About SAR
The Society for Artistic Research is an international non-profit society that promotes artistic research as a peculiar practice of knowledge production.
SAR fosters cooperation and communication among those interested in studying and practising artistic research, in and outside academic or institutional settings. SAR was established in 2010 in Bern, Switzerland, by 80 artists, researchers, and academics from various global locations. It started as an initiative conceived by the artists Florian Dombois and Michael Schwab in collaboration with Henk Borgdorff.
What we do
- SAR promotes practices of artistic research as undertaken both in and outside academic institutions, encouraging risk-taking, quality research.
- SAR facilitates co-operation and communication through conferences and meetings, and disseminates knowledge on artistic research practices and results.
- SAR publishes the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal for the identification, publication and dissemination of artistic research and its methodologies.
- SAR runs the Research Catalogue (RC), a searchable repository of artistic research that anyone can contribute to once they have registered (cost-free).
- SAR hosts the annual International Conference on Artistic Research, bringing together leading practitioners, scholars and policy makers.
Core values
Openness & freedom
SAR aims to protect and promote artistic and academic freedom by committing to the principles of open data and open science, supporting open access and accessibility, and harnessing the impact and power of open-source development.
Respect & mutual trust
SAR supports the recognition of authorship, invention and creation while celebrating diversity and respecting differences, valuing responsiveness and responsibility for environmental, aesthetic and economic sustainability.
Commitment & solidarity
SAR continues to build a strong and growing membership community by collaborating across geographical and disciplinary boundaries while facilitating shared ownership and mutual support.
What SAR runs
Research Catalogue
A non-profit, collaborative platform for artistic research provided by SAR. The RC is free for artists and researchers, and serves as the backbone for teaching, student assessment, peer review, journal publishing and research funding administration. With over 30,000 registered users, it is the largest repository for artistic research worldwide.
Journal for Artistic Research
An international, online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that disseminates artistic research from across disciplines. JAR invites the rapidly growing number of artistic researchers to develop formats that go beyond standard academic publication procedures, serving as a meeting point of diverse practices and methodologies.
Current issue: JAR 37
JAR is based on foundations of expositionality. We publish expositions of practice as research, media-rich assemblages that gather and present material traces of artistic practice, and articulate them as original epistemic contributions. While this paradigm allows for highly complex constellations of materials, in reality, artists often choose more standardised formats. In JAR, we assume that any …
Annual Conference
The yearly International Conference on Artistic Research is the largest conference on practice-based research through the arts. It brings together leading practitioners, scholars and policy makers, showcasing exemplary projects and addressing key issues through critical debate.