Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ARTIVISM (Art and Activism : Creativity and Performance as Subversive Forms of Political Expression in Super-Diverse Cities)
Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-02-28
Artistic expression represents an original way to voice political criticism and to demand civil rights. But how do citizens use art in activism or activism in art to create multiple forms of resistance? Professor Salzbrunn‘s project on ARTIVISM explores new artistic forms of political expression in super-diverse cities, in times of crisis and/or under oppressive conditions. Her international research team focuses on a broad range of artistic tools, styles, and means of expression, such as festive events and parades, cartoons, comics and street art. The work is based on multisensory ethnographic research, including filmmaking and drawing, in three principal urban settings on three continents: 1. Europe: Italian and French towns with a strong tradition of Carnival parades and carnivalesque style figures (masquerade, détournement) in political demonstrations; 2. Africa: gateway cities in Cameroon with creative and satirical comic art; 3. North-America: Latino immigrant cities in California (US) with powerful mural paintings. Building on urban studies, migration studies, and the anthropology of art and performance, Professor Salzbrunn and her team aim to understand and explain how social actors engage artistically in order to trigger social, economic and political change.
In each of the fields actors have used art in activism; in parallel, art has become more and more activist, as political contexts have grown more instable, repressive, populist and authoritarian. Tragic events such as the collapse of public infrastructure in Genoa and of private buildings in Marseille, the outbreak of war in Cameroon, and the construction of an anti-immigration wall at the southern border of the US, point dramatically at failed city and state policies. In a context of growing repression of democratic political opposition movements, artivistic means of expression have become even more important key elements of political processes. Hence, ARTIVISM’s epistemological, empirical and theoretical focus on new artistic forms of political expression under precarious and oppressive conditions is extremely pertinent.
Analysis of fieldwork and field-crossing material, digital ethnography, interviews and audio-visual material has led to first insights:
• The researchers’ presence in the field-sites has become more important than ever to build trusted relationships with research participants
• Precarity is increasing constantly in the chosen fieldsites, but also creativity as a way of coping with and resisting to precarisation
• Liminality and precarity are directly intertwined concepts that mark processes of deprivation of rights and resources, prompting outrage and resistance through artistic activism, engagement and performance.
• The overall struggle for recognition and empowerment has emerged as a pertinent subject in artivistic spaces and events
• Gender struggle is part of artivist actions and resistance. Women and LGBTQI+ defy marginalization by becoming increasingly active in social and political resistance through the visual arts.
• Many social and political struggles have shifted from the street to social networks, a process accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic
• Touristification, gentrification, neo-liberal capitalism, commercialization on the one side and accelerating precarity on the other, have triggered new forms of protest in all fieldsites
• In Mediterranean cities, activists and artists have organized independent carnivals and carnivalesque events as satire and critiques of corruption, anti-immigration and anti-refugee politics.
• In Cameroon, where open political protest faces direct state violence and persecution, artistic resistance through the visual and performative arts is coded, subtle and ironic. Yet, artistic activists are also threatened through censorship, intimidation and persecution.
• In the US, the Trump government and anti-immigration politics have sparked new mural art projects. In Los Angeles, mural art has increased the sense of belonging to a neighborhood and a community, but symbolic references have also triggered rejection and symbolic violence reflecting conflicts about territory, belonging and the interpretation of history.
Updates, news and insights from the ongoing work as well as first shortfilms and articles are constantly being published on the ERC ARTIVISM Blog: www.erc-artivism.ch