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Defending culture differently: methods for tomorrow

My multidisciplinary practices—spanning creation, cultural action, training, and support in a wide range of cultural, social, and educational contexts across France—provide me with a privileged, subjective, and in-depth observatory of the cultural sector in France.

This sector is weakened by its position, often deemed “non-essential” by many political leaders, by the competition from digital platforms in cultural practices, as well as by challenges and obstacles related to the difficulty of establishing interdisciplinary collaborations and the scarcity of evaluations, which are often poorly conducted and instrumentalized.

My observatory allows me to identify dynamics that work, as well as difficulties I observe. Here, I propose to share my analyses, methods, and suggestions, hoping they may prove useful. My goal is to contribute to a stronger cultural sector in the future, as I believe that defending a cultural sector funded by taxpayers’ money holds the potential for emancipation, the development of freedoms, democracy, and the capacity to act—in a way that is fundamentally different from what private actors produce.

This is possible if there is no hypocrisy, and in my view, it comes at the cost of a commitment to lucidity and self-questioning, a choice to deconstruct representations, and perhaps to challenge certain privileges and systems of domination.

The Fertile Margin
The Fertile Margin

Reframe cultural and therapeutic practices within the current reality, where digital culture has become the dominant culture.

Publicly funded culture has become marginal in the face of digital practices. Rather than lamenting this, this article proposes to embrace that margin and turn it into the most vibrant space for our action. We are marginalsCulture is people’s (…)
22 March 2026
  7 min
Growing Up in Cultural Contempt
Growing Up in Cultural Contempt

When the Emancipation Sector Manufactures Domination: A Sociological Analysis of an Intimate Experience

Contempt is not an accident of the cultural system; it is its fuel. What François Dubet analyzes on a societal scale, I experienced from childhood in my very flesh as the child of modest artists. The Child in Front of Télérama: An Original Wound (…)
28 January 2026
  7 min
What Artistic Discourse Reveals About Itself
What Artistic Discourse Reveals About Itself

A semiological analysis of a performance program text, when the talk about art speaks primarily of power.

A flyer distributed to audience members before a show may seem like nothing more than a mediation tool. Linguistic analysis reveals something else: a discourse that assigns roles, constructs hierarchies, and programs the conditions for symbolic (…)
27 January 2026
  18 min
The Dramatization of Mistrust
The Dramatization of Mistrust

When cultural venues stage the opposite of their own rhetoric.

An evening at the theater in a left-leaning city reveals a troubling paradox: the welcoming procedures produce exactly the opposite of the democratic promise. A testimony and analysis. Theater begins before the stageA National Dramatic Center (…)
24 January 2026
  12 min
What we avoid seeing when we defend culture
What we avoid seeing when we defend culture

When young people are forced to go to the theater under threat of sanction, the promised emancipation can become suffered oppression.

Calls to defend funding for arts and cultural education are multiplying in the face of budget cuts. While these commitments are legitimate, they often reveal a significant “unthought”: the absence of a critical analysis of our own practices and (…)
16 January 2026
  6 min
The Representation of One's Cultural Role
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role

What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.

What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the unexamined assumptions of a cultural policy struggling to become democratic. The good news of a surveyThe (…)
6 January 2026
  8 min
For a Permanent Cultural Transformation
For a Permanent Cultural Transformation

Moving beyond political infantilization to rebuild our institutions.

Faced with budget cuts in arts education, cultural actors appeal to those in power. This posture of supplication reveals, in my view, a dead end. It is time to think differently about our action. The political choice to miseducateProfessional (…)
1 January 2026
  6 min
Is Culture Serving the Public?
Is Culture Serving the Public?

Reflections on the dead ends of French cultural policy.

Do the 4 billion euros of the national culture budget truly serve the general interest? This question deserves to be asked pointedly, as budget cuts continue to accumulate. On the ground, committed professionals who have long been asking this (…)
28 December 2025
  7 min
The True False Cultural Freedom
The True False Cultural Freedom

When defending creative freedom masks a corporatist conflict.

Faced with recent film deprogrammings by elected officials from various political sides, a collective statement expresses outrage at political interference in cultural programming. Yet this corporatist indignation obscures a structural reality (…)
24 December 2025
  5 min
The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors' Independence
The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors’ Independence

When the fear of political alternation reveals the unspoken truths of the French cultural sector.

Cultural actors have been regularly mobilizing for some time against an alleged threat to their programming and creative freedom. But does this independence they claim really exist? An analysis of the relationships between culture and politics in (…)
23 December 2025
  6 min
The False Public-Private Debate in the Cultural Sector
The False Public-Private Debate in the Cultural Sector

What is at stake in cultural policies is not the public-private opposition, but a transformation in what we expect from culture.

