Crisis in the Performing Arts

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Arts, total economy and ethical challenge

Crisis in the Performing arts
by Dominique LEROY

In this test, I would like to show that if there exist interactions which involve the joint transformations of art and the economy, the historical involved forces depend on determinations differentiated more or less distant from those from the normative economy. In its globality, art does not constitute a market, the artist is not an entrepreneur, a theatre is not a company like the others and the competition which reigns in this field arose more from the emulation of competition.

The “erosion of the values”, that Karl Homann in connection with the general economy notes, is translated in a particular way within the artistic field where the actors who are the States, the international organizations, the markets and the multinational corporations play a specific and sometimes contradictory part, beside the artists and of public who remain eminently principal actors.

Section 1 – The relation techno-esthetics in the history of the performing arts

From the start, it is necessary to take into account the singularity of the performing arts within the general economy because the production is there in its foreign petrol with standard technical progress. If one considers the insertion of the novel methods throughout the history of arts, one attends the insertion of technologies which arose with a specific concept that I will qualify “progress techno-esthetics”. Admittedly, the experts always were with the mounting of technical innovations and their possible applications – as opposed to what one could think of an “ethereal” design of the creation – but the question which should be posed is well : “such a progress, for what to make ?”.

My matter will be interested in the original form of the show known as “alive” (theatre, concert, opera, dance, etc…), then will extend to the “recorded” show (cinema, television, etc…). It will also sometimes happen to me to make some incursion into other sectors of the artistic field like the “visual arts”. I will consider the development techno-esthetics in his entirety – “alive” “show – “recorded” – “popularized through the media” – “digitized”” – being given the interdependence, the imitation and the correspondences more and more prégnantes between these various dimensions in the sector of the show as in that of the “Art schools”.

The innovation techno-esthetics never played a secondary part in the performing arts. It extended from the application of the rules of the “prospect” to the beginning for the Rebirth with the “structured scene” for Palladio. After lighting by the candles and the quinquets of the ages classic and baroque which illuminated the totality of the theatre, one passed to lighting to the gas who will upset scenographic art at the beginning of the 19° century by separating the scene from the room, itself plunged in the darkness. Later, electricity will revolutionize spectacular esthetics before electronics increases the mechanization of the theatrical scene. Contrary to what will occur in the economy in general, electricity will be used neither to increase alleged “outputs” in the artistic production (if that has a direction !), nor to increase a financial profit that certain directors of establishments could have hoped.

In the history of the performing arts, the changes techno-esthetics thus knew strong amplitudes. They married, sometimes with a comprehensible reserve, the forms of evolution of the economic system and general policy. The function of the theatre is not the same one under the governments of Louis XIV, Napoleon or the Republic. Their system of organization passed, within the phase of rise of capitalism, of a “stock system” (system of the “permanent troop”) in “Combination System” (a room, a work, a distribution, a production and a financing combined in order to speculate about a work considered as “produce”), which explains why this economic transfer was done as well in Paris as in London or the United States. One assists, during the 19° century, with the progressive penetration of the “theatrical system” by structures of the capitalist type, and even with the shape of “industrialisation” of the theatres : concentration of the property of the rooms, wage-earning of the artists, “speculation” on works, management directed towards the profits, standardization of the topics and works, development of consumer loyalty of the audiences (by the subscription, etc…), centralization in the national space of the new creation and collecting public ones by the commercial rounds, appearance of the business managers and installation of intermediaries as dramatic agencies. The appearance of the “Star system” in second half of the 19° century is also connected with financial capitalism dominating since it simultaneously makes it possible to increase by with dimensions price and the receipts of a higher amount to the seals of the “tops of the bill” (“stars”, “stars” or “stars”), and of another with dimensions to decrease the fixed charges in consequence of the disappearance of the fixed troop and the depression of intermediate remunerations.

Section 2 – Specificity of the economy of the performing arts

It is necessary for me now to introduce some theoretical reflections in order to more completely seize the specificity of the economy of the performing arts compared to the other activities of the general production.

Within a model of total economy and under conditions of long growth, one can consider of with dimensions “progressive” sectors (automobile for example) where it is possible to increase the average hourly salaries all while maintaining prices stable because of reduction in the unit costs related to the productivity gains due to technical progress. It of another dimensioned there sectors which one can describe as “stagnant” because they “suffer” from the absence of productivity gains and cannot profit in the same way from the effects of technical progress. Thus the “reproduction” of a quartet of Mozart asks for the same quantity of “work” (repetitions, representations, etc….) with the 20° century that at the time of its creation. It is about the same for a work of Gluck in front of a public of opera : in the two situations, the cost price of a representation head on undergoes the current rise of the wages and other aesthetic loads because a big part of this expenditure, incompressible because contained by aesthetic conventions, must be reflected completely in the price of the places.

