PROF. DR. MICHAEL SCHWAB LECTURE “ARTICULATIONS OF ARTISTIC PRACTICE AS RESEARCH”
Friday, 16 January, 2026, at 10:30 AM
LMTA Juozas Karosas Hall (Gedimino pr. 42, Vilnius)
PROF. DR. MICHAEL SCHWAB LECTURE “ARTICULATIONS OF ARTISTIC PRACTICE AS RESEARCH”
Today, artistic research seems like an established field with many doctoral programs, publishing projects and funding opportunities. At the same time, there are massive regional differences on a global level, and artistic research’s relationship to contemporary aesthetics as well as its epistemological underpinnings remain underdeveloped. This historical situation has opened exciting spaces for experimentation, yet institutional framings continue to demand separations between practice and theory, insisting on orthodox modes of academic work that keep material practice at arm’s length.
Against such structural disconnect, an expositional approach to artistic research seeks new forms of making and writing where neither practice nor theory occupies a predefined place. Instead, expositionality suggests that what counts as practice and theory—and thus artistic research’s contribution to knowledge and understanding—emerges from specific articulations that must be both specific to each project and central to its methodology. This approach to artistic research requires different material distributions alongside deepened sensitivities to their aesthetic and epistemic effects.
Following the lecture, participants will be invited to engage actively through a Q&A session, encouraging the exchange of perspectives, experiences, and questions related to their own research practices.
10:30–12:00 – Lecture
12:00–13:00 – Lunch break
13:00–14:30 – Q&A session
Michael Schwab is a London-based artist and artistic researcher who investigates postconceptual uses of technology in a variety of media including photography, drawing, printmaking, and installation art. He holds a M.A. in philosophy (Hamburg University) and a PhD in photography (Royal College of Art, London) that focuses on post-conceptual post-photography and artistic research methodology. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), co-editor of Intellectual Birdhouse. Artistic Practice as Research. (2012), co-editor of The Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia (2013), editor of the book Experimental Systems. Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (2015) as well as the editor of Transpositions. Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research (2018) and co-editor of Futures of the Contemporary. Contemporaneity, Untimeliness, and Artistic Research (2019). Through a focus on experimentation and the exposition of practice as research, Schwab has developed a conceptual approach that links artistic freedom with academic criticality.