The rhetoric of scarcity masks deliberate political choices. Deconstructing the false public-private debate allows us to think differently about the place of cultural actors in the contemporary ecosystem. The Myth of Scarcity: A Political Lie (…)
21 December 2025
  6 min
The Free Institution
The Free Institution

Opening spaces for creation outside the logics of cultural domination.

For thirty-five years, in response to the systems of domination that structure the cultural field, I have been proposing an alternative approach: the free institution, a framework that legitimizes creation without imposing hierarchy or (…)
4 December 2025
  5 min
Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?
Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?

A plea for a democratic refoundation of cultural institutions in the face of political arbitrariness.

From Arcadi in Île-de-France in 2018 to the Agence culturelle Grand Est in 2025, cultural agencies are disappearing into indifference. Beyond the observation, a reflection on the conditions for a sector’s resilience. When Cultural Institutions (…)
25 November 2025
  6 min
Social Networks and Cultural Institutions: Breaking the Strategic Deadlock
Social Networks and Cultural Institutions: Breaking the Strategic Deadlock

Towards a digital policy that renounces communication in favor of citizen empowerment.

Local authorities are massively investing in their presence on social networks without questioning the relevance of this approach, and are generally losing resources in futile endeavors. Yet magnificent projects can be built there. The (…)
24 November 2025
  7 min
Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives
Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives

Rethinking the link between cultural institutions and citizens through collective storytelling.

Cultural structures struggle to mobilize audiences. Rather than perfecting communication strategies, I explore here a different path: that of democratic narrative as a tool for legitimizing and transforming the cultural sector. The diagnosis of a (…)
10 November 2025
  6 min
On the Fragility of Corporatism
On the Fragility of Corporatism

When the defense of cultural privileges masquerades as freedom of expression.

The recent condemnation of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region has aroused enthusiasm among performing arts professionals. Yet, this provisional legal victory masks, in my view, a real problem: the corporatist defense of a caste at the expense of (…)
9 November 2025
  8 min
The connected audience
The connected audience

Rethinking cultural participation through building connections.

Cultural attendance does not depend on communication but on the bond woven between people and cultural offerings. This prior relationship determines the meaning that each person finds in participating. Beyond the Logic of Supply: Connection as (…)
30 October 2025
  5 min
Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism
Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism

Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.

In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a troubling propensity for submission that questions its capacity for future resistance. The cultural (…)
27 October 2025
  5 min
Rethinking the digital content strategy of cultural institutions
Rethinking the digital content strategy of cultural institutions

For a web presence that prioritizes editorial authority over social media dispersion.

Cultural institutions would benefit from concentrating their efforts on producing reference content rather than maintaining a dispersed presence on social media. A refocused editorial strategy allows them to build lasting authority and let (…)
23 October 2025
  5 min
The artistic relationship with the audience
The artistic relationship with the audience

The paradoxical intimacy of live streams on social media.

Starting from the Belgian pop duo Candeur Cyclone on social media, I explore the dialectic of contemporary artistic encounters. Questioning our traditional conceptions of performance and connection with the audience. The Singularity of Digital (…)
19 October 2025
  4 min
The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution
The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution

For a citizen reappropriation of creation.

Rethinking culture beyond institutional walls: how spontaneous practices redefine our relationship with creation and question established cultural policies. The legitimacy of spontaneous cultural practicesWhen people organize in their homes, (…)
27 September 2025
  4 min
The Accelerated Eye
The Accelerated Eye

Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.

What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to the work that disrupts established cultural hierarchies. Acceleration as an act of creation: moving (…)
7 September 2025
  7 min
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization

Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.

Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to creative legitimacy. The meritocratic illusion of cultural democratizationCultural democratization, in (…)
24 August 2025
  5 min
The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture
The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture

Rethinking the Role of Public Funding Beyond the Numbers

In 2025, debates over funding cuts for culture are heating up, following unprecedented reductions in public subsidies and a political shift in this direction. It is not “culture” that is under threat, but the subsidized cultural sector. The real (…)
22 July 2025
  7 min
For a narrative revolution of territories
For a narrative revolution of territories

The urgency of a horizontal cultural democracy.

What if true cultural power resided in the stories we write, daily, from our positions, with our words? Each territory produces a narrative. Not the frozen and smooth one communicated by institutions alone, but a living, multiple narrative, (…)
19 July 2025
  5 min
Implementing cultural dissemination
Implementing cultural dissemination

Towards a decentralized and participatory cultural network.

