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Thread 6 discusses instances of artistic activism in which the often grey concrete of the "urban fabric" is overflown with its carnivalesque counter-textures: the Orange Alternative of the Polish 1980s; rainbow symbolism; the "knit graffiti" of contemporary "craftivists"; and an antifascist clown patrol in Tampere, Finland. A staple in the performativity literature, the particular theatricality of political protest is located in more ephemeral qualities of surface texture and the abundance of colour specifically—deemed empty or excessive like theatricality itself; adding to urban texture rather than fading into its fabric. Zooming out to a more evolutionary time frame of more-than-human performativity (in accordance with the often organistic metaphors of artistic activism), the discussion helps imagine a more permissive politics of textural porosity and thus also of diversity—predicated not on antagonistic tropes of transgressive opposition, but on saturating the world, perhaps with the merest hues of textures to be.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-73226-8_6

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