Artists are largely absent from both the process and the content of the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research. In their critique of this international policy document, Florian Cramer and Nienke Terpsma recall the foundational role of artists in the practice of art research and propose on this basis modes of research that challenge and subvert the hierarchical academic framework rather than merging with it. The original version in English is accessible here.

The European Forum for Advanced Practices (EFAP), an informal forum of artists, theorists, philosophers, educators, performers, curators, musicians, urbanists, anthropologists and other cultural actors across Europe and beyond, has assembled to propose new ways of recognizing the values of contemporary cultural practices. The EFAP Charter for Advanced Practices takes the form of a preliminary communication is hoped to become an expanded conversation across the fields that have been at the forefront of significant shifts in what is recognized as research and of its place within the trajectory of practice. There is an investment here in new ways of multiplying and proliferating how practices instantiate forms of open source research as opposed to new forms of excellence. We publish a translation of this text, whose original version in English is accessible here.

As a member of one of the signatory umbrella organizations of the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research – the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) – the HEAD – Genève is indirectly linked to this declaration. However, the HEAD advocates for and develops research formats that depart from an overly academic, or application-oriented, framework. In an interview, Anthony Masure, Head of the Research Institute at the HEAD, describes the school’s initiatives to develop an heuristic research process driven by creation and whose restitution can bypass the academic text. In addition, Doreen Mende, Researcher and Head of the CCC Research-based Master Programme, discusses the political role of advanced art practices in their dissemination of knowledge and how they deconstruct historical hierarchies, which, conversely, the Vienna Declaration tends to rigidify.