If the rise in costs of the “stagnant” sector can, initially, being compensated by an equivalent increase in the price of the places, the moment will come where the rise without discontinuity of the prices will appear against-productive in term of audience. The public ones will be diverted these “products” to substitute for it consumption whose prices drop (cultural expenditure and of leisure, consumer goods competitive, etc…). There exist obviously alternative means to limit these effects : increase in the gauge of the rooms, increase amongst representations, selection of works whose distribution is reduced to a number decreasing actors, etc…, but it is hardly possible to delay the moment indefinitely when, the deficit becoming structural, any new action can prove insufficient to thwart the inescapable rise of the costs. If one came from there to modify the “quality” of the artistic product, that would amount disavowing the intrinsic value and conventions of the kind in the preparation, the execution and the diffusion of work. The example, taken among so many others, the circuses where, for financial reasons, the orchestra was tiny room to two or three musicians supported by a “sound system”, constitutes obviously a condemnable artistic practice !

To cope with structurally overdrawn situations, the establishments of show are then obliged to seek increasing financial aids. Those must increase ata rate as high as the increasing variation of the relative rise of the unit costs in industry (“progressive” sector) and in the artistic sector (“stagnant”). This effect is called “Baumol disease” (“Baumol disease”), of the name of the large American economist who showed this law of the “comparative costs” unfavourable to the “live performance” – and besides generalizable to the “stagnant” sectors of the art and a broad part of the services. It applies, though in an attenuated way, in the media audio-visual where one finds the same opposition between stagnant artistic segments of with dimensions, and progressive technical segments of the other. The first elements, which correspond at artistic and screenplay manufacturing costs, undergo the law of the increasing costs relative, which explains the sometimes drastic reduction in audio-visual creations and their replacement by litanies of repeat broadcasts.

This “bronze law” applies initially to the theatrical “heritage” whose a large number of old works cannot be represented nowadays within the framework of a current production and with an absolutely comparable luxury of production (cf the “Marvellous one” of the baroque Scene, extravagant productions of the Parisian Grand opera and “heavy” distributions of the melodramas and light comedies of the Parisian Boulevard to the 19° century !). For works of “creation” on the other hand, if it is necessary to thwart the Baumol effect by certain “tricks”, kinds of changes techno-esthetics which arose from the historical development complexes, the constraint continuous techno-esthetics to apply with the greatest force as long as artists and stage-folk refuses to sell their heart with the devil and refuse to sacrifice the intrinsic quality of their art to the forces of money and the sirens of the profit.

“We are tradesmen” hammered Hippolyte Hostein, it dynamic director of the Parisian theatre of the Jollity. It was right in the middle of 19° century, and he claimed the economic freedom of the theatres against the choking framing of the Napoleonean system… One knows the terrible artistic regression which will be followed from there, after the law of 1864 on the theatrical Freedom, and which will lead the performing arts towards the acute existential crisis of the Inter-war period, for lack of supports. The State will leave its “neutrality then” and will be in the extreme obligation to save the theatres, of Paris and especially of province, starting from the Popular front and definitively after the Release.

Section 3 – New technologies and movement of liberalization of the cultural and artistic markets.

The systemic changes of Western Art to the turning of the 20° century made it possible to cross the aesthetic dead ends in all the fields : visual arts which evolve to the non-figurative artist and the abstract, classical music which transgresses the limits of the melody, symbolism in the productions for purposes to fight against excesses of mechanization of the scenes, etc….At the end of the 20° century, these changes are much deeper and cross a true qualitative jump with the irruption of radical new technologies which penetrate all the extent of the field of works of the spirit and the sensitivity.

There is indeed a link of consanguinity between the contemporary art and cultural and artistic diffusion and reproduction, information technologies. Just as the plastic money generated the financial globalisation, in the same way the computer and Internet lead to the greatest change techno-esthetics than knew arts since the Rebirth. All the cultural functions – creation, diffusion, formation, conservation – “are impacted” by the informational revolution and the new “culture Web”. One does not know, for example, until where an emblematic innovation like the transmission of lyric shows can lead us (of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, Bolchoï, the Opera of Paris, etc…) in real time towards multiple cinemas throughout the world. In this precise case, the human and cultural challenges are considerable (on April 7th, 2012, the Manon de Massenet of the “Met” was diffused live bound for 3 million spectators in 54 countries !), and the economic issues are not it less (the benefit of the season 2011-12 was of 12 million dollars for the Met of New York). But some do not fail to consider that to this production on a relatively large scale a “pseudo-public” of consumers anonymized in the nebula of a juicy planetary market corresponds.

