From Artistic Practice to Writing — and Back

Abstract

The article examines a problematic distinction between the ‘artistic-creative’ and ‘research’ parts of the doctoral art project-dissertation as prescribed by the Lithuanian Regulations for Doctoral Studies in Art (2017), and considers the possibilities of overcoming it. At first sight, it might seem that this formal distinction is there to honour the respective specificities of both art and research. However, the artists stumble into problems at the point where the ‘research part’ of the project is equated to a piece of academic writing. Thus, from the point of view of this traditional approaches toward rhetoric and dissertation structure, artistic practices and artworks are nothing but appendixes and supplements to the ‘main text.’ Here, we might ask why the results of artistic research in a doctoral art project must be ‘verbalised’? The dominant academic paradigm of an artistic research can be overcome and played over by the ‘artistic expositions’ and ‘artistic arguments.’ Here, the ‘artistic argument’ can be understood as an irreducible assemblage of artistic ideas and epistemic claims, where the type of material ‘noise’ plays a positive role.