Mobilizing creativity: carnival as performative (re)appropriation, (re)invention and affirmation of urban spaces and belongings

The PhD research is part of the ERC-ARTIVISM project, directed by Prof. Dr. Monika Salzbrunn at the University of Lausanne. The project focuses on creativity and performance as subversive means of political expression in super-diverse cities, and it aims at understanding social transformations triggered by artistic activism.
The PhD research focuses on how festive events can become platforms through which political stances are taken by focusing on contexts where people feel unheard, unrepresented and unconsidered within the city life. In particular, the research endeavors at analyzing the ways people face difficult situations and try to overcome feelings of exclusion by means of festive events and creative practices. Ultimately, the research also aims at understanding if and the ways through which these engagements generate changes.
The research adopts an anthropological and ethnographic perspective, foreseeing a one year-in-depth fieldwork within the French (independent) carnivals of Nice and Marseille, and short-term visits to the field sites. To operationalize the research questions, framed by the theoretical concepts of performativity and creativity, the study adopts a multimodal, bottom-up method, combining three interrelated methodologies: 1) audio-visual approach, 2) field-crossing (Salzbrunn, 2011) and 3) apprenticeship.