When the lights (don’t) go out: disrupting the hyperreal at the Basel Fasnacht in 2020

Once a moment of rebellion and resistance against authority, carnivals are increasingly part of local and national cultural calendars with negotiation of power being of interest to cultural geographers for decades. Given the dependence on this imagery, costume, masks and other aspects of the imaginary, what happens when the theatricality of carnival with its masks, costumes and music is largely removed? The Basel Fasnacht that was due to take place in 2020 but cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic yet participants continued anyway. The case study thus presents a unique opportunity to examine a carnival that rebelled against the incoming regulations that would characterise the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing together carnival theory and Baudrillard's work on simulation and simulacra along with urban geographical thinking of Soja and Simmel I argue that in the 2020 Basel Fasnacht the symbolic presence of the new structure and signs it deployed were made to bear the weight of political resistance. Hyperreality and social order of everyday life temporarily collapsed as the referential signs become once more connected to the reality of the rebellion on the streets of Basel as relations between participant bodies and wider politics of authority emerged through demonstration against incoming social restrictions.