What's On

Our series of Research Forums gives audiences the opportunity to hear presentations from academics, performers and composers, and to engage in the exchange of ideas that follows. Talks usually last about an hour, including a Q&A session. You can join us in person or watch many of the sessions livestreamed from the RNCM YouTube channel.

The emergence and development of Artistic Research as a novel epistemic field has been inextricably intertwined with the contemporary university. While there is a substantial literature that probes the place and legitimacy of Artistic Research within cultures of academic research, there has not been any recognition that Artistic Research is evolving within institutions that are widely recognised to be in a deep crisis. My aim in this presentation is to take some initial steps to consider artistic research in music performance in the context of the so-called “neoliberal university”. I will first introduce literature on the neoliberal university that evinces the nature of the current crisis and its effects on academics, and some of the strategies being developed to resist processes of neoliberalisation in academia. I will then talk about an artistic research project built around my performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, which will highlight what is being lost, as lived experience, in the neoliberal university, and what it is that artistic research promises to safeguard.

Free admission, no ticket required.