Contrary to the large financial profits and in the fields which one would rather attach to the sectors of the leisure or information, a new form of free “culture” made its appearance with the “new economy of the Net”. This form has nothing to do with the problems of the exemption from payment such as it had been approached by certain European intellectuals with the XIX° century. “Pseudo-exemption from payment” of which us “profit” exposes on screens from million from computers and others smartphones where it is financed by the publicity ubiquist and omnipresent which bludgeons us and “makes us pass to the case” at the end of circuit by the means of the rise of the products and services differentiated and complementary to the media system.

In the current system, the globalisation put on the neo-classic economic theory to spread itself in three dimensions (cf Karl Homann) :

A – INTERNATIONALIZATION HAS :

In the field of the performing arts, and especially in the sectors of the media and visual arts, a proliferous global market with a great dynamism and is declined in a multiplicity of theatrical works (confirmed successes of the parts created in London or New York then played in Europe, etc…) or musical (“musicals”, concerts,…), in a myriad of telefilms, of cinematographic films or series audio-visual. The powerful attraction of creations with transnational vocation regrettably consumes the emergent value of the local creative forces.

An example of mimetic internationalization is provided by the training of the artists of the show and musical interpretation such as it evolved with the 20° century. In America then in Europe, the Anglo-Saxon system constituted a model dominating which took extension with the “universitarisation” of the near total of the artistic courses. After creation pionnier of the “Department of drama” of Yale in 1966, university courses were born in the USA and in Canada, parallel to the academies and with the private schools of Article One can quote some examples showing their diversity : “Faculty of music” (YorkUniversity), “Department of dance” (New YorkUniversity), “Management in arts program” (UCLA), “Department of writing” (Columbia university), etc… In Quebec, in the Eighties, an imposing reform led to the constitution of “Faculties” of visual arts beside the traditional Schools of Art schools. In their turn, these structures inspired the European universities where one managed from there to think that this new kind of formation is more cultural than the traditional system and than “one does not manufacture there “makers of notes”… as in the music colleges” (a professor of the Laval University) !

B – DENATIONALIZATION/PRIVATIZATION :

The introduction into the theatrical public sector of methods of “management” and criteria of “entrepreneurial” management can be regarded as an attenuated form of denationalization by downgrading of the classical cultural policies. It is the case of France where the activities of the persons in charge of establishment of show subsidized for several years evaluated and have been supported financially according to the results got as regards frequentation, amongst creations, of the activity ratio, etc…

Behaviors and programs again standard are encouraged, certain to the dismay of the more classical defenders of cultural activities. A movement of reform was thus made the defender of one management “to American” of the national museums. Let us take some examples, in France still : Louvre lent to Abou Dhabi of the hundreds of works and “exported its name” in return for a considerable amount of money ; the Sorbonne made in the same way in the field of education and research. One sees finally the director of the center Pompidou declaring that it “will dare a policy of brand” for a headlight project of expatriation of works of the Beaubourg Center because, “with the crisis, the hour is not more with expensive constructions, but with the agility”…

C – DEREGULATION :

It is initially economic – with (for example) the international agreement binding the grand operas of the world in order to limit the excessive rise of the seals of the stars of the lyric art. It is then aesthetic – with (for example) the disappearance of the system of the “Schools” (Dutch painting of the 17° century, impressionists, etc…) who characterized the European painting of the 15° to the 20° century. In doesn’t the field as of “installations”, the singular character of each work want to be absolute, as in Marcel Duchamp ?

With “globalization”, works which are born in a given place acquire decisive advantages when they are intended for the external cultural markets, just as in the general economy, local industries or SME gain in competitiveness while preparing to invest the worldwide market. Don’t these brutal applications to works of the spirit and the sensitivity comprise disadvantages and improprieties ?

