The Body in the Library, a 12-hour (performative) reflection on artistic research

In the fictional small village of Agatha Christie’s 1942 mystery novel The Body in the Library, a library is troubled by the appearance of an improbable and sensational body. In the libraries of artistic research, a field shaped in the last three decades by multiple, sometimes conflicting definitions, there are many physical presences that disturb the regular dustjacket life of books on the shelf. The materiality of the artwork, expansive in space and time, is not easily reconciled with a two-dimensional page of text. The embodied presence of the artist, often more prominent in the process than that of researchers in other disciplines, is sometimes at odds with traditional ideas of objectivity. Ultimately, the corpus of art itself does not sit comfortably in the formats of academic research contexts.

It might be that a spectacular crime in the artistic research library is yet to be uncovered. In 2026, the LARGE 12h conference starts from the premise that just because the body has not yet presented itself, it doesn't mean there are no misdeeds to be investigated. It puts forward a provocative presupposition: what if the striking body that might show up behind the shelves where artistic research is being carried out is that of art itself? And not because it is central to the process of inquiry, but on the contrary, because it has been rendered so marginal to it that it can be easily removed. Acknowledging this as a distinctive possibility in the field, it aims to explore ways in which artistic practice can be placed at the centre of research, opening grounds for new ways of investigation.

In the process of peer-reviewing contributions for artistic research journals, the question of the quality of the art is rarely—if ever—asked. In the evaluation of an artistic doctoral project, what is more often assessed is an artist's ability to “reflect” on their practice and “reference” relevant theoretical literature, rather than a project’s contribution to the field of contemporary art. By contrast, artists whose work indisputably contributes to contemporary art—whether or not accompanied by a text explaining how—are rarely present in the field unless they are employed by universities. Rather than diminishing with time, the rift between artistic research carried out in universities and research carried out in the professional world of contemporary art gradually increases—with some of the definitions of artistic research even presenting the word “artistic” as a mere adjective that does not need to include artistic practice if it incorporates artistic methods, manners, or experiences.

Over the course of twelve hours, the event will explore the concerns brought about by this separation between art and academia in a series of artistic investigations: not only interrogations of the current state of affairs or discussions on how art incorporates research, but also explorations in which the art itself is the research.

Curated by Irina Gheorghe, Anetta Mona Chișa and Lamija Čehajić