Research unit Image

About

Artistic research at Sint-Lucas Ghent comes in many shapes and forms: autonomous and applied, individual and collective, discipline-bound and interdisciplinary, theoretical and practical. Starting from a shared ambition to prepare and shape the art and artists of tomorrow, every artist, designer and researcher at the Ghent campus follows their own intuitions, expertise, subjects and visual languages. Creation, education and reflection on art and design are closely intertwined, time and time again differently. Nevertheless, a number of common threads can be discerned within the research unit Image.

The research unit Image brings together researchers in the arts around three research nodes, all three closely connected to the academic programs at the Ghent campus (Visual Arts and the Educational Master in the Arts): the coming into being of the image, the interaction between image and discourse, and the relationship between image and society.

1. Studio practices and processes in Art and Design

The focus here is on different methods and methodologies of artistic practices, as well as on the physical and mental space within which the process of designing, imagining and shaping takes place. How to create and co-create starting from intuition, sensibility, knowledge, experiment, creativity, substance, technique and technology? True to tradition and with an eye to the future, special attention is paid to the role of drawing within the creation process, both as an autonomous practice and as a preliminary study.

Keywords: creative process, drawing, craft, studio, method, technique, experiment, crossover between different disciplines, inspiration, imagination

2. Image, Word and Discourse

The focus here is on the relationship between theoretical discourse and artistic practice, the dialogue between word and image, as well as on the relationship between making, shaping and thinking. The written and spoken word, the mental and physical image, the concept and the act form a constellation whose benchmarks are examined in all possible and thus varying connections. This is done by looking, documenting, archiving, thinking, reading, writing, interpreting, imagining, inventing, translating and designing.

Keywords: reflection, criticism, art and science, art history, philosophy, literature, authorship, archive, writing, fiction, word & image

3. Image and Society

The focus here is on making the image public and on the relationship that the image establishes with society. What is the position of the image within education and within other social domains and disciplines? How does the public relate to the image and how does the image show itself to various audiences? The political, social, ecological, educational and emancipatory power of the image is examined from different artistic practices and disciplines. Special attention is paid to the pedagogical experiment and the significance of the art school.

Keywords: society, art education, publication, exhibition, participation, emancipation, present-day art, sociology, artistic economy, anthropology, ecology, social engagement, activism