It stinks, it's damp and it's decaying. Loose beams hang down from the ceiling, and the podium is made out of two old crates. Two glaring bare light bulbs cast long shadows on the brown-painted walls, from which the plaster is coming off in chunks. Revolutionaries need things this way. At the latest since watching the Schopenhauer-like visions in the film »Matrix« we know that reality is gray like this; baubles and trinkets are mere illusions that we must fight against with a strong will.
»Le Barbizon,« in the southeastern part of Paris, is an old, vacated cinema. The question »Art and Activism: What makes for an artistic revolution?« lured some forty interested persons to come here. It rapidly becomes clear that the relationship between politics and art, which both occupy the symbolic field making up social identity, is every bit as brittle in present-day France as the old artificial leather seats in this revolutionaries' theater. Taking their place at the podium are artists Olivier Blanckart and Alain Declercq, as well as art historian Hélène Sirven. They criticize the actionism that is currently in fashion, the height of which is considered to be »hardcore« and the Palais de Tokyo, and emphasize the necessary distance to politics and the freedom of the arts.
The larger question of what an artistic revolutionary is supposed to be or can be remains, unsurprisingly, unanswered. At any rate, the more interesting questions asked here were why art always has to shock and whether artists actually have any influence at all and are not more like curious little pets that society likes to keep and marvel at. And, whether art does not always reach an audience that per se affirms its message. Declerc answers the question of whether it is actually possible to show actionistic art in a museum in the affirmative. For him, museums are platforms on which he can appear and, perhaps, succeed in making people think. He does not regard exhibiting on the one hand or trying to shake things up a bit on the other hand as alternatives, but as complementary facets of his work. For a project in Korea he borrowed a police car, blocked the steering wheel and gas pedal, sprang out and let the car drive around in circles until the tank was empty.
This symbol of state power that goes around in circles while staying in the same place might well be applied to French cultural policy. Particularly with regard to safeguarding the nation's cultural heritage, France's institutions have become shop windows in which art recedes to the status of so much wall-to-wall carpeting. Paris is just one big shop window. Between monuments, museums and rentals that are all beyond the pale of good taste, there is hardly any room for freelance artists, whose ranks continue to swell as some 10,000 newcomers graduate from art schools throughout the country each year.
To put things right, considerable means have been invested since 1983 in the organs of decentralization. The grand exhibitions on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the FRAC (Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain) demonstrate that with this strategy the French state has up till now succeeded above all in keeping a gigantic art-collecting machine in motion. Now, this is all supposed to change; there is a desire to »hand over responsibility and decision-making power.« Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon presented a 15-point plan in late May that proposes shifting responsibility for 400 cultural monuments to the communes or regions. Although 110 million euros have been earmarked for the preservation of historic monuments and 30 million euros for art education in the provinces, the plans are nonetheless regarded by many as signaling the state's intention to shirk its duties in these matters.
Paris is tightening its belt as well: only with great difficulty are the museums able to stay open. Initiatives that spark important impulses, such as the annual salon »jeune création,« are forced to scramble for meager subsidies. Criticism of the allegedly murky and dirigiste funding policy is growing louder. »For us,« says Nicolas Roméas, director of the initiative 'horschamp', »decentralization does not mean a leveling of art to make it more palatable for the market, as is apparently the intention of current politics. Decentralization means promoting all of those who remain in the shadows of the grand media spectacle.«
Together with »horschamp.org,« websites such as »passeurs.org«, »confluences.net« and »arpact.org« are striving to create more independent structures. Functioning in part as straightforward information pools, and also as Web windows onto »analog« meeting places, these websites by now have given rise to doubts about the seriousness of the »art« produced by the hardcore activists. With the linkage of Hacktivism, globalization critique and committed Web design, art becomes an overtaxed label, cheapened just like when the big department stores decorate their windows with the art of the "Young Savages". Surrealistic experiments such as »wwwwwwwww.jodi.org« or »pavu.com« are rare by comparison. That also goes for militant sites that try to make »parasitic« use of the Web. Among these, »connexe.org« was awarded the prize for best work in the category of Web activism at the Flash Festival, which took place at the Centre Pompidou at the end of May. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Internet in France is often nothing more than a pure infobox.
This is definitely the case with respect to »Reflex(e)«: on »horschamp.org« one can read the latest meeting minutes of this group, which aims to force reflection on and reaction to the withdrawal of those responsible for cultural policy. They also believe that the FRAC has failed: »Even today, artists that want to be recognized must have exhibited in Paris. There is still no contact with the international market.« Participation and »collective working out« of state funding structures are to be achieved by a »democratic parliament of decentralization,« to be founded mid-June in Lyon. This artistic service for the benefit of the community first asks the question of what modes the campaign should take: How can we work together? How should each individual contribute to the whole?
The philosopher Etienne Balibar wanted artists to be »Antigones for our time;« they should »try to penetrate into the really irreconcilable points in the representation of man or that which is human.« In present-day France it's more a case of looking for strength in numbers. And looking for work where there is less and less of it to be found. »If one were to take all the money spent by the police in flushing out artists squatting in unoccupied houses, and invest it in creating studios instead, there would already be a great deal to be gained,« says Annie Stansal, a member of the team at »Interface«. This artists' group mediates between house owners and squatters as well as the city administration, offering to manage vacant properties or mediate exchanges such as »a studio in return for art.«
This is vaguely reminiscent of the »Food for Oil« programs and draws attention to the dilemma of French politics, caught between promotion and repression: at the same time that the Minister of Culture is fighting against the complete ossification of the former art capitals, Minster of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy is busy putting squatters out on the streets. Financial and political pressure tends to weld people together, with more and more new associations being founded every day. With his FRAAP, »Fédération des Réseaux et Associations d’Artistes Plasticiens,« Antoine Perrot wants to bring more structure into the abundance of individually-acting groups, to make them more visible and more effective. The first nation-wide meeting will take place in September, with 5,000 participants expected. In closed workshops with political office-holders, concrete steps for improvement are to be worked out. Painter and draftsman Perrot is skeptical with regard to works based on political themes: »Often in such works, society's losers are instrumentalized. Artistic work is political when it changes our view of things and not when it illustrates the political.«
In fact, art often plays a didactic role in political action. Conversely, effective art is always political because it intervenes in the symbolic field from which society grows. The French state needs art and culture as a structuring element of the republican order. When art is freed from the yoke of inscrutable subsidy policies, it's this very order that is called into question. The drift of state-funded art away from art that is produced independently splits the symbolic field. In their struggle for affordable workspace and social security, artists are on the same side as that steadily growing group of inhabitants that are not being effectively integrated by the Republic. If the artists' campaign were to succeed in giving this group a face and a new self-awareness, they would perhaps be able to play a decisive role in the reshaping of France.
Translated by Jenny Taylor-Gaida