In connection with previous projects dedicated to examining and re-thinking what kind of changes in the aesthetic experience are inducing new practices in contemporary art, the aim of the current project is to approach the nature of «artistic research» as it is currently developing. The motives of this project are two: one theoretical and the other practical/empirical. The first one is the reactualization of past philosophical discussions about art’s cognitive power that go back to Plato and his condemnation of artistic knowledge. Since the experimental turn of the avant-gardes, however, current artistic research arises as a different, though parallel, form of the scientific research. Behind this theoretical exploration is a practical one: Large amounts of money worldwide are devoted to finance artistic research projects and Art Schools, to judge artistic projects, and to grant Ph.D.’s in the arts – but in what exactly does the production of artistic knowledge consist? What criteria should one apply at the moment of granting a scholarship to an artistic project or to accept a work as a Ph.D. dissertation? This is a complex question that challenges both the aesthetic and the institutional discourses of ministries, foundations and other public and private institutions. The project aims to approach three of the myriad issues that can be examined:

I. In relation to the "Kantian pragmatism" that we defend as philosophical approach, we will analyze the validity of the concept of reflection and of reflexivity to understand the cognitive production of contemporary art.

II. We will examine the transformations of the concept of "experimentation", studying the differences between "experimentation" in the avant-gardes and contemporary artistic "research".

III. We will study the peculiarities of certain contemporary artistic practices as concrete and extreme cases of communicative pragmatics in art today, and the characteristics of their ways of producing knowledge, particularly in the case of designart, artistic gastronomy, and performance.

The expected from this project are contained in three kinds of contributions:
1. Clearer proposals that help to define what artistic research is, as well as the quality of a project.

2. A proposal regarding what can be understood as "knowledge contribution" of an artistic project.

3. Contribute to the clarification of old theoretical questions such as the relation between art and science, the nature of artistic knowledge, and the redefinition of contemporary philosophical concepts of aesthetic experience.

For this project we count on with the support of such EPOs as the Joan Miró Foundation of Barcelona, Escola Eina de Disseny, Laboratoire Paragraphe of the University of Paris VIII, the elBulliFoundation of Ferran Adrià, and the School of Art and Design Eina of Barcelona. The research and its results, in addition, revert in EINA/UAB Master in Research in Art and Design.

Members

Gerard Vilar (IP, UAB)

Laura Benítez (FPI)
Pol Capdevila (UPF)

Remei Capdevila Werning (UAB)

Dialitza Colón (FU)

Alex G.-Düttmann (Goldsmiths, London)

Christopher Green (Courtauld Institut, London)

Marina Hervás (FPU)

Clara Laguillo (FPI)

Jèssica Jaques (UAB)

Vicente Jarque (UCLM)

Leopoldo La Rubia (UGr)

Roger Mas (PIF)

Christoph Menke (Goethe U., Frankfurt)

Joan Minguet (UAB)

Peter Minosh (Columbia U., NY)

Yves Michaud (París)

Oriol Pibernat (Eina,UAB)

Begonya Sáez (UAB)

Imad Saleh (Paris VIII)

Andrea Soto (CONICYT)