ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe a participatory, multimodal, experiential study of social issues, aiming towards community exploration and potential mobilization related to local social concerns. It is part of an ongoing innovative transdisciplinary project, entitled “Transition to 8: bridging social issues, tech and contemporary art”, that applies multimodal methods for studying the experiential and affective impact of social issues on citizens and bridging them with technology and contemporary art. More specifically, this community project connected prominent local social issues in the city of Eleusis in Greece, such as the environment, employment and refugees/migration, with contemporary art, in view of Eleusis being the European Capital of Culture in 2023. Data generation took place in the context of six sociodrama sessions, in which adult residents were called upon to enact their perspectives, concerns and experiences regarding living in Eleusis. We collected experiential and embodied data from these sessions through audio, visual and biometric recording as well as field diaries from participant observers sensitized in embodied attunement. The data are processed in a multimodal way by the participant observers identifying important scenes and themes. The synchronization of verbal, visual and biometric data is the next step in the process. Processed data from the sessions will be provided to artists in the form of sound, visual, verbal and biometric elements, which will constitute their source material to be integrated in their artistic productions. Events will be organized as part of the festivities in Eleusis as the European Capital of Culture, during which artistic productions, research findings and other material deriving from the project will be presented to the local population as a way of mobilizing the community towards acknowledging and addressing important social concerns as well as disseminating project results. Through its transdisciplinary and international character, the overall project goes beyond the mobilization of the local community to bridging people and communities across countries, indicating the commonality of social issues that communities face and creating possibilities for common actions to address them.
