Ethics review of artistic research: challenging the boundaries and appealing for care

Abstract

In 2019, a new national Ethics Review Authority (Etikprövningsmyndigheten, EPM) was created in Sweden. In 2020, Sweden’s Ethical Review of Research Involving Humans Act was revised, tightening this legislation, and increasing penalties for its infraction. This article draws on empirical material generated by artistic research conducted with a norm-critical contemporary music ensemble. Two of the musicians who collaborated with this research identify as disabled. Consequently, in accordance with EPM, my artistic research was subject to mandatory ethics review. Reflecting critically on my own experience of seeking ethical approval for this artistic research project, I show how EPM’s process of ethics review enacts scientific boundary work in Sweden that privileges the interests of academic disciplines that are already well-established. As a corrective to EPM’s scientific boundary work I propose the application of an ethics of care that recognises the complex relationalities that exist between research institutions, researchers and research participants.

Careful Convivial Listening: Making Sound Work Apparent as Political Action

“…Frictions that exist between the application of an ethics of care and the demands of the institutional ethics review processes that are applied in Sweden, the country context in which this research has taken place, have been a significant source of tension throughout my work. The disjunction that exists between my application of an ethics of care, and the ethical principalism that is dominant in Sweden's institutional ethics review processes being particularly evident in the tensions that arose during the process through which I had to secure ethics approval for my artistic research with Elefantöra (Boothby, 2023a). Although Elefantöra are a norm-critical ensemble that includes both disabled and non-disabled musicians, they prefer not to be defined as musicians in terms of disability.…”

“…EPM and the processes of ethical approval that it regulates are strongly informed by the ethical concerns of bio-medical research and the ethical principalism that is dominant in this field. The process of submitting my ethnographic artistic action research with Elefantöra for ethical approval by EPM demonstrated to me that EPM and the ethical principlism that it privileges exists as a powerful site of scientific boundary work that works to the benefit of research that applies conventional scientific methods and to the detriment of artistic research (Boothby, 2023a). Applying theoretical perspectives from STS that inform an ethics of care I recognise that the laws, rules and ethical principles that assemble people and technologies into institutions exert a regulating agency.…”