In the Making #17: Towards an Artistic Research Community

* Image credit: Portrait Picture of Tobias Dias

ITM #17 – April 16th, 19:00

Towards an Artistic Research Community

With Tobias Dias and a panel of artist researchers, scholars and curators

In the fourth and final session of In the Making 2026, writer and art scholar Tobias Dias will share fundamental points he has developed in his forthcoming monograph, Elements of the Revolution: A Prehistory of Artistic Research.

Although the phenomenon of Artistic Research and contemporary art’s now notorious turn towards knowledge production, collaborative research, and pedagogy have transformed and redefined the artistic field in the last few decades, genealogies and prehistories of this social, institutional, and disciplinary form are still generally lacking. In this talk, Tobias Dias will ask: How did the “form” of artistic research come into being? Why, when, and how did artists begin to redefine their practice and identity towards knowledge, collaborative research, and technoscience, and even endow such a redefinition with political and revolutionary motivations? In other words, what are the historical conditions for “artistic research”? and, ultimately: What can a prehistory of artistic research do to artistic research in its current form?”

This presentation will lead towards a panel discussion with a group artist researchers, curators and scholars on the conditions necessary (or desired) for the eventual emergence of an Artistic Research community. The question of such emergence concerns, essentially, howthe artistic research perspective alters, or may alter further in the future, the way artists conceive of themselves – in a fundamental way – beyond the paradigm of the individual artist. It might also lead to speculations as to the kind of infrastrucutures, habits and protocols that such a community would need.

Bio

Tobias Dias is an intellectual and art historian, theorist, and cultural producer. His research focuses on the historical avant-gardes, the neo-avant-gardes, contemporary art, and aesthetic theory from 1800 to the present. He is particularly interested in the "politics of knowledge" and art's relation to labor, value, science, and race. His work (singly- and co-authored) has been published in journals and magazines such as e-flux journal, Texte zur Kunst, kritische berichte, and New German Critique (forthcoming). He also co-edited the anti-capitalist handbook En anden økologi, published by Antipyrine in the Spring of 2025. His first monograph Elements of the Revolution: A Prehistory of Artistic Research is forthcoming from Minor Composition. Alongside his employment as a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University (funded by New Carlsberg Foundation in a collaboration with the Museum Jorn), and editor of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, he is also a Lecturer at Jutland Art Academy and a member of the extradisciplinary collective Organ for the Autonomous Sciences. Last but not least, he runs the exhibition space Æsken in Aarhus, Denmark, with friends.

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