Participatory art has developed as part of the many international art festivals that make use of beautiful natural and urban spaces in local communities and which have expanded on a global scale since around 1990.
At these festivals, artists have not only created formative art works such as paintings and sculptures, they have also maintained a special presence as manager of actions and situations that involve the audience.
Among these kinds of artists, Fujimoto has focused on Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist born in 1957.

While focusing on Hirschhorn's works, Fujimoto continues his research to clarify how the "violence" latent in contemporary social structures is incorporated into contemporary art. He is working on a literature review of Hirschhorn's work to reveal the context in which he has been discussed up to the present, and he identifies similarities and differences with artists before the 2000s.

One researcher who continues to lead the discussion on participatory art is the British art historian Claire Bishop. However, Fujimoto considers that Bishop's discussion tends to focus on the controversy with other theorists on the topic of participatory art, and that she does not sufficiently consider in detail how Hirschhorn positions his own work and what he contributes to the discourse.

In addition to surveying literature, Fujimoto also conducts fieldwork by visiting international art festivals and exhibitions to explore the spaces where actual artworks are placed and conduct research on the works. When he was researching Documenta 15 in 2022, he also visited the installation site of Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument to observe the atmosphere of the space where Hirschhorn had installed his work and the people who live there. He wanted to examine the message contained in the work from various perspectives.
Because he focuses on arguments presented by artists, Fujimoto says he is careful not to take them at their own word in the research process.

When Fujimoto was a student at the Kyoto University of the Arts (formerly the Kyoto University of Art and Design), he spent his days surrounded by people who wanted to become artists or curators (i.e., the professionals involved in collecting, storing, exhibiting, and researching materials at museums), but he was not learning about Western art history or contemporary art from a theoretical perspective. It was during this time that he saw Hirschhorn's work at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, which led him to start doing research on contemporary art and the work of Hirschhorn.

Fujimoto, who joined the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences to study contemporary art from an academic standpoint, has been developing his knowledge of basic theories, focusing on the history of contemporary Western art, and he also surveys literature from other fields including political science and sociology. Although he has a lot of knowledge to absorb because he is conducting research in a field he did not study in his undergraduate days, he does not consider this to be a disadvantage. Because of the practical knowledge that he has taken the initiative to acquire, he is able to deeply understand the underlying theories. In other words, every graduate student has their own approach to learning.

Fujimoto belongs to the Representation Division of the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, and aside from contemporary art, some of the graduate students in this division conduct research on topics like video games and literature. This environment is conducive to friendly rivalry, as members discuss each other's research across disciplines, which helps them come up with new ideas. According to Fujimoto, there are moments when, as a graduate student, he feels a sense of responsibility as a researcher of contemporary art.

Having accumulated a diverse array of experiences as a graduate student, Fujimoto has been selected as a RARA Student Fellow. Among the extensive program of talks from researchers in diverse fields, Fujimoto said he was most impressed by the workshop given by Kei Wakabayashi, the former editor-in-chief of Wired Japan (who now works for Blkswn Publishers). It afforded him with an unparalleled opportunity to think deeply about the significance of disseminating information and presenting research outcomes to the public.
Having taken this definitive first step as a researcher, Fujimoto is now focusing on contemporary art from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

In this world, violence and conflict are all around us. Many people, however, do not consider this to be their own problem. Fujimoto continues to search for the potential of "participatory art" to encourage audiences to think about things with a sense of tension and awkwardness.