Although almost every debate about artistic research leaves notes on the topicality of the theme, one cannot disregard the fact that such timeliness is already 20-30 years old. This acknowledgement does not prevent the newness of artistic research to be tacit in references to its “uncertainty”, ”immaturity”, and to its lack of identity whilst “bound to a tradition external to itself”. In the couple of decades passed on the building of the field, not much progress - in the positivist sense of the prescription of a law and its posterior generalisation - can be registered, and many of the problems raised today are already to be found back when research and art education began to relate within academic context in the 1980s. For where is the discussion taking artistic research to? Is a solution intended to be found? And, most importantly: is there a problem to be solved?

Through a notion of productivicism, this text aims to argue that the commonly shared idea that artistic research is problematic has been successful in securing its state of pendency and, ultimately, arranging it as a failure.

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