Keynote | Falk Hübner: “The artist-researcher as a connector in times of crises: Four questions to computer music”
In the last 5–10 years, artistic research has undergone a process of growing maturity: often transdisciplinary in nature, the discipline has grown into an immense diversity, and out of a “need for syntheses”, the focus of the discourse is “shifting more towards methodological aspects and best practices” (Craenen 2025). The artist-researcher is a central persona in this field, that is typically characterised by hybridity and fluidity, taking part in several practices, contexts, and discourses — connecting all of these, both within and outside the arts.
At the same time, however, we live in a time characterised by multiple crises that don’t seem to end very soon, and leave the world in extreme continuous instability on a global scale. This includes late-stage neoliberalism and capitalism, climate change and questions of climate justice, rising fascism and multiple wars, to mention only the largest and most devastating examples.
While the arts can never literally “solve” any of these issues, artists have always related to the world and times they live in, in one way or another. And just as several scientists have taken more activist stances recently (Heinzen-Ziob 2026), artistic research arguably can take (more) responsibility to address social-societal issues, and explore what kinds of “shifts” might be suggested, provoked, proposed, speculated, or imagined.
In this lecture, Falk Hübner will offer various examples of such socially engaged artistic research projects, and discuss the persona of the artist-researcher as a “connector” and the methodological consequences such a positionality implies. From this perspective, he develops a series of questions to the field of computer music, to explore and discuss bridges and potential connections between topics of socially engaged artistic research and the disciplines and discourses of (research in and through) computer music.
Falk Hübner
Since completing his composition and double bass studies at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, The Netherlands, he has been active in contemporary jazz, experimental music theatre, and a wide range of interdisciplinary collaborations within and beyond the arts. Between 2008 and 2013, he conducted his doctoral artistic research project Shifting Identities at DocARTES/Leiden University, which led to a series of experimental music theatre works as well as his first book, Shifting Identities: The Musician as Theatrical Performer (2014). From 2019 to 2021, Falk conducted postdoctoral research at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht on artistic research methodology and ethics.
As a teacher and research supervisor, he has worked at HKU University of the Arts, the Master NAIP (New Audiences and Innovative Practices) at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, the ArtEZ Master in Music Theatre, and as Director of Research and Writing for the ArtEZ International Master Artist Educator.
Falk’s current research focuses on the social and activist potential of artistic research, transdisciplinarity, artistic research methodologies, practices of care and care-fulness, climate justice, circularity, and anti-racism. He is part of the Dutch research network Creating Cultures of Care and a member of the Graduate Committee of the Professional Doctorate in Arts & Creative Practices. He currently supervises two Professional Doctorate candidates and four PhD candidates.
Among other publications, Falk is the author of Method, Methodology and Research Strategy in Artistic Research: Between Solid Routes and Emergent Pathways (2024) and co-editor (with Henny Dörr) of the volume on the collaborative transdisciplinary artistic research project If You Are Not There, Where Are You? (2017). Together with Annelys de Vet, he is co-editor-in-chief of Forum+, a journal for research and the arts based in Antwerp.
In addition to his professional life, Falk is an (ultra-)marathon runner. He lives in Rotterdam with his partner and their five children.