Discussions on artistic research is mostly happening in the Global North with very few voices from the Global South and nearly no voices from the Global East[1]. What is going on regarding artistic research in Czech Republic, Latvia, Georgia, Poland, and Lithuania? The countries which used to be the Second World (socialistic and Soviet bloc), and now are fluctuating between past and future, have very different recent hi(stories) about artists being recognized as researchers. Some of them have almost been integrated into the Bologna Process and international discussions with recognition of the 3rd cycle for artists by local governments and funding bodies; however, some of them are still struggling significantly. Some of them used to have 3rd cycle education in fine art and music. Since the 1960s, a few elite schools in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Moscow were offering 2-3 years of practice-based fellowship programmes, awarded with an art licentiate’s degree. It was considered a professional degree and it increased chances to get teaching positions in highly respected academies. Both art and music academies in Lithuania overtook this experience and opened similar programmes in the 1990s.

Full text was published in The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR)