The Society for Artistic Research (SAR) is an international, non-profit organization that nurtures, connects and disseminates artistic research as specific practices of creating knowledge and insight. SAR facilitates a range of encounters for its community of artistic practitioners in the pursuit of a transformative understanding that impacts on political and societal processes as well as on cultures of research and learning. The society has an international membership drawn from individual artists, as well as academic and non-academic institutions.
Following a general introduction to the objectives of the society, the presentation will focus on two of its key initiatives: providing and further developing the Research Catalogue (RC) and publishing the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR). The RC is a searchable, documentary database of artistic research work and its exposition. With the aim of displaying and documenting practice in a manner that respects artistic modes of presentation, the RC allows the weaving together of text, image, audio, and video material. The RC acts as the infrastructure for JAR as well as for teaching and publishing initiatives by an increasing group of SAR members who form the RC Portal Partner Project.

Julie Harboe is an art historian & art critic. After completing her studies at the University of Copenhagen, she co-founded and co-managed the interdisciplinary artspace forumclaque in Baden CH 1993-1999. She then worked at Collegium Helviticum, ETH Zürich. From 2007 she developed and coordinated and the new unit for artistic research at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (LUASA), Department of Art and Design and since 2012 she heads the CC Arts Materials Research there. She is a founding member and 2011-2013 president of Swiss Artistic Research Network, SARN and since 2011 she is a core team member of CreaLab, part of the interdisciplinary program at LUASA.
Johan A Haarberg has extensive experience creating framework conditions for higher arts education and artistic research. He is presently the Director of the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, a national, cross disciplinary, governmental-funded organisation created to stimulate the development of artistic research within higher arts education in Norway. He was previously the Director at Bergen National Academy of the Arts (1996-2009). He is external Board Member at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.