Throughout the Autumn I’ve been meaning to write more on artistic research, but there have been just so many thoughts and feelings that it has seemed impossible to write about them in short form.

That’s why I’ll resort to simple, practical and utterly logical solution: A list.

Here goes.

10 Very Clear, Logical And Scientific Facts About Artistic Research

1. All the texts and discussions centre on practice. Nobody has any time for practice because they spend all their time reading the texts about the practice.

2. Artistic research shouldn’t be based on existing scientific or art production models. To justify this approach, you should formulate your artistic research according to existing scientific or art production models.

3. You should be open for artistic research to unfold in unexpected ways, but to know beforehand how it unfolds.

4. PhD / Doctor of Arts is the highest arts degree in Finland. People see it as an end to your career as an artist.

6. You can’t do anything, because everything is potentially a form of oppression. This is the main reason why systems of oppression continue as they were.

7. You should be critical of everything except the system of criticism itself.

8. You should be able to logically formulate why logic really doesn’t work as an overall principle with art (refer to number 2).

9. You should avoid feelings when discussing anything that has to do with feelings.

You said 10? Oh, I did, didn’t I?

There’s always something that is left out, something you can’t grasp, something beyond your control.

There’s also always something that doesn’t make sense. Not everything does. I don’t think everything should.

And these are also the main reasons why I’m still enjoying immensely playing around with this weird thing called artistic research.

But I haven’t stopped acting or dancing (refer to number 4) or doing other weird things. I see artistic research as a truly wonderful way to deepen that practice, may be even any practice. Kind of like life as practice.