Section 4 – the erosion of the aesthetic values within the movement of globalisation

Nowadays, the most established aesthetic values are reconsiderations under the blows of stop of aesthetic new technologies, of the “culture Web”, the general technological mutations and the international economic crisis. The capital intensive concentration does not reach it its apogee in the project of world domination associating Hollywood, Bollywood and the studios of Shangaï in full expansion. Can this cultural imperialism solve the crisis related to the simultaneous effects of the “Baumol disease” and the phase of difficulties of the Kondratieff cycle of long period ?

In all the fields, and in particular in the sector of visual arts, the reign of the money led to a denial of the values multiséculaires of Western art : unrestrained speculation on markets stateless people, launching of young “growths” by the means of erratic modes and sporadic speculative financings (young person painting New Yorkean, Parisian, etc…), investments on a large scale in the culture for reasons which are a priori external for him (commercial tourism), artificial hybridizations and specious cultural diversifications as in the cases “bordering line” of the “Cross-country race over” (thus “when the classic meets the rock’n’roll” !).

With the crisis which is economic than ethical as much, one notes a multiform erosion of the intrinsic values particular to the performing arts :

– Increase in the international coproductions founded on economic needs : this phenomenon initially affects the cinematographic sector but also the audio-visual field where its effects support the concentration of poles of powerful production and financing. In the “alive” field, the giant coproduction of Turandot to Palace-Omnisport-Paris-Bercy called upon 150 chorus-singers of the national Chorus Bulgarian Svetoslav Obretenov for the primary reason which the contracts had been able to be negotiated under extra-trade-union conditions…

– The “starisation” excessively : one too often hears on the waves the same “voted by plebiscite” interpreters be-saying (but by which public ?), with “the” pianist of the moment, “larger the” baroqueux one, “incomparable” the singer of Lied, “the best” chorus head or “the best” chorus, etc… The “majors” of the disc reduce cultural diversity like “shagreen” and drain the offer by focusing the production of Cd-audio on some artists, on profitable concerts, finally on classical” and redundant programmings very “.

– The artistic diffusion puts to the composers or of the musical genres already obliterated by the “globalization of the taste” : I will quote the example of the British singer Simon Keenlyside, large amateur of French melodies but whose discography is composed only of “Lieder” in accordance with the trade policy of Sony. It is essential that there are small labels and musicians who learned how to make use of state-of-the-art technologies auto–to be recorded. But if these cases contradicted very partially the generalized very-concentration of the musical production, it is not Internet – nor You Tube ! – which will make us say that the crisis of the diffusion of the classic is solved !

– According to some critical, the standardization of the tastes and the musical globalization would explain why the orchestras would seek to obtain the “international sound” which is appropriate, so that the originality of the sound of the great orchestral formations would be in the process of loss… What leaves me a little skeptical, but I obtained this information of a specialist informed in the musical life….

– The vulgarizing of artistic work

I remember the day when giving the first outline of a report requested by the European Parliament, one had asked me to agree to use in the title the expression “hard-working cultural” in preference to “so beautiful name of “artist”” which I used naturally. According to my interlocutor, it was to better use this suitable expression to remain within the framework of the Treaty of Rome while being addressed to the members of parliament with whom it was a question of freedom of movement, unemployment rate, levels of incomes, etc… in connection with these “cultural workers” who are the actors, the musicians, the singers or the dancers.

– Threats on the intermittency

In France, the artists of the show acquired brave fight a statute which takes into account specificities of their trade (intermittency, multi-employer…) and a control of the professional life ensures them to carry on their activity under the best material conditions (mode of unemployment benefits on specific criteria, adapted taxation, training, etc…). Currently, the profession worries about the threats which relate to the future of this mode very particular to France and threatened by the globalisation and the movement of hostility except cultural.

All this leads me to speak about the economic actors of the artistic globalisation : States, international organizations, multinational corporations.

Section 5 – actors of the artistic globalisation : States, international organizations, multinational corporations.

“Pure and hard” liberalism, if it were generalized, would have the capacity to shake cultural balances and social assets by decades of fight of the European people. For its part, France, which knew a “nihilist” long experience by choking its local cultures by centuries of royal hypercentralisation then jacobine, blamed very tardily these factors of desertification. But it should well be understood that such phenomena can re-appear, this time, at the international level and world.

Nowadays, there are a real problem when the Sovereign states undergo the pressures of organizations like WTO, or those of dominant States like the United States of America. In 1993, the defenders of a audio-visual autonomous European succeeded in gaining, of brave fight, the battle against the cultural ultraliberalism by obtaining the exclusion of this sector of the agreements of GATT. In the tread, the cultural exception defended by the European Union and the cultural diversity supported by UNESCO obtained for the moment an international recognition. Currently, the European audio-visual sector must be held ready to fight again against any reconsideration of the cultural policies, against “any destroying model of the national singularities” (Jack Lang) as it had been question in 1998 with the Multilateral draft agreement about the Investment (FRIENDLY) concocted by OECD and fought in first line by France.

