On June 18th 2025, platform art ≈ research organized a discussion and debate with the Commissie Wetenschappelijke Integriteit for the arts universities, where we talked about integrity in art research.
We started our discussion with a lecture from Alexander Damianisch. As Head of the Support Art and Research Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Alexander Damianisch plays a crucial role in advancing artistic and interdisciplinary project development, managing funding strategies, and overseeing the University’s Doctoral School. He advocates for practitioner-led exploration that shapes transformation.
About Alexander Damianisch
With an international profile as a mediator for art as a catalyst for action, Damianisch serves as a teacher, moderator, writer, and consultant. He is a member of the ELIA Careers In the Arts working group and he has initiated Special Interest Groups within the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), including one dedicated to language-based artistic research. Besides that, Damianisch played a crucial role in high-level funding agency meetings during his tenure on the SAR executive board.
Alexander Damianisch was the inaugural director of Zentrum Fokus Forschung, where he coordinated the Artistic Research PhD program. His earlier leadership of Austria’s artistic research funding program (PEEK), which he designed, and the Art, Science, and Business residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude reflect his commitment to integrating art and research across fields.
In his presentation today, Alexander Damianisch will provide a critical analysis of both scientific and artistic integrity, and subsequently will put forward a proposition that approaches integrity in the domain of practice-based research from a more context-sensitive perspective.
On Art and Research, Respect and Integrity: About neither Narrowing nor Exaggeration of Qualities
Integrity is the cornerstone of responsible academic and creative practice; this of course also applies for the unique context of the art and research field. However, the introduction of the term ‘artistic integrity’ risks a strategic narrowing that may undermine the specific qualities of critical approaches in the arts. Unlike the scientific discourse on integrity, which often adheres to seemingly set universalized principles, the arts operate within a specific and distinct peer culture—one that is sometimes more rigorous, sometimes more open, but always deeply embedded in processes of negotiation and self-determined quality assurance.
This keynote will critically examine how the imposition of a singular notion of ‘artistic integrity’ could erode the autonomy of these processes, while also reflecting on the broader tensions following reflective flows like in postmodernism, like the proclaimed erosion of shared values and the rise of relativism. Instead, I propose a focus on integrity as such allowing for a pragmatic and context-sensitive application of specific principles. By addressing these challenges, this talk aims to foster a nuanced dialogue on how integrity can be upheld in practice-based research in the arts without compromising its critical and self-reflective nature.
A video of the online lecture can be found below.