Mourning the Bastard:

A Short Survey of Artistic Research in DK

By Katrine Dirckinck Holmfeld, 2025

Kritiker #74: Artistic research: frihet och ansvar

This essay is a survey of the relatively short history of artistic research, and the backlash against artistic research in Denmark. Drawing on the pioneering work of late artist Pia Arke, the essay mourn the “bastardized form” of artistic research: as an art form that questions and exposes the limitations of conventional forms of artistic practice, research and knowledge by exposing the limits to what can be known within a given society. In so doing artistic research actively breaks with the silences and injustices perpetuated by the institutional, epistemic and aesthetic violence within that given society.

The essay was first published in the Swedish journal Kritiker #74: Artistic research: frihet och ansvar, edited by Anna Arvidsdotter och Rebecca Pourhassani.