The Careful Turn: The problem with care within socially engaged art

Abstract

The concept of an ‘ethics of care’ is a gaining in attention within the cultural sector, both in regard to how participants and communities are approached, but also in how organisations might ‘care’ for their artists. Drawing from Belfiore's seminal 2022 article “Who cares? At what price? The hidden costs of socially engaged arts labour and the moral failure of cultural policy,” this text reflects on this question of ‘care’ as an infrastructural concern, relating to the formalisation of management structures, and the ethical considerations this would engender. The text follows the development of this ‘ethics of care’ through its nascent phases within the domain of nursing, and delineates the authors understanding of ethics and morals. He then moves on to complicate notions of care by invoking Ranciere's text The Ethical Turn and Bishop and Mouffe's notions of dissensus, and how this complicates both the role and function of ‘art’ but also the pragmatic concerns of management (of both artists and socially engaged art projects). This chapter ends with an example from the author's own artistic practice and calls for reflection on how relational and human processes such as ‘care’ can structurally fit within bureaucratic infrastructures of management.