Professor Salzbrunn’s team conducted intensive ethnographic fieldwork in sites where artists and activists had formed alliances under conditions of political, social, economic or environmental precarity. As the COVID-19 pandemic and global travel restrictions closed many borders for researchers in 2020-2021, the team concentrated on digital ethnography and explored new local field-sites with similar political and artivistic dynamics (carnival and carnivalesque events in Cologne; environmentalists’ and feminists’ artivist actions and struggles in the Lake Geneva region). The researchers followed relevant groups online and participated in interactive artivist events and debates.
Data protection measures and ethical concerns have been widely applied. These measures, combined with the construction of a website with an interactive blog, presentations at international conferences and in public media, contributed immensely to the understanding, acceptance and enthusiastic welcome of the project.
Long-term fieldwork, frequent follow-up field visits and the method of field-crossing developed by Prof. Salzbrunn (2011, 2021) allowed to establish and consolidate trusted relationships with participants living under precarious conditions.
The overall struggle for recognition and empowerment has emerged as a crucial subject in artivistic spaces and events. The research team documented and participated in new forms of protest against increasing touristification, neo-liberal capitalism and commercialization. Feminist, anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian, anti-colonial and environmental struggles shared common ground in several field sites but differed in the choice of artistic expression and the degree of political risk and engagement.
In Genoa, carnivalesque fashion shows and carnivalesque parades were performed to raise awareness against growing inequalities, discrimination and gentrification. Similarly, artists and activists in Cameroon’s major cities Yaounde and Douala use performances, fashion shows, street art and comics to subvert the political and cultural ideology of the authoritarian regime. Social pressure and auto-censorship of artists work hand in hand with political repression.
In Los Angeles, conflicts around territory, the interpretation of history and symbolic references were expressed through mural art.
More than a century old carnival traditions researched in Nice, Viareggio and Cologne, turned out to be complex and subtle means of expression, for official political representatives as well as for artivists and engaged minority groups.
In all fields, the project highlighted the articulation of intersectional dynamics in art and activism and revealed that gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and age all have an important impact on artivism but are interlinked and expressed in very different ways depending on the cultural, social, economic and political contexts and the freedom of expression in each site.
Furthermore, the project has focused on the articulation between micro-utopias in specific places and unspectacular forms of artivism researched through the event approach (Salzbrunn 2017, 2021). These local events strongly impact social relations and political transformation processes but have been less researched than strongly mediatized actions (like the Occupy movement).
Finally, the project has widely contributed to the innovative articulation of alternative research methods: graphic anthropology, multi-sensory ethnography, audio-visual methods (Salzbrunn 2020), apprenticeship, digital ethnography (Pink 2015) and field-crossing (developed by Salzbrunn 2011 and 2021), documented in several individual and collective publications as well as four short films (“Defile Maddalena La Superba”; “Messa Partigiana”; “Yannick D. Sekoué sur le Festival MBOA BD au Cameroun”; ERC ARTIVISM Final Conference Film), one medium film (“Street”) and one long documentary film (“Créer resister, exister”). The contributions to collaborative research techniques have allowed us to push forward general methodological reflections in social and cultural anthropology and qualitative sociology.
