LARGE is a department dedicated to the support and development of artistic investigations at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, as well as a reflection on the nature of such inquiries. Its aim is to explore what it means to investigate not about art but through and in art: how this investigation can be carried out, how it can produce knowledge, and in what relationship this knowledge finds itself to other disciplines. As such, one central focus for LARGE is the interrogation of the specificity of research conducted through artistic practice and thinking: its methods, its possible systems of evaluation and presentation, as well as the contradictions inherent in the process. Starting from the idea that artistic research must often produce not only its content but also its form, methods and sharing practices, LARGE places particular focus on the exploration of art specific presentation formats in research.
LARGE focuses on artistic research understood as an in-depth investigation driven by artistic practice. While an interdisciplinary exchange can be central to the process, LARGE aims to interrogate how artistic research projects make a significant contribution to the field of art, particularly to art practice. Rather than placing emphasis on the adjective “artistic” as a method which can be equally deployed across several disciplines, LARGE is concerned primarily with the generative role of the art practice in (artistic) research: its capacity to create new aesthetic and conceptual spaces, to suggest and imagine alternatives to existing realities, and ultimately to produce forms of knowledge not in response to other fields but alongside them, with equal epistemological value.