At the IfM, artistic research can be understood as research in and through artistic practice. Artistic practice is not merely the subject, result or illustration of an investigation, but an essential means of gaining knowledge.

Artistic work can be involved in formulating a research question, testing possible answers, developing methods and generating new insights. This includes, for example, playing, composing, improvising, listening, staging, producing, teaching, physical experience and experimental work.

Following Henk Borgdorff, artistic research can be understood as a field of research in which artistic practices contribute independently to knowledge and understanding while being combined with reflection, documentation, contextualization and communication.

Christopher Frayling's distinction between research into, for and through art helps to distinguish artistic research from purely art-historical or art-theoretical research and from development work focused exclusively on production (Borgdorff 2012; Frayling 1993/94).

Distinguishing artistic practice from artistic research

Not every artistic project and not every reflective teaching or practice routine is automatically artistic research.

Artistic research can be spoken of in particular when several elements are combined:

• a recognizable research question or a clearly defined research interest
• a targeted artistic investigation
• a comprehensible documentation of the process
• a critical reflection on the methods and decisions employed
• a contextualization within existing artistic, pedagogical or academic discourses
• a suitable form of presentation, publication or dissemination of the insights gained