How is artistic research situated today – and how can it be advanced in different social, academic, and art worlds?

Mend, Blend, Attend explores this through a wide range of art and design practices that seek to acquire and communicate knowledge about specific materials, environmental issues, and social phenomena. With its interdisciplinary and intersectional character, artistic research is uniquely positioned to confront uncertainty.

The Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and global violence demand more than utopian gestures or technological optimism. Artistic researchers are called to apply embodied knowledge to develop new tools for post-crisis conviviality and radical kindness.

The 13th International Conference on Artistic Research, held for the first time in Germany at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (30 June – 3 July 2022), engaged with these challenges through 70 contributions by more than 200 international researchers – including workshops, presentations, online talks, and keynote lectures.

The artistic program Spooky Actions at a Distance featured four group exhibitions and five performances. The conference marked the first major public presentation of practice-based research in art and design in Weimar.

This publication documents the event through 15 extended abstracts, 20 full papers, keynote contributions, and visual material. It not only shares the outcomes with a broader public but also serves as a prototype for future conference publishing in the field of artistic research.