“On whose side are you?”: Artist-researcher positionality in a global public health challenge

This exposition discusses risks that emerge from the artist-researcher’s fluid position within artistic research. The research entails the artistic researcher interviewing vaccine-critical parents and a vaccine scientist about their opposing standpoints toward immunization and vaccination, while remaining ambivalent and sympathetic toward both views. The exposition uses concepts such as positionality, insider-outsider, and sameness to unpack the various risks arising from the stimulation and staging of conflicting voices about vaccines. These risks include upset participants due to unmet expectations raised partially by the artistic researcher’s understanding attitude, and the pervasiveness of the “voice” of the documentary film being created throughout the artist-researcher’s interactions with the participants.