This project is funded by the SNSF (Agora funding program) and by Ernst Göhner Stiftung
Summary
In the current context of political, social, economic, and ecological crises, this Agora project aims to stimulate dialogue between social scientists and society on creative forms of political expression, to raise awareness for diversity and equal opportunities through scientific mediation. In this way, we seek to enhance interest in social science research, transmit knowledge and create dialogue with the public about research results, and stimulate bottom-up participation in democracy through art and activism.
The project is based on the research processes and results of the project “ARTIVISM. Art and Activism. Creativity and Performance as Subversive Forms of Political Expression in Super-Diverse Cities”, financed by the European Research Council as a consolidator grant for the applicant in the framework of Horizon 2020. The ARTIVISM project has explored artistic forms of political expression in urban spaces marked by migration and growing diversity. It has researched creative resistances as responses to diverse crises and/or oppressive conditions. The researchers combined innovative methods of audio-visual ethnography, urban event ethnography, street ethnography, multisensory ethnography, apprenticeship and field-crossing.
To implement the project within two years, the researchers will organise interactive events in form of creative workshops on art and activism, and film screenings of ERC Artivism productions, inviting scientists, artists, activists, and the public for dialogue.
In parallel, the researchers will produce an ethnographic comic book on art and activism in different cultural and political settings in dialogue with the targeted publics. In this way, the comic book will be a product of fieldwork, restitution, and dialogue. The applicants will continue to collaborate with artists and activists from the fieldsites of the ERC project, contributing in this way to the decolonization and diversification of scientific research. The interactive events target a diverse and intergenerational audience in Switzerland that seeks to engage in processes of political change and to learn about creative forms of engaged citizenship from across the world.
The comic book addresses readers worldwide using open access.
A blog will be published to support the scientific mediation. The Agora project will be implemented by a team consisting of the applicant, the co-applicant communication expert and the comic artist (both from the French Cameroonian fieldsite), the senior researcher of the Artivism project, and a student assistant. The Scientific Mediation service of the University of Lausanne and the comic book festival BDFIL will be partners in the organisation of the events and their dissemination and promotion alongside several public and private cultural institutions of the city of Lausanne. The project takes an intersectional and collaborative approach with a high input of human power.