One can say that there was not, on these various occasions, of head-on opposition between the strategies of the globalized multinationals and the actions of the globalized organizations which agree on the benefits of liberalization and the deregulation more or less unslung. Unlike small artistic industries or averages which do not profit from the production from a high number or crescent of products, the large “integrated” firms can manage in an optimal way each stage of the lawsuit of production (chains, video, Internet, etc…). This is detrimental for cultural diversity even if, according to an American expert, “rather than with an Americanization, one attends an increasingly large cultural homogenisation through exchanges in any direction of programs to increasingly universal contents”.

This reference to universal is suspect, especially when it comes from a pseudo-diversity such as it can be preached by persons in charge of “majors” of the cinema or the audio-visual one. Jean-Marie Messier, when he was president d’ Universal, said the same thing by praising the “glocalisation” : “if the total one indicates a standardized production which one seeks to impose on all, the universal one, indicates a singular work, born to him some share, and who goes the world. For my part, I do not aspire to build a “total” company, but to build, in culture industries, a universal group…”. The cultural field is autonomisé well little in the profession of faith of this “cultural manager” when he adds : “I do not believe in a “total culture”. I believe on the other hand in local cultures able to grow rich mutually and which can give rise to universal successes or myths”. Jérôme Clément, vice-president of the Franco-German chain Arte, answers him : “Cultural diversity ? Messier does not have the monopoly of it. It is diversity of the actors, the producers, the diffusers, of the ways of financing, which founds this diversity”.

With the globalisation and the competition inter-media, the inevitable reorganization of arts can pose problems of an ethical nature on all the levels, of the director of room to the producer, the director, the actors and the artists, public even who undergo the dictatorship of the market when some blockbusters “saturates the offer with the cinematographic complexes.

Section 6 – Challenge ethical of the economic globalisation extended to the aesthetic field.

We live one generalized paradigmatic time where there exists possible flashback, neither economic nor aesthetic. From where importance of ethics for the spirits concerned about the future of arts : the ethical values are indeed guarantors of a quality of the aesthetic values. Let us specify what it would not know being classical question of morals in all that, but to note that ethics must adapt when esthetics itself evolves in an autonomous and in-depth way. It is the plasticity of the values and their interrelationships which support all this movement.

On the points which interest us, it is enriching to refer to the thought of Claude Lévi Strauss who constitutes a major diversion compared to the “hand stream” of the postmodern thought. In does an article bearing in the cultural policies, the large ethnologist-philosopher wonder whether “fidelity with oneself” and “the opening to the others” are really reconcilable and if there is not “contradiction to imagine only the originality and the creative power which, by definition, have an internal source, can be caused or stimulated outside” ? One can elucidate the three following points of his reflection :

a) the modern very-communication makes that each culture is submerged by the products of other cultures and, “consumed passively, becomes less and less rich and original since the foreign cultures arrive stripped of their authentic freshness, already contaminated and crossed by what they themselves received from the others”.

b) “One could quote contemporary companies where the young generations do not have any more any means of having a simple idea of what were, in their authenticity, the philosopher’s stones, say theatrical or lyric, of their past. Alleged “creators”, actually produced of a rudimentary syncretism, see nothing any more in these works but one raw material which they assume the right to model with their imagination (…)  To create supposes initially that a knowledge was fully assimilated, summarizing the experience accumulated with the wire of the generations…”.

c) “the danger would be to believe that it is only a question of reversing barriers, to release a spontaneousness which, since it would not be blocked any more, would lavish its wealths inexhaustibly (…) To create always consists in fighting against of resistances : material, intellectual, morals or social”.

The argumentation of Lévi Strauss can seem severe or astonish some. It results in saying, paradoxically and far from any sophism, that “any creation supposes a will of conservation (…) It can exist of authentic creation only in one confrontation with constraints which the creator endeavours to turn and to surmount”. In connection with creativity, he writes : “the creator is he that which, in an absolute way, innovates, or that which tests joy to work for his account, even if what it does, others did it before or do it as well as him”.  Creation is not innovation, and “a company which would like to make each one of its members an innovator in power (…) could not progress nor to even reproduce. Adoring the innovation, not for its always rare successes, but for the innovation itself, it would make cheap its assets, impatient which it would be to put without different slackening thing at the place”.

