In recent years, alternative forms of knowledge-based art production have had their impact on the arts. Since the first implementation of PhD programs in so-called „Artistic Research“, their ongoing institutionalization at universities and art academies worldwide confronts art criticism with a range of problems: How can we judge such practices, which kind of judgments should we apply, and how should we define the proper criteria for their critical evaluation?
Artistic research is based on the idea that the arts can and even should produce a specific knowledge that differs from scientific knowledge. Thus, research projects initiated by artists should derive from unique artistic methodologies that differ from scientific methodologies. Artistic research should not only invent new epistemologies, but also questions conventional aesthetic and epistemological qualities of the artwork. Thus, some of the questions that need to be adressed are: How can we judge or criticize artworks and artistic projects that define themselves as artistic research? What exactly should be considered as the object of critique: the material artwork, its epistemological content, or the artistic methodology that has lead to its production? Through which forms of aesthetic or theoretic judgments can this critique be articulated? And what is, finally, the role of the art critic being confronted with artistic practices that are already evaluated, reviewed, and valorized within the academic system from where they often originate?
Sebastian Mühl
Is an artist and researcher based in Leipzig and Offenbach am Main. He is working on a thesis about concepts of utopia in contemporary art. The project is an art theoretical research into modernolocical, participatory and art activist strategies since the early 1990s. His films and film-based visual art projects focus on the effects of the politico-aesthetic and the built utopias of modernity. Since 2013 Sebastian is a research assistent at Offenbach University of Art and Design, where the philosopher Prof. Dr. Juliane Rebentisch supervises his thesis. In Spring 2015, he completed a „Meisterschüler“ programme supervised by Prof. Astrid Klein at Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. He studied Fine Arts and Media Arts at HGB Leipzig where he graduated in 2012 (supervision by Prof. Astrid Klein, Dr. Ralf Hartmann and Prof. Dr. Beatrice von Bismarck). He studied at the University of Arts London and received a B.A. in Philosophy at HfPh München. Sebastian exhibited internationally, e.g. Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig, Kunstverein Tiergarten – Galerie Nord Berlin and CAC Passerelle Brest.
