Art is occasionally the subject matter of research, yet it can also serve as a foundation for research, offering a motivation, a backdrop and a distinct set of methodologies. Such a research approach is often referred to as “artistic research.” It is important to note that this approach does not oppose scientific research; instead it seeks to establish a framework that preserves the integrity of art without reducing it to merely a subject of study. This form of research invariably thrives within a critical community.
Artistic re-search for Sarazad entails thinking artistically as well as valuing the necessity of searching again about art and contemporary history. Sarazad proposes a transnational approach to artistic research that seeks to elaborate further on the historical entanglements linking geographies.
Such a transnational approach to artistic research puts art theory and practice in dialogue with other research fields—an alternative method for knowledge production that challenges and refrains from prevailing disciplinary approaches to the history of the Global South. Here, our artistic research has an ambition: to challenge sedentary forms of knowledge production. Through a reenactment of material history, Sarazad investigates artistic practice as an alternative way of historical engagement; in particular, it asks how an artistic research practice can excavate the image of contemporary history in the present and suggest a possible future for it. The image of our collective past demands reinvention in order to confirm the possibility of thinking about social transformation, emancipation, and solidarity—an alternative way of thinking that entails an alternative method of investigation.
Sarazad argues that an approach based on transnational artistic research offers a distinct advantage, precisely in its proposal of such an alternative. New subjectivity demands an alternative form of production; hence, the process of decolonization must be linked both to the subject of investigation and to the method of engagement. Along these lines, artistic research and its emancipatory methods offer a critical reading of the contemporary history of the Global South, not just in relation to the field of art and artistic research but across disciplines, subjects, and site-specific conditions of the research.
Like a cantilever lamp, fixed on one end and free on the other, artistic research creates the possibilities for such an alternative.