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17th Conference of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR)

The Compass for Advanced Practices

🗓️ Thursday, 25 June — 9:30am - 10:50am (80 mins)
Presenters
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The Compass for Advanced Practices
Abstract
A significant number of artists and creative practitioners are currently engaged in processes of decolonising the cultural canons, moving across polylocal knowledge domains and beyond the limits of language. The ability to challenge established knowledge hierarchies whilst collaborating with individuals from diverse backgrounds, expertise, ages and locations requires specialised capacities to navigate the intricate landscape of institutional and cultural values, assumptions and expectations. It can prove challenging for artists and creative practitioners to navigate across fluid and shifting knowledge cultures and frameworks.

The PACESETTERS research project has developed a Compass for Advanced Practices, with the aim of providing practitioners with the necessary tools to navigate the challenges of advanced practices in culture and creativity. By establishing and aligning key concepts as its coordinates, the Compass functions as a tool that references the terminology of contemporary transformation processes, reflects their potential significance, and provides conceptual orientation.

We propose organising a performative session that uses the compass as a spatial guide and a conceptual tool. Through a performative and documentary approach, we aim to experiment with a format that may allow for a different kind of contribution from participants, both individually and collectively.

The aim is to generate insights and further considerations on the relationships between these concepts, and to facilitate shared reflections on the key hypotheses about impact, value, quality, technique, affect and artistic intelligence. In addition, PACESETTERS aim to strengthen the development of alternative and independent digital infrastructures and the session can be a platform for sharing these strategies among peers.

The session will be organised by researchers within the PACESETTERS project. For more information please check: https://pacesetters.eu/ccs/map-of-challenges
Biography
Jacqueline Rowley is an Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker, artist, and educator whose work spans documentary, installation, and experimental media. Her feature documentaries have screened at Sundance, IDFA, and Sheffield and aired on Showtime, HBO, and PBS, while her experimental video works have been presented at Transmediale, OVNI, and MoMA in New York. A founding member of Big Noise Films, she helped establish the Independent Media Center movement in Seattle and later co-created media hubs in Mexico, Argentina, and Iraq. She is currently a PhD candidate in Artistic Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and a researcher within the EU-funded PACESETTERS project.

Mari Sanden is an artist and researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) where she is exploring how international research frameworks and programmes can challenge and change the conditions for cross-disciplinary research in ways that opens up for artistic forms of knowledge production. Since 2024 she is project manager of the Horizon Europe-funded research project PACESETTERS. PACESETTERS explores how arts and culture, creativity and cultural heritage can adapt to, contribute to and ultimately push the pace of the climate transition.
17th Conference of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR)

Welcome to SAR 2026

Endangered Conceptual Worlds

The 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research takes place from 23 to 26 June 2026. Hosted by the University of Galway on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, the Forum addresses the challenges of Endangered Conceptual Worlds. As the 17th annual conference of the Society for Artistic Research it is the largest conference on practice-based research within and through the arts, bringing together more than 300 international participants: leading practitioners, scholars and policymakers from the entire range of arts-based disciplines.

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Slightly extended deadline for submissions

The 2026 Forum on Artistic Research website has been inaccessible for several hours on Friday night and Saturday morning. Unfortunately, an update to the web server was scheduled to take place, which automatically activated maintenance mode and prevented any work on the submissions during the night and the next morning. We have therefore decided to slightly extend the deadline for submissions to Monday 2 March 2026 at 23:59 GMT. Feel free to work on your proposals until then.