The thought of Claude Lévi Strauss appears premonitory for those which feel the deep crisis of a certain “ethics of esthetics”. One finds at his place the powerful idea that creation feeds with a “internal source” while the creativity “is stimulated outside”.

Section 7 – Creation and creativity

To exceed the speeches aporetic that one too often hears and which is made with the punch, I believe that it is necessary to engage a reflection without a-priori on the distinction of the respective fields of creation and the creativity and to proceed by là-même to new visions of these concepts according to the contribution of an economic approach of arts. I will advance the idea then that creation refers to ethics – the ethics evoking of the values more or less normative – while the creativity operates under influence of the dominant economic law and develops independently of the standards such as they can be established by “the experience accumulated with the wire of the generations” (but not only that of the schools and the artistic academies).

I will then oppose the “ethics of creation” to the “economy of the creativity”, without it being question of any hierarchy of the one about the other. It appears that globalization supports the blooming of the creativity, while creation, in the defense of its autonomy compared to the forces of the economy, is of another petrol that creativity, even if links exist between them : thus the creativity can possibly constitute an economic answer to the crisis of creation.

My position does not consist in slicing to separate them the two concepts of creation and creativity, just as in another order of idea, out of musical matter, it seems to me erroneous to trace a rigorous wall between the composition and interpretation. My goal is not to show that there would be an absolute of creation opposite an absolute of the creativity. But compared to the economic standard in its exogenic dealing, there is an artistic field arising in its projects of non economic, and another stimulated and penetrated artistic field completely different from economic logic.

I will say that néo-liberal globalization, the aesthetic market-king and new technologies do not change anything with this situation. Globalization is the last misadventure to call in question the essential relations of the ethics and the esthetics of arts. Admittedly, the reference to historical “quality” does not mean anything absolute, and it is necessary to be able to call all in question to cope with significant reality in change. It is however necessary to resist, not with globalization, which would be illusory, but with some of its consequences, by daring free criticism when and where it is necessary.

François Perroux wrote : “Any capitalist company functions regularly thanks to social sectors which impregnated nor are not animated a spirit of profit and research of the greatest profit. When the high official, the soldier, the magistrate, the priest, the artist, the scientist are dominated by this spirit, the company collapses and any form of economy is threatened. (…) ”. It is this central ethical question which is raised by the erosion of the aesthetic values which cannot be discredited as a whole in the name of a capitalist system with the barks. Work “created” takes its consistency in reference to an aesthetic ethics, not in reference to a market. The market, which directs the creativity, does not answer an ethical value, but essentially an economic value.

The conditions of artistic creation have-temporal and méta-economic, while those of the artistic “production” are temporal and perish-economic. If creation is a long patience and the aptitude to take the infinite troubles, she is opposed essentially to the economy which is initially an economy of time and money. The modern artistic “production” is connected with the creativity, for example when it chooses “short cuts” which came out from a “rudimentary” multiculturalism. Creation, it, is the result of long “turnings”. Therefore the creativity is about the economic total one (like globalization), while creation is about universal an ethics (in time and space). Between the two grey areas “about creation” and “the creativity range”.

 

Tentative conclusions :

To exceed the bronze baumolienne law over the long period, I spoke about the need for ruser, i.e. to transgress the rules of quality such as they are transmitted in a patrimonial way in creation. As for the creativity, it is made new fashion and news gives : while being influenced by other esthetics (like those of the media), it plays the card of competition and the segmentation, and there one can say that it has extremely to make. The economic pressure urges the “creative one” to take short cuts with respect to the historical context, while the “creator” operates turnings of creation out of economic time and the court-termism.

It follows that the creativity has to follow the dictatorship of the mode and is captive of success because it is in its logic to be grabbed by what is in “the air of time”, by the temptation of sensational, of the scandal or the provocation, while following the media model or that of the aforesaid “culture Internet”, finally by inspiring the multiculturalism of frontage of certain interbreedings or musics too quickly declared “of the world”. It is not to pass beside all the modern art and contemporary only to write that…

The challenges are fundamental for us, people of the SEC, since they engage with a reflection under a particular angle of the “food-growing policy”, to an educational revolution of the young people so that they are released from the pressure of the images, the media and the digital one, to a “saving in culture” worthy of a “food-growing policy”, and which respects the autonomy of artistic creation.

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