PUNKGATES

Our response to the MRSEI call for proposals is for a ERC Synergy Grant project with a submission deadline of November 8, 2022. In 2014, I (Luc Robène, PI1) initiated with Solveig Serre (PI2, research fellow at CNRS) a large-scale project, PIND (Punk is not dead, a history of the punk scene in France 1976-2016) for which we received funding from the ANR during the period 2016-2021. This project has materialized through the constitution of a research team (to which PI3, Marine Schütz, lecturer at the University of Amiens, belongs), the organization of several scientific and cultural events, publications, an important effort of popularization and the insertion of the team in international networks (in particular the Punk Scholar Network, of which PI4, Roy Wallace, is at the initiative with other English colleagues). PIND has also made an original contribution to the knowledge economy, based on a mutualization of views between an interdisciplinary team of researchers, a network of partners linked to culture and the performing arts, and actors from the scene who enrich the production and analysis of data with their own approaches and skills. We now wish to capitalize on the scientific, methodological, and human resources mobilized since 2014 in the framework of an ambitious and large-scale research project dedicated to rethinking the global history of fifty years of punk. The counterculture “punk” has become in half a century the musical, artistic, aesthetic and social matrix of a shared experience of revolt, as well as the manifestation of a creation in resistance confronted with the societal challenges to rethink and the worlds to re-enchant. By relaying on “gateways”, PUNKGATES develops an innovative methodology for conceiving the history and globality of this total artistic phenomenon in an unprecedented way, and for meeting the future scientific, heritage, cultural and societal challenges associated with the memory and worldwide dissemination of punk. It aims : (1) to write the global history of punk by articulating the local precision with the global scope (connecting/linking micro-situated histories); (2) to preserve a vulnerable culture/ give value to the counterculture memory via a digital/interactive portal; (3) to provide citizens with a knowledge body recognising the importance of this countercultural prism; (4) to have punk labelled as intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. PUNKGATES mobilizes 4 PI with previous successful collaborations, and their teams (recruited internationally) via 4 task forces (Writings & medias, Music & sounds, Visuals & aesthetics, Narratives & voices). This scientific synergy creates a continuous dialogue between several interdisciplinary fields, specialties and skills, as well as social properties (age, gender, nationality, culture) and experiences (involvement in the scene) with strong epistemological and scientific impacts. It is reinforced by close collaboration with actors on the scene and more broadly solicits the citizens participation in the shared knowledge construction. Thus, the ground-breaking aspect of PUNKGATES lies in its epistemological stance (global micro-history) and experimental methodological synergy (interdisciplinarity, citizen science) (high risk) and in the careful and inclusive articulation of science, education, culture and society (high gain).