Artistic Research and the Lingering Gaze of Thought [SAR2026 Keynote Published]

Artistic Research and the Lingering Gaze of Thought by Henk Borgdorff

Artistic Research and the Lingering Gaze of Thought, by Henk Borgdorff, is the text of a talk delivered at the 17th Conference of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) in Galway. Borgdorff argues that artistic research should be understood not as opposed to academia but as a cutting-edge form of it, pointing to Australia’s recent recommendation to retire the term “Non-Traditional Research Output.” He surveys what distinguishes artistic research—its engagement with practices and material things, its grounding in experimentation, participation and interpretation next to its methodological pluralism, and its relation to 4E-cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive)—while sharing common ground with fields like visual anthropology and science and technology studies. The heart of the piece is a proposal to rethink “discursivity” beyond language, treating material configurations of sound, image, movement and gesture as forms of rigorous, non-propositional reasoning. 

The text can be found on the Journal for Artistic Research website: https://www.jar-online.net/en/artistic-research-and-lingering-gaze-thought

Henk Borgdorff is emeritus professor of Research in the Arts at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Leiden University and the Royal Conservatoire, University of the Arts, The Hague. Borgdorff has published widely on the theoretical and political rationale of research in the arts.

The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) is an international, online, open-access and peer-reviewed journal that disseminates artistic research from all disciplines. Its Network space provides a forum for JAR readers to share unreviewed contributions including reflections and book reviews, while also housing the JAR network channels.

JAR is published by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), an independent, non-profit association.