"I want to understand": Artistic research at conservatoires
The discussion about artistic research and integration efforts at Swiss music academies has intensified, but their potential continues to be underestimated. The following reflections are based on the author's study visits to Ghent, Copenhagen, Oslo and Vienna.
Despite the recent development and the sometimes different approaches, there is already a consensus that artistic practices make a significant contribution to discourses on knowledge systems. As an action geared towards knowledge - in the spirit of Hannah Arendt's statement in the legendary interview with Günter Gaus (1964) "I want to understand" - art itself generates knowledge. From a scientific perspective, reflected artistic action should therefore be understood as research. However, educational policy considerations also suggest the promotion and institutionalization of artistic research. This is because within the framework of established university disciplines, there is a widespread lack of opportunities for an adequate research practice for music universities. This corresponds to the fact that research concerns generated from artistic practice and relevant to conservatoires have often been marginalized. Added to this are competitive disadvantages and systemic weaknesses: The limited appeal of Swiss conservatoires for highly qualified researchers and doctoral students as well as a lack of career paths for their own young talent. Even cooperative doctoral models with universities only seem to alleviate these problems: without a right of first supervision and without institutional visibility on the diplomas, the conservatoires still often bear the main burden of supervision work, and such collaborations rarely result in the sustainable development and strengthening of a specifically conservatoire-based research culture and corresponding academic expertise.
For music universities, the right to award doctorates linked to artistic research therefore has the special potential to develop artistic and academic skills and to master the challenging interlinking of theory and practice. Through research-based learning, students are enabled to reflect on, theoretically underpin and present their projects according to standards of artistic excellence as well as academic standards. This not only promotes a deeper understanding of their own musical practice, but also of its social and historical context. At the same time, artistic research fosters new formats of expression and presentation as well as creative problem-solving processes. The promotion and institutionalization of artistic research is therefore also linked to an expansion of the musicians' profile, which - in addition to the production and reproduction of music - aims to generate socially relevant knowledge and new insights. By enabling musicians to become more actively involved in social processes, artistic research contributes to raising the profile of music studies in changing social conditions. In the context of current discourses on diversity and sustainability as well as cultural participation and appropriation, this added value cannot be valued highly enough.
For some years now, Swiss music universities have been taking promising steps that are still largely funded from their own resources: The establishment of research focuses and professorships for artistic research or the implementation of master's degree programs as well as cooperative doctoral programs. In the future, these efforts should be effectively flanked by more sustainable and systematic funding as well as the introduction of the right to award doctorates, which has long been called for and is equivalent to the university model.
