A Survival Guide for Artistic Researchers Who Don’t Yet Know They Are Such
Have you ever caught yourself collecting endless references, filling notebooks with chaotic scribbles, or obsessing over the same underlying themes for years without knowing how to frame them? Good news: you are likely already conducting artistic research. You just haven’t been given the vocabulary (or the permission) to call it that.
Entering the world of artistic research can feel daunting, confusing, and cluttered with heavy academic jargon. But practice-based research isn’t about fitting your creative work into an academic box—it’s a rigorous, liberating way of generating knowledge through continuous artistic experimentation.
This workshop was born out of a realization: when I writed an article about my creative process writing my manuscript Un árbol el bosque una vez, I realized something crucial: A book is not artistic research. A book is a fruit of it. The research lies underneath, in the messy, horizontal, rhizomatic roots of process, questioning, and method.
What the hell is artistic research is a hands-on, action-oriented session designed to dismantle creative blockages and help creators build their own research methodology. Instead of abstract theory, we roll up our sleeves and work directly with our raw creative materials: our obsessions, fears, limits, and recurring motifs.
During the workshop, we navigate practical exercises such as:
- Botanical Mapping: Drawing and naming our practice to map out our «web of words». We separate the fruits (finished pieces) from the core obsession running underneath.
- The Three Identities: Shifting between the reader, the writer, and the artistic researcher to extract core concepts from our past output.
- Turning the Self into the Subject: Moving from story questions to research questions focused on our own motivations.
- Uncomfortable Methods & Situated Knowledge: Exploring non-linear methods—from fiction writing and interviewing to interactive prototypes, collages, and zines. We embrace failure and limits as valid forms of situated knowledge.
- Rhizomatic Thinking: Drawing on Deleuze and Haraway without the headache—learning to embrace non-linear processes that move beneath the surface in all directions.
Who is this for?
Designed for writers, visual artists, performers, MA/PhD candidates, and curious creators who sense that their work goes beyond the final product, but need clarity, structure, and language to map their process.
I facilitate this workshop for art academies, master’s programs, writing centers, and creative residencies looking for a practical, approachable, and refreshing entry point into practice-led research.
