Artistic research needs ethics like a rip in the canvas

Abstract

Is free artistic research compatible with academic research ethics? What are the tensions between these positions, and how can we bridge them? The following article is an abridged version of a longer presentation I gave at the UM Research Expo in May. I have adapted the contentious first words of my title from film director Alan Parker’s remark that ‘film needs theory like a scratch on the negative’. Such a comment reflects the scepticism amongst some practising artists about what they perceive to be academic intrusions and constraints. Yet is free expression the purpose of art? Have artists ever been entirely free from constraints? Are the goals of artistic research the same as those of art? Though I advocate for research undertaken through art practices, I feel it is a ‘category mistake’ simply to equate art practice and artistic research. An art-space might be both a studio and a laboratory; an artefact might simultaneously be an artwork and a research outcome. But, to undertake research in an academic context, practitioner-researchers might attend differently to their work, understanding the protocols of academia even as they baulk against them.