Deterritorialising the research space: artistic research, embodied knowledge, and the academy

Abstract

Artistic research has in recent years concerned itself with the nature of practice and how this may be framed as research. These debates may have blinded us to a more fundamental concern: territorial claims to the research space made by other forces. Competition for access to material and human resources, funds, space, and infrastructural support, among others, drive debates about the academic status of performance within higher education. The main objective of this article is to demonstrate how the ideological imbalances underpinning the concepts of artistic knowledge and research in Higher Education have contributed to this territorialization. In a milieu of overmanagement, these imbalances often go unquestioned largely because of the university’s ever-decreasing role in interrogating the agenda set by others who stand to benefit from it.