AI, rise of populism… Faced with new challenges, "culture is not dead"assures Arnaud Idelon

Dince the health crisis of 2020 and the classification of cultural places as “non-essential” by the government, the world of culture has been in decline. Between the loss of importance in public debate and budget cuts, cultural actors must deal with few resources to defend themselves from the rise of reactionary ideologies, the monopoly of imaginations accelerated with generative AI and the concentration phenomenon. Despite everything, the worlds of culture continue to reinvent themselves in the interstices of forms of resistance, like so many reasons for hope to deal with the challenges that lie ahead.

In his latest work, Culture low costpublished by Éditions Divergences, Arnaud Idelon, author, journalist and cultural programmer, makes a self-criticism of a world of culture in danger without losing hope in the face of the various forms of resistance which are emerging on the territory like the question of the commons.

Marianne : Why use the term “low cost” to talk about culture?

Arnaud Idelon: This term directly refers to the drastic budget cuts that target the worlds of culture today. Culture has fewer and fewer resources, hence the idea of ​​low cost culture. Knowing that this budgetary crisis, which serves as a primer in the book, is rather the symptom of a political crisis. These are no longer reductions which are contrite and forced, but which are fully assumed for political reasons. If we look at the figures for 2025, we have 50% of local authorities which have reduced their funding for culture. For the departments, it’s 70%.

What are the different crises affecting the worlds of culture?

This budgetary crisis, which affects culture, is the symptom of a political crisis, but also that of a democratic crisis. But if politicians today allow themselves to hit culture so hard, it is because it resonates in public opinion and because it resonates with the electorate. The worlds of culture have lost their footing or lost a certain basis among the working classes. It is the symptom of a final crisis of meaning.

From this observation, I call for self-criticism and to ask ourselves why we have lost this foundation? In this period of emergency, perhaps we should ask ourselves again, rather than defending the means, the question of the end.

How is cultural policy expressed in a low cost regime?

Cultural policy in the low-cost regime is expressed in many ways. The first being the New Public Management. This idea of ​​applying performance management to public services, and in this case to cultural policies, where we will ask culture, like any other economic domain, to produce performances. We will judge culture in terms of its effectiveness and try to rationalize in a very mathematical way what it produces, completely forgetting the specificities of the cultural world. Then, the other forms of cultural policy in a low-cost regime will be competition via calls for projects, where actors, particularly associations, will respond to calls for projects to have some funds and will compete with each other to obtain this subsidy.

As a final point, I try to talk about dogmas, beliefs, fetishes, telling myself that, to really become aware of what is wrong in the worlds of culture, we must also rethink our systems of thought, our frames of reference, and our beliefs which prevent us from moving forward like patronage.

To what extent is culture a bulwark against the reactionary arc?

There is a battle of imaginations which is underway, with on the one hand attacks from far-right and right-wing political personnel on the worlds of culture, with phenomena of obstruction, censorship and direct attacks in the press, etc., on a supposed social non-usefulness of culture. And then, on the other side, we have the market with a concentration in particular of the media and publishing houses in the hands of Vincent Bolloré, with Stérin who comes to finance the French canons and the Immersive cities, with de Villiers, who puts Puy-du-Fou at the service of a certain vision of France. We can clearly see how, today, a certain economy deprived of culture is in the hands of reactionary ideologues.

It is a culture which will be put at the service of a unified, uniform, fantasized, monolithic national narrative which would say “this is what France is”, “this is what French heritage is” and “these are the values ​​of France”. When in reality, culture is the complete opposite of that. It is the place of instability, of trouble, of complexity, of empathy too, thanks to fiction. It is important to come and cherish what the culture produces of plurality of perspectives, of constant shifting of ways of seeing the world and of putting plurality and diversity back into our imaginations.

What role do concentration phenomena and the development of AI play in the low-cost future of culture?

We see in culture there are phenomena of concentration like the empire built by Vincent Bolloré. Until then, the risk of monopolies, not to mention ideology, is standardization and lack of cultural diversity. If culture is in the hands of the same group then the latter will work with its own cultural references, will play on economies of scale, pooling, etc., and will, little by little, come to format a cultural offer. And when, in addition, billionaires, like Stérin, Bolloré, De Villiers, Carmignac and others, come out of the woodwork assuming they have a certain political, civilizational, rather conservative and reactionary will, we have a standardization in the service of a narrative which diminishes the imagination.

Regarding AI, it doesn’t create anything. It is nothing less than algorithmic calculation, and statistical prediction based on what already exists. The problem is that artistic creation has always been a break with what exists, with academia, with school, the mainstream, the great dominant movements. Artificial intelligence, if it draws on what is already there in a society which is otherwise a bourgeois, white, patriarchal, extractivist society, it will only give continuity and amplify these already dominant imaginations and we will gradually lose our ability to move away from the lines of force. already written.

What is your definition of a third cultural place?

For me, these are places that will create culture in a way that is anchored in their territory by positioning themselves as resources and tools for the territory and the inhabitants of this territory, from which we will put into discussion, into debate, what constitutes culture, how we address it. They are a space-time for the implementation of cultural rights and they are places where we will also ask ourselves the question of governance and the distribution of value. I see there interstices where other political modes will be imagined in the question of work, in the question of decision-making, in the question of the distribution of value.

Regarding public institutions and private institutions financed by public money, you say in your book that the French cultural landscape is becoming the scene of a double movement. Can you come back to this point?

Today we are dealing with worlds of culture which are extremely threatened. This observation could be an opportunity to ask ourselves how to confront the attacks of the reactionary arc. But unfortunately, I have the impression that third places, for example, have become a new fetish. We equip ourselves with a fetish that allows us to preserve what François Dubé calls “necessary fictions”, things that we try to believe in, even if we don’t really believe in them, otherwise everything collapses. Patronage is one of them.

In France, since the Aillagon law of 2003, the legal and tax system for sponsorship has been one of the most attractive in the world. I have nothing against patronage. But let’s stop lying to ourselves. A company decides to finance a cultural project of general interest because this project will serve its objectives as a company, all with 60% of money from the State. Where the Palais de Tokyo or the Grande Halle de la Villette, for example, are rather around 50 to 52% public money. So there, in fact, we have a two-speed system, a double movement, since on one side, we will have private institutions, but ultimately financed by 60% of state money without having any accountability to the state on questions of programming, parity, ecology, etc. and on the other, a public cultural service with fewer resources.

Can culture be completely privatized in the long term?

Unfortunately, yes, clearly, it could happen. Finally, if we listen to everything that is announced to us, the Court of Auditors which threatens the CNAP (National Center for Plastic Arts), the RN which threatens the CNC. We are still on the verge of gradually dismantling all the bodies supporting, facilitating and public funding for culture. Basically, on the other hand, we have not equipped ourselves with legal tools to counter monopoly phenomena and we can see a great risk of privatization of culture. But I think that all is not lost, the establishment of common areas can be a solution.

The commons is the capacity of civil society to self-organize around a resource that is important to it and to adopt rules to preserve the sustainability of this resource. But they must not arrive at the end of the chain as the last solution in the face of the bankruptcy of the State or in any case of the public cultural service. They are an immense opportunity to rethink the way of creating culture by really asking the question “why?” “, from “for whom? » and « with whom? HAS”.

***

Culture low costby Arnaud Idelon, Divergences, 150 p., 16 €.