The publishing of first essay of the series Artistic Research Does brought us to a state of drooling joy. The acute remarks and observations made by Annette Arlander in that essay were instrumental to set our dear project in motion.

With the new academic season Artistic Research Does proudly presents a new contribution for the debate about Artistic Research, by sharing the inaugural lecture held by Janneke Wesseling (Professor of the recently installed Chair of Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Leiden, Academy of Creative and Performing Arts). The lecture is as recent as September 2016.

Starting with a tautological “Artistic research is research carried out by artists”, this #2 sets a fundamental condition to the academic understanding of artistic research, while at the same time somehow setting the tone for the unfolding text. Janneke Wesseling undertook a passage through some of the evidences and common-places that have lately conditioned and characterized artistic research, going through “methodology”, “ontology” and “knowledge”, in order to offer a more elaborated view stressing the reflective dimension the artists’ practices ought to comprise. A complex notion of “experience” crosses Wesseling’s understanding, which she draws as basis to think the pivotal intertwinement of theory and practice, of work of art and language, that artistic research has to definitely envisage for its own interest.

Since Janneke Wesseling’s visit to the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto two years ago, we have been in contact and following attentively the developments within the PhDArts programme she directs. The PhDArts programme (mostly based at KABK – Royal Academy of Art/The Hague) is, without doubt, one of the leading clusters of artistic research in Europe today. For all this it is with great joy and gratitude that we have Janneke Wesseling with us again.