SARN Conference 2017, ZHdK

When do you work? What are you paid for? How do infrastructures, apparatuses, and forms of life influence our work? How do we influence them? What don’t you capitalise in your life? Who determines funding policies? Does a PhD make one happy? Who is allowed to do research? How white is your research community? Where does your work stop? What goes in your CV? Which currencies does our work circulate in? How is your enterprise doing? How many projects can one pursue at the same time? Can “work done out of love” be paid for? How do we change our working conditions by talking about them?

 With Eva Egermann, Hans-Christian Dany, Doreen Mende, Johanna Schaffer, Amal Alhaag & Maria Guggenbichler, Mirjam Bayerdörfer, Petra Elena Köhle, Pekka Kantonen, Marina Belobrovaja & Rachel Mader & Lucie Kolb, Bojana Kunst, Hinrich Sachs, Jovita dos Santos Pinto, Raju Rage, Irene Revell, Hannes Rickli & Valentina Vuksic & Zoe Tempest, Swetlana Heger-Davis, Frank Hesse, Cornelia Sollfrank, Yvonne Wilhelm & Christian Huebler & Felix Stalder, Benjamin Egger, Teresa Chen, Tine Melzer, Ursula Jakob, Marianne Halter and others

The 2017 SARN Conference explores the working conditions prevailing within artistic research. In the last 20 years, an institutionalisation and academisation of artistic work known as “artistic research” has taken place. Arts universities are establishing research institutes, promoting PhD programmes, and competing against universities for funding. Most artists only have small workloads in institution-based research. As much time is spent on projects and exhibitions as on teaching and earning a living. Although much of this work receives great symbolic recognition, it remains unremunerated. Working in such diverse contexts demands great flexibility regarding methods, skills, and the ability to reconcile several roles. The two-day SARN Conference reflects on the processes involved in institutionalising the changing material and ideological preconditions of artistic research in recent years from the perspective of artistic researchers. The conference aims to better understand the current situation of artistic researchers, to outline concrete ideas for future work-life strategies and for other funding and job opportunities, and to formulate concrete demands for self-determined artistic research. 

A Conference of the Swiss Artistic Research Network (SARN), organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR), Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)