table we will look at our material and during the second we will reflect on them with regard to possible methodologies.

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[1] Vanessa Ohlraun: “Letter to Janneke Wesseling”, in: Janneke Wesseling (ed.), See it Again, Say it Again. The Artist as Researcher, Amsterdam: Valiz 2011, pp. 200-203.

[2] Andrea Thal, Uriel Orlow (eds.): Formuler en Parlant, Zürich: edition fink 2009.