Art-in-Design: Facilitating Design and Design Research by Means of Art

This article outlines the author's continuous collaboration with the Danish art collective Superflex; an internationally recognised example of how contemporary art has taken interest in design practice in order to realise visions of change and empowerment. Setting off from Frayling's infamous distinction between research in, for, and through art and design, the author lays out this collaboration as a series of stepping back from an initial action research situation, that is, a case of research through design where the researcher is involved by means of strategic interest. However, by gradually distancing himself, by taking steps back from this situation, the author has sought to map out systematically the institutional contexts in which the art collective has been operating. In this way, it has become possible to understand further why art may maintain its original empowering role in design practice and how the art institutional contexts in turn may facilitate various critical approaches on behalf of the researching scholar.