In the current decade, the discussion on art seems to be increasingly dominated by a research-based and research-oriented discourse. What does this development mean for the concept of ‘experiment’ that, in the past century, has been so crucial for an ever-innovating art practice? Did the discourse on artistic research and its methodologies redefine our ideas regarding experiments and experimentality? Does current research generate new types of methodologies (such as affective or multi-sensory approaches) reassessing the nature of experimentation? These questions formed the starting point for the first Research Pavilion1 that took place in 2015 in the context of the Venice Biennale. For two months the pavilion accommodated a series of events such as an exhibition, discussions, screenings, interventions, seminars, and performative situations. The pavilion focused mainly on how the notion of experiment relates to the institutional space of the laboratory. Does the concept of ‘laboratory’ retain its sense in the context of artistic research? Could artistic research laboratories be seen as strategic, transdisciplinary platforms enabling research to be reimagined in new ways, i.e. by creating aesthetic preconditions for experimentation allowing topical problems to be addressed in some hybrid form?