Artistic research is the research of singular events, identified as an individual's creative moments. Such moments are open to others' interpretations but are still unique.

The unique is naturally related to time. Temporality is essential to all events, but it is not possible to study temporality as such in science, for it is indeed the standardisation or objectification of temporality that makes research science.

Each point of departure in research originates from an event, which can be described with a verb: painting, writing, designing, negotiating or the like. Thus, action is selected to describe temporal nature, The result of this action is usually a document, such as a painting, a poem, the minutes of a meeting or a description.

Naturally, the document is not what we are interested in here, for it is a mere object: we are interested in the event which yields the document.

Juha Varto critically opens up our common preknowledge of the basics of artistic research.