Abstract
Following a long and arduous period of academic debate about what artistic research is, now is the time to move beyond questions of definition and methodological purity. Art schools and research universities are still struggling to give credence to this new model of interdisciplinary research, albeit for different reasons; this chapter, however, proposes leaving the struggle behind and focusing instead on how best to nurture students in preparation for their own future artistic research. By replacing the inquiry into what “counts” as artistic research with an inquiry into how to create an “environment of care” that allows for artistic research to thrive, pedagogically and curricularily, we infuse practice into a debate that has long been removed from it. In order to prioritize practice, we will consider the difficulty that the absence of viable role models poses to the teaching of artistic research, and how such a challenge can be overcome. This chapter will draw from a case study that locates the education of the artist at the intersection of art-as-making and the discourse within which art is being made. With artists no longer being just makers of objects but also makers of culture, creating curricular space for artistic research has become an educational necessity.
