CASSANDRIAN ARCHAEOLOGY : PIONEER ACTIONS (1997)

It is about art.

« Art », said Dubuffet, « is never born in the beds one prepares for him ». It arises from the friction of a community’s vital necessity for a new cohesion. Art is an expression unwilling to quietly remain in its traditions, but needing to be renewed in contact of life. Change, hardly perceptible in the here and now, emerges with time. It appears years after things have taken place, long after analysis, when it is obvious that there is a link between history and the emergence of an artistic movement : when it has become necessary.

It is then easy to say : the times needed that. If, in the present, creation seems intended to elevate us from the vulgarity of things, this effect must not deceive us : when art belongs to an elite, when it evolves in a circle of specialists feeding on references cut from contemporary sources, art sterilizes itself. It then ceases to be a language used by a human community to express itself where words are insufficient. Art becomes a consumer and distinguished good.

Bandage Art’ applied to social wounds lead us to misunderstandings. This bandage type of art is the production of arrangements between artists and elected individuals and therefore cannot be ranked as a creative force. Observations show, on the contrary, that the exhibit (the showcase) is only one link in the chain. What is missing in contemporary creativity is the understanding of the process of movement between source and reception. To avoid strengthening the gap between art and society, cohabitation of these two is necessary, so that actual forms may emerge and belong to the community. Not only in inserting creation of art into communities does it preserve their nobility, but it is the single movement of regeneration. It is all about politics.

Europe’s legacy is an almost feudal-type system, continuing in democracy under a privileged cultural class imposing a system incompatible with the movement of ideas which face the realities of our epoch. Some artists free themselves from their original grounds to walk the road of individual success, some meet in chapels : all fighting for individual survival. In context of contemporary history, it is therefore in vain to strive for a renewal of forms.

Those who work in places where cultural forms are in difficultly (psychiatric hospitals, prisons, rural circles, suburbs, districts, etc.), while they actually bring answers to the strongest social necessities, are unseen and unheard. It is not a question of awarding prices, or judging on results, but of considering the act in itself.

What we need today is a strong cultural political backbone. A political plan to join the movement by fighting against the general faint-heartedness, lobbies and those of the business as well as those of the « lords » of culture. If we are still able to give a real meaning to the word « culture », we have no other choice. Because culture is a permanent struggle not to leave anybody out of the process of exchange of ideas and creation. Nothing is more authentically political.

This consciousness, this relation between art and the movements of our times are a tool for us all. Artists, observers, audiences, experts, critics, must be open to new criteria. Politically efficient art is artistic efficiency. It is about culture .

When our national culture is breaking up into micro-cultures hermetic towards one another, we insist on the fact that the live arts are a primary sector to be reconstructed. Far from wanting to introduce works of lesser importance behind a social or political alibi, it is a question of embracing the link between cultural identity and the symbolic function of art within community.

This semantic debate requires impulses from counter currents defending gravities of our times, and asking essential questions. How does cultural identity make sense in the minds of each member of our multicultural communities ? What is it, nowadays, to be French, British, Italian, and Spanish ?

Energy must circulate to create renewal. We have to ground crossroads and strengthen teams by putting them in contact with artists and cultural actors who often ignore each ones existence. The circuits linking cultural and artistic actions have to be reinforced.