Establishing art practice as research at the University of Malta [Editorial]

Abstract

This special edition of the the Malta Review of Educational Research (MRER) focuses on an area of scholarship that is, by its very nature, very unstable. Locating the role of contemporary artistic practices within a variety of university-based research paradigms is not a straightforward process because the field of contemporary art is itself quite complex, heterogenous, context-specific and prone to change. While research in most other academic disciplines (such as medicine) is also prone to constant revisions on the basis of thorough experimentation, fieldwork and scientific scrutiny, contemporary art often deliberately defies or challenges expectations and preconceptions, making any assessment of creative or epistemological ‘results’ more difficult. Art today often questions its own criteria, hierarchies, conventions and, to some extent, its own relevance and existence in a society that is increasingly dominated by homogenising, consumer-driven notions of ‘value’. In a very real sense, art can only critique this homogeneity by maintaining a condition of instability.