Reflection
on taught session, Friday 4th December 2015
Ethics
Karen led a discussion
on Research Ethics.
As we’d learnt
before, one of the defining principles of research is that it disseminates information,
so by definition it’s not individual. Images, objects and actions can have
consequences too. Ethics is crucially important when it involves human
participants. Karen gave an example of a student researching disabled dancers.
Who owns the research? What gives the researcher the right to do that research?
We also discussed
the ideas of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov. One of my fellow
students had been doing a lot of research into him. His series of
partly-stripped homeless people in the former USSR came under discussion.
Mikhailov evidently defended it as photographing nudity was forbidden under the
Soviet Union – but basically, sex sells, and including partial nudity would
ensure the plight of the homeless people was raised. If he paid the
participants in cigarettes, which they wanted, was it so wrong? I think they
were exploited, but I’m not a homeless person, so how can I judge… what gives
me the right to judge?
A group discussion
followed. One of the points raised was the desire for us all to put work “out
there”, trying to build an audience, weighed against the likelihood that it
would be stolen or pirated. For example, music samples and photographs. Also,
it’s far too easy for people to be able to make anonymous, negative comments
via social media. Another thought was that we could be promoting stereotypes (an
example given was “McDonald’s eaters”) in our quest to produce interesting
work. We concluded that you can’t allow
for every circumstance. You may also decide to publish some work even if it
does offend.
I had been
pondering ethics after writing about Stuart Whipps’s work in my week
9 blog post. Had Whipps considered
what emotions the Mini carcass might provoke if seen by workers who’d had their
lives turned upside down when the Longbridge motor works closed? If so – what did
he think and do about it? Anything? I don’t know, and probably never will.
However, this was brought a lot closer to home for me earlier in the day. A
fellow student told me they had been upset by an image I had used as it
unexpectedly reminded them of a very distressing situation. Generally I have used my own image in any
image manipulation I’ve done, in order to avoid ethical issues. And yet I hadn’t
avoided them! We talked about the situation and it was clear there was no way I
could have anticipated my classmate’s reaction. But this image wasn’t set out
to upset. It may have been intended to shock – there is a difference. When I
did my depiction of my breast cancer experience, I didn’t care if it shocked. I
just wanted to describe the reality of having this disease in a way that is
masked by all the pink fluffy sisterhood approach. Although it might have
shocked some people and struck a real chord with others, I’d never set out to
upset (to clarify, my classmate’s experience was not to do with breast cancer).
So in future I need to think about this; if I might upset one or a few persons,
should I hold back on expressing myself? I think probably not, although in that
case I have to be prepared for negative comment or criticism. As we said in the
group discussion, you can’t allow for every circumstance. But a good learning
point for me, and I thank my fellow student for being open enough to approach me
about it and talk it through with me.
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