What is Good in Art?
direction behind the work? Is there a contextual discussion or positioning? Is there a development of time, space and form in the presentation? How are intra-medial effects used, such as music, light or imagery? Is the work relevant in a current discourse? How is the work related to other choreographic practice? Is there a development of established codes or other contextual spheres (social, political, cultural)? To be able to answer questions like these, you need knowledge in and about choreography, artistic process and production, both from experience and commitment to the field of choreography. All artists do not have the interest or the knowledge it takes to do this. To me, knowledge in art is partly what I need to know to do what I wish to accomplish, express my idea and communicate it to the public. But it is also what I receive from experiencing art, a developed ability to communicate, information about the world from another perspective than everyday life, a consciously reflected visualization of how important it is with subjective experience/interpretation. There are surely more arguments, other criteria and opinions one could include on the subject of relevance. Another set of criteria is the one used in the JAR peer-review process. The following categories of criteria are mentioned: Reviewer self-assessment, Interest and relevance, Potential, Exposition of practice as research, Design and navigation, Ethical and legal concerns, Conclusions and revisions, Recommendation and Feedback. All of these are explained in a public document (on the web) together with guidelines for reviewers. The reviews are presented anonymously to the researchers, but if the project is accepted for publication, the reviews are also made public as part of the dissemination. These are the criteria applied for reviewing applications for artistic research funding at VR151 (in 2014): Innovation and originality: Artistic specificity and depth that can contribute to new knowledge and opportunities to present problem 151
Source: Chair of the Committee for Artistic Research, VR
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