Faced with the crisis of cultural democratization and a growing disengagement of public action in the cultural domain, new forms of artistic distribution are emerging. These initiatives, carried out outside traditional circuits, reveal a genuine (…)
16 July 2025
  4 min
Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce
Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce

From Louis XIV to Rachida Dati: anatomy of a rupture between subsidized culture and political legitimacy.

Culture is no longer the theater of power. Once an instrument of political influence, it now struggles to justify its public funding. How can we renew democratic dialogue in a context where cultural practices have profoundly evolved, under the (…)
14 July 2025
  16 min
What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?
What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?

A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.

All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of cultural policies. Why is culture necessarily political?The answer is obvious. A culture represents a (…)
11 July 2025
  8 min
Dilapidation of resources in supply logic
Dilapidation of resources in supply logic

For a democratic revolution of cultural practices.

Faced with the crisis in the cultural sector, it is urgent to shift from a top-down supply logic to a culture of connection and listening, inspired by digital practices. Traditional supply logic versus the digital modelThe cultural field is (…)
2 July 2025
  8 min
Formalizing the informal
Formalizing the informal

Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.

The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for innovation, developing methods that transcend the limitations of in-person training. The paradoxical (…)
22 June 2025
  5 min
Towards a distributed cultural sector
Towards a distributed cultural sector

Hypotheses on the commons and digital diversity.

What if digital cultures showed us how to build the commons through distribution rather than centralization? This hypothesis invites us to rethink cultural fragmentation not as a threat but as an opportunity. Digital technology as a laboratory (…)
18 June 2025
  5 min
France's cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink
France’s cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink

From 1959 to 2025, history repeats itself... in reverse.

French cultural sector funding is crumbling. Malraux’s “colonial” heritage (1959) is obsolete in the face of digital technology and political attacks. Vital urgency: decolonize or disappear. A troubling historical parallelThe French cultural (…)
16 June 2025
  9 min
Cultivating digital sovereignty
Cultivating digital sovereignty

For a democratic reclaiming of our digital spaces.

Faced with our growing dependence on tech giants, digital sovereignty is becoming a major democratic challenge. It’s time to act collectively. The foundations of digital sovereigntyDigital sovereignty refers to the ability of a State, (…)
14 June 2025
  8 min
Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence
Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence

Towards an open, non-directive methodology for revealing the unexpected.

How can we transcend the limitations of traditional cultural surveys? By combining spontaneous dialogues and AI analysis, a new approach could allow us to discover what we would never have thought to look for. The limits of traditional surveys: a (…)
13 June 2025
  5 min
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights

Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.

Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia contradicts cultural rights: how can we build a relationship without memory? Institutional Amnesia in the (…)
10 June 2025
  7 min
Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects
Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects

For “cultural prevention” policies.

The subsidized cultural sector is going through a crisis of legitimacy after betraying its democratic values. I believe that a refoundation through sincere evaluation is necessary. A sector in crisis that refuses to see its contradictionsIn (…)
2 June 2025
  6 min
Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues
Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues

For a truly inclusive cultural democracy.

Do cultural venues filter their audiences, consciously or unconsciously, according to criteria of radicalism? This question reveals our contradictions about violence and extremism. Proposals for exercising democracy. What is a radicalized person? (…)
31 May 2025
  3 min
Cultural venues and social networks
Cultural venues and social networks

How to turn audiences into ambassadors rather than chasing followers.

Cultural venues are on social media out of obligation, without a clear strategy or convincing results. We need to rethink their presence: no longer communicating vertically, but nurturing audience sharing. A presence to be questionedCultural (…)
30 May 2025
  7 min
Documentation and artificial intelligence
Documentation and artificial intelligence

Rethinking professional practices.

Generative AI can profoundly enrich our professional practices. To exploit their potential for constructive synthesis and analysis, we need to rethink our relationship with the documentation of our activities. Anthropological changesWith the (…)
29 May 2025
  4 min
For a virtuous dispersal of the cultural sector
For a virtuous dispersal of the cultural sector

The end of traditional cultural influence.

The cultural sector is going through a major crisis that reveals a paradigm shift. In my opinion, we must now cultivate culture everywhere, in all sectors. A paradigm shift at workThe French cultural sector is in a phase of very great (…)
24 May 2025
  3 min
The marginality of cultural institutions
The marginality of cultural institutions

Lucidity of a paradigm shift.

