Is the Question the Answer?  Future Response is a project conceived in response to The Art of Research seminar (University of Art and Design Helsinki, 1st-3rd of October 2007). For this seminar, we will engage with questions on/of/about art Research.

What does response mean in the context of art? Or, more importantly, in what ways can response be understood as art Research in its own right? Future Response is a project that addresses these questions through a paper/survey/dialogue. In the paper component, we examine response as a form/process/method/outcome of collaborative and interdisciplinary making. Specific concerns about the dynamics of response in context of MPhil/PhD Research are addressed through four questions: What are the key positions on art Research? What are the languages of the art Thesis? When is art R/research? And where is the Knowledge in the art PhD? We conclude by claiming that the art PhD is a space where the individual and the collective, the question and the answer, the practice and theory of art and art as R/research can simultaneously merge and (co)exist.

The surveys involved in this project grapple with the key questions addressed in the paper. The first survey (completed through email) gathered data on popular perceptions of art Research by using esoteric language and symbols. It also playfully considered the meaning of questions, how they can arise and make non/sense. Subsequent questionnaires have addressed the project's initial findings by responding to the responses by way of new responses and in anticipation of responses to come. In this way, the project's overarching method involves a longitudinal survey: a multi-part questionnaire where each part is designed in response to previous ones and where the same respondents complete all the parts. We position this questionnaire in/between the artwork and research, attempting to collapse these positions into an alternate space, a third space.

The presentation of our paper will be performative, using participation, including polling and Q&A. Different kinds of language, such as body movements, equations, and instructions will invite response. Reconfiguring the conference model, we perform the process of art/research in one space - the third space.