Drawing the Line: Evaluation, Boundary Work, and Boundary Objects in a New Discipline

Artistic research—research carried out by artists, through artistic practice—displays the markers of a burgeoning academic discipline. Dominant perspectives on research cultures would therefore predict that practitioners’ boundary work would play a decisive role in the development of this field. But when binary understandings come up against multiplex meanings, when and how do binaries matter? Focusing on documentary evidence drawn from the Swedish artistic research field, I consider how evaluations and boundaries interact in this emerging research discipline by theorizing the relationship between commitments to boundary work and orientations to boundary objects. This analytical perspective offers specific insights into the definition of new artistic and academic fields, and how the research conducted within them is evaluated.