Traditional cultural institutions, once central, have become marginal in the face of digital practices that now dominate citizens’ attention. This paradigm shift demands a reinvention of public cultural service—more humble but potentially more (…)
1 May 2025
  6 min
On the role of artists
On the role of artists

For a politics of the artist.

The political role of the artist is never neutral. Whether they want it or not, their social position and aesthetic choices reflect an engagement, conscious or unconscious, in the life of the community. Becoming aware of it and defining it allows (…)
22 April 2025
  5 min
Primary and secondary cultural practices
Primary and secondary cultural practices

For a cultural dialectic of public proposals.

Daily cultural practices (internal) are underestimated compared to external cultural offerings, yet the latter are secondary in people’s lives. Professionals must acknowledge this reality. Two Levels of Cultural PracticesI refer to primary (…)
16 April 2025
  3 min
Re-engaging France's public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen
Re-engaging France’s public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen

Avenues of action for a permanent future.

Facing budget cuts, the public cultural sector must reconnect with its democratic mission. Beyond corporatism, professionals must strengthen their ties with citizens and fully assume their political responsibility. An entrenched phenomenonIn (…)
15 April 2025
  11 min
Evolving forms of artistic creation
Evolving forms of artistic creation

An anthropological reflection on the forms of subsidized artistic creation.

Subsidized art must distinguish itself from the commercial sector through a fundamentally democratic approach, favoring shared experience over elitist creations, to better fulfill its public mission. Clearly distinguishing between commercial and (…)
13 April 2025
  3 min
Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy

When digital mediation transforms the relationship between citizens and heritage.

Video in museums represents a challenge of cultural mediation and the democratization of heritage. In the digital age, it transforms the relationship between audiences and institutions, allowing citizens to actively participate in the (…)
8 April 2025
  2 min
Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices
Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices

Anthropology of the future.

To foster intercultural dialogue, we need to legitimize cultural practices that are unknown to us, without ranking them above our own. This openness is essential for building bridges between different realities, as shown by the example of young (…)
7 April 2025
  2 min
Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector
Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector

Methodological approaches.

By 2025, it seems essential to enable employees and stakeholders in the cultural sector to share the challenges of AI within their professional context, to explore its potential, and to implement responsible and cooperative uses, for a better (…)
22 March 2025
  3 min
Overcoming the fragility of public funding for culture
Overcoming the fragility of public funding for culture

Anthropological point of view, to sketch out future paths.

Public funding for culture is currently perceived as being under considerable threat, and so the cultural sector seems to be in an extremely fragile state. I’d like to draw up a few perspectives from a slightly different point of view on this (…)
16 March 2025
  4 min
Systematize mutual discoveries between cultural players
Systematize mutual discoveries between cultural players

Removing obstacles to cooperation.

Common-sense proposal for better mutual understanding among cultural actors in the same territory. Why don’t we know each other well enough?In France, within the cultural field, it is all too common to observe that actors within the same (…)
11 March 2025
  2 min
Pour une robustesse coopérative des projets culturels
Pour une robustesse coopérative des projets culturels

Réflexion sur les modalités de coopération territoriale et d’évaluation.

Pour que les projets culturels puissent trouver pleinement leur sens social et devenir plus robustes face aux attaques politiques qui les jugent « non essentielles », il me semble nécessaire de réfléchir aux dynamiques de coopération et (…)
10 février 2025
  4 min
“Donotdo”
“Donotdo”

Methodological concept of setting the world in motion.

The neologism “donotdo”, which I develop here, describes the capacity we have to set the world in motion at great depth, to transform it in a way that is far more powerful than through the traditional doing.We aspire, a priori, to create and (…)
4 January 2025
  5 min
New directions
New directions

A film by Emmanuel Vergès and Benoît Labourdette (1’25s, 2021).

"What if we gave ourselves new directions by seeking new points of view?Text by Emmanuel Vergès.Direction, image, sound by Benoît Labourdette.Shot at the Domaine of Chamarande, France - 2021.
6 January 2021
  3 min
Balance and supports
Balance and supports

A method for the sustainability of projects.

Based on the way the human body balances itself, for a sustainable approach to project management.Observation of nature is often very good advice for engineering projects (architecture, aviation, textiles, IT, neural networks for example...). (…)
8 August 2020
  10 min
Build antifragility for cultural projects
Build antifragility for cultural projects

Methodological proposal.

What methodology should be adopted to build cultural projects that have the capacity to tame uncertainty and thus become more deeply rooted in their objectives? Methodological proposal, based on the thesis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the (…)
12 June 2020
  11 min