A history of the pioneering years establishing a new genre in the field of arts: artistic research.

Artistic work connects multiple competencies, areas of knowledge, and ways of life. The Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR) has made this principle its guiding ethos through organizing research projects in correspondence with this transgressive gesture, manifesting as interdisciplinary, networked knowledge production.

Inventory and Hinge offers an overview of the research projects performed over the last two decades at IFCAR through project descriptions, plentiful illustrations, and, most importantly, links and QR codes that grant access to nearly all publications and websites that were created by the individual projects he discusses.

Although art as research has a long tradition outside of institutions, Inventory and Hinge chronicles IFCAR’s drive to introduce this new discipline and establish a new artistic genre.

Christoph Schenker was professor of philosophy of art and contemporary art at the Zurich University of the Arts and is former head of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research.