About SAR
The Society for Artistic Research is an international non-profit society that promotes artistic research as a distinctive practice of knowledge production.
SAR fosters cooperation and communication among those interested in studying, practising, teaching, and advancing artistic research, both within and beyond academic and institutional settings.
SAR originated as an initiative conceived by artists Florian Dombois and Michael Schwab in collaboration with Henk Borgdorff. It was established in 2010 in Bern, Switzerland, by 80 artists, researchers, and academics from around the world. Today, it serves a community of approximately 80 academic and research institutions and more than 30,000 artistic researchers.
What we do
- SAR promotes practices of artistic research as undertaken both in and outside academic institutions, encouraging risk-taking, quality research.
- SAR facilitates co-operation and communication through conferences and meetings, and disseminates knowledge on artistic research practices and results.
- SAR publishes the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal for the identification, publication and dissemination of artistic research and its methodologies.
- SAR runs the Research Catalogue (RC), a searchable repository of artistic research that anyone can contribute to once they have registered (cost-free).
- SAR hosts the annual International Conference on Artistic Research, bringing together leading practitioners, scholars and policy makers.
As an open research community, SAR provides us with an unparalleled platform to disseminate research in the specific domain of the Arts, the possibility to meet in the SAR conferences and forums, training and a stage for discussion in the thematic webinars, and the hosting of our Journal of research in Art, Design and Society HUB-BUH, published through the Research Catalogue.
Paulo Luis Almeida — Director i2ADS; Associate Professor, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto
Core values
Openness & freedom
SAR aims to protect and promote artistic and academic freedom by committing to the principles of open data and open science, supporting open access and accessibility, and harnessing the impact and power of open-source development.
Respect & mutual trust
SAR supports the recognition of authorship, invention and creation while celebrating diversity and respecting differences, valuing responsiveness and responsibility for environmental, aesthetic and economic sustainability.
Commitment & solidarity
SAR continues to build a strong and growing membership community by collaborating across geographical and disciplinary boundaries while facilitating shared ownership and mutual support.
What SAR runs
Research Catalogue
A non-profit, collaborative platform for artistic research provided by SAR. The RC is free for artists and researchers, and serves as the backbone for teaching, student assessment, peer review, journal publishing and research funding administration. With over 30,000 registered users, it is the largest repository for artistic research worldwide.
Journal for Artistic Research
An international, online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that disseminates artistic research from across disciplines. JAR invites the rapidly growing number of artistic researchers to develop formats that go beyond standard academic publication procedures, serving as a meeting point of diverse practices and methodologies.
Current issue: JAR 38
In the JAR36 editorial I began a line of thought that deserves further reflection given the ongoing impact AI has had on our work. That editorial concerned conflict and the ways in which conflict compromises through either implication or avoidance. In it, I speculated that 'we could aim to seek differences not compromised by conflict.' On the side of implication, I referred to the many open confli…
Annual Conference
The yearly International Conference on Artistic Research is the largest conference on practice-based research through the arts. It brings together leading practitioners, scholars and policy makers, showcasing exemplary projects and addressing key issues through critical debate.
