Festpraktiken als temporäre Verräumlichungen einer sozial-ökologischen Transformation? Die Kulturelle Landpartie im Wendland aus geographisch-relationaler Perspektive

Abstract

Societal transformation tends to be negotiated increasingly within event-oriented, affective spaces. When political concerns are articulated as part of a festival, the prevailing view is one of commercialisation rather than political participation. To challenge this opposition, this article takes the tension between activism and festivalisation as its starting point. Using an empirical example, the question arises as to how the presence of socio-ecological transformations becomes tangible through festivalised activism. Using a praxeological approach, the Kulturelle Landpartie in Wendland (Lower Saxony, Germany) is understood as a temporary, spatialised protest event. The article uses qualitative methods to explore the tension between experience-orientation, local environmental activism and commerce. The investigated festival brings growth criticism, supportive care infrastructure and community life into the consumable mainstream. Here, pleasure and protest are by no means mutually exclusive. Instead, it is precisely through being intertwined that this festival encourages isolated breaks with capitalist relations of production and alienation.