Arts-based research, as a hybrid of theories and methods, is an ambivalent field of research. Embracing the subjective challenges as possibilities can lead to the growth of fresh new sprouts of research questions, knowledge production and works of art with additional layers of multiple truths. Artists and researchers might learn more from paying attention to the internal and external ambivalences than from a faithful choir of fixed traditions. In the field of art and in research, the quest for knowledge and development is essential; thus to step out of the comfort zone should be embraced as both useful and necessary. Increased reflections about interdisciplinary research ethics and theories, can reinforce the integrity of arts-based research – not as a field beside other fields but as a functional hybrid of methods within qualitative research – hence provide mutual understanding in our common world.
Liv C. Fjellsol (Wed,) studied this question.