Whereas ethnographic and interview-based approaches tend to monopolize the power of definition in the hands of the scientist, Participatory Action Research (PAR) aims at reconfiguring knowledge production towards a collective, mutually beneficial process. To overcome objectifying hierarchies between the researcher and the researched is particularly significant in ‘traumatic places’ such as Salvador (Brazil) and Cartagena (Colombia), two major ports of arrival during the trade in enslaved Africans. In this presentation, we share insights into the PAR process developed with Afro-diasporic communities from both cities before and throughout the pandemic. We reflect on the potentialities and limitations of the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge(s), in which research ethics, topics, methods, concepts and outcomes are co-created by relating academia, arts and community work. Finally, we discuss to what extent a ‘detachment process’ from the investigated social field is possible in participatory research, on the one hand, to abstract and theorize from the situated lifeworld, and on the other hand, to mirror the interpretations of the involved actors in the academic theorizations.
Logocentric approaches to knowledge production can hardly address traumatic experiences such as the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Video performances are a fruitful way to explore and exchange such embodied knowledges and collective memories, passing them on to future generations. This presentation gives insight into a participatory research-creation process developed with Afro-diasporic artists and community actors from Brazil, Colombia and Mozambique. We will show fragments of transdisciplinary video performances produced during the Covid-19 pandemic. They provide a means for personal and collective reflection and transcontinental collaboration at the intersection of artistic research and socially engaged art. This approach offers an important opportunity to connect diverse actors from both shores of “The Black Atlantic” (Gilroy, 1993). We will discuss the shifting roles between academic researchers and co-creators of knowledge from different socio-spatial contexts and artistic fields such as music, dance and poetry. Thereby, we will gauge the possibilities and limitations of transformation emerging from a co-creation of artistic/academic knowledges based on communal practices, joint reflections and mutual learning.
