"Knowledge takes many forms. Artistic research invites us to ask different questions. It encourages us to see differently."

These words from the Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Hester C. Klopper, at the close of a full day of conversation, captured something that the Artistic Research Colloquium at the University of the Free State had been building towards since the first session opened at the Sasol Library. The day was not simply about defining a field. It was about claiming space for a form of knowing that universities have too often overlooked.

The colloquium, titled Art as Knowledge: Exploring Artistic Research, was hosted by the University of the Free State International Institute of the Arts (IIA) in collaboration with the Odeion School of Music, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. It brought together artists, researchers, academics, and policymakers from South Africa and Belgium, as well as the Department of Higher Education and Training, for a sustained dialogue on what artistic practice produces as knowledge, and how universities and national policy can better recognise and support it.

Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, opened the colloquium and hosted the evening cocktail reception that brought the day to a close. His presence at both events underlined the institution's commitment to this conversation – not as a peripheral arts event, but as a serious contribution to understanding how knowledge is produced and what forms it takes.

In his opening remarks, Prof Reddy noted: “Artistic research invites us to move beyond the false divide between thinking and making, demonstrating that knowledge can be discovered through words, sound, image, movement, performance, and creative experimentation. Artistic research challenges us to see art not merely as an outcome, but as a way of knowing, questioning, and understanding the world. It enables us to embrace ambiguity, nuance, creativity, intuition, and critical reflection.”

A conversation the institution convened deliberately

The decision to host a colloquium of this scope reflects the University of the Free State's growing investment in the arts as a site of rigorous enquiry. The IIA, under the leadership of Prof Alexander Johnson, has positioned itself as a platform where creativity and scholarship are not treated as opposites, but as partners. The Odeion School of Music, led by Dr Jan Beukes, brings eight decades of musical excellence and a deepening commitment to research to the project.

What artists know, and how they know it

The colloquium's keynote contributor, Peter Dejans, founding Director of the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium, opened the day with a question that anchored every discussion that followed: Why do you need to be an artist to do what you want to do?

He argued that artistic practice constitutes a distinctive epistemological perspective – one that generates questions, challenges hypotheses, and produces knowledge in ways that musicology, performance studies, and other adjacent disciplines cannot replicate. In his framing, the rehearsal room is not a preparation space. It is a laboratory. The artist is not an observer of their practice. They are inside it, and the knowing happens there.

"The most important knowledge about music is music," Dejans told the colloquium – a formulation deceptively simple in its phrasing and substantial in its implications for how universities account for what artists do.

Lyrene Kühn-Botma, artist, Lecturer, and Programme Director of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State, brought a voice from within the institution to that conversation. Currently completing a joint PhD in Fine Arts between the University of the Free State and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, she described the relationship between studio and theoretical research as a choreography – non-linear, changeable, and composed differently by each research artist. 

Policy meets practice

The afternoon placed the day's ideas in direct conversation with national higher education policy through Dr Idah Makukule, Deputy Director: University Research Support and Policy Development at the Department of Higher Education and Training. Her presentation, Interpreting and Implementing DHET Policy, addressed how creative and innovative outputs from universities are recognised, monitored, and evaluated within the national research framework, and where current instruments fall short in capturing what artistic research produces.

Creativity is never a solitary pursuit

The day closed with a cocktail reception, during which Prof Klopper addressed a community of scholars, artists, partners, and guests.

Drawing on the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu – "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together" – she positioned the colloquium within a broader institutional value. "Artistic research reflects that same spirit," she told guests. "Creativity is never a solitary pursuit. It grows through conversation, collaboration, and a willingness to see the world through one another's eyes."

She extended particular thanks to the IIA and the Odeion School of Music in its anniversary year. She offered a special welcome to Dr Dejans and Dr Makukule, noting the importance of the international and national partnerships their presence represented.

“This colloquium, which took place in a week of a festival of the arts, reminds us that artistic research deepens our understanding of human experience by connecting intellectual rigour with imagination, emotion, culture, and lived realities. It creates spaces where theory and practice engage in meaningful dialogue and enriches higher education, innovation ecosystems, and public dialogue,” remarked Prof Reddy.