Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
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 construction of heritage.
Moving Beyond the Focus on the Artwork
One might assume that the primary challenge of video in museums lies in its content. However, its online interoperability, discoverability, digital preservation, its place on social media, and online mediation—in other words, the concrete issues of cultural democracy—seem secondary. In my view, this is not the case. The subject of video in the museum field extends far beyond the question of its on-site exhibition. The challenge of video is the challenge of mediation: how do we mediate today? It’s about understanding how citizens engage with cultural heritage.
As cultural professionals, we all want more people—and more diverse people—to come to museums, theaters, concerts, etc. Yet, these audiences have multiple cultural practices tied to apps, the internet, and digital tools. These are indeed cultural practices: they discover content, take an interest in topics, become passionate, educate themselves, interact, create, and exchange with one another.
We cannot ignore this aspect. While using videos in exhibitions is a good thing, it remains insufficient. Why? Because audiovisual creation tools are becoming more accessible, altering the anthropology of the relationship between amateurs and professionals, between visitors, curators, and mediators. We can entrust visitors with part of the mediation process, which disrupts the traditional boundaries of each role.
The Anthropology of Technology and Its Uses
It is essential to consider this new paradigm and reflect accordingly. If we view video solely as a technique, it means we have failed to understand—or refuse to acknowledge—that a technique always has anthropological impacts. It changes the world, relationships, and life itself.
Concerns about SEO, discoverability, digital archiving, and the long-term preservation of online video productions are absolutely fundamental in a cultural and heritage-driven approach. Precisely because heritage and mediation go hand in hand. Video should not be merely a marketing tool to attract audiences to physical exhibitions but a true instrument of heritage and museum construction, incorporating its own accessibility. This is neither tedious nor complicated—in my opinion, it is inherent to the mission of museums and cultural institutions today.
The internet is, in itself, a vast museum, accessible and used by everyone daily. We must fully exploit its potential to connect with our offerings, which must radically transform by accounting for these major shifts in relationships and roles.
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.
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On the role of artists
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Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
When digital mediation transforms the relationship between citizens and heritage.
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