Pirates from Naples

Hi everyone, greetings from Italy.
I am a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, currently carrying out my fieldwork in wild, wild Naples.
My research project focuses on Telestreet (www.telestreet.it), an Italian network of pirate television stations and explores ways of turning sociological research into a tool for activism. At the most basic level, this is done by folding traditional ethnography and politically engaged research methods (e.g.: co-research, practice research, as well as creative workshops) to actively explore the linkages between practices of resistance and the social and spatial assemblages within which they can take place. My experiment with Telestreet foregrounds knowledge sharing and collective learning by framing problems and their attendant solutions collectively, in order to untangle the fields of forces that facilitate or hinder the work of the network.
While I take part in the activities of some of the broadcasters, I am also interested in examining how these activities become part of processes of subjectivation for myself and other subjects of practice. More precisely, my ethnography is also a reflection on and an inquiry into how already existing and newly developed practices can not only take us beyond ascribed and static subject positions and coded roles, but can also form a new ethics of relation both spatially and socially. It is my hope that this experiment in collaboration and learning will not only embolden the Telestreet project but will also give rise to new thoughts/practices that provide alternatives to the current ways we imagine or theorise social change.
So far, I am happy to say that, after only four days “in the field”, I already find myself fully immersed in the activities of InsuTv, the Telestreet channel I am working with. Their enthusiasm for their work, as well as for my research project is exhilarating. Yet, the most exciting thing about this all is that InsuTv is only one of the many grassroots political projects developing in Italy at the moment. Despite the tragic state of Italian institutional politics––to say the least––what I have found here is a myriad of little autonomous experiments; the ferment is incredible and very inspiring!
I look forward to meeting you all and discuss all the interesting projects you have introduced. I will also introduce some installation and video work I have been doing together with Laura Kane in the next post.
Only a few days to go…
Alessandra