Through crises, wars, and storms, live art is more essential than ever. Some lucid and subversive wishes for our sector in 2024
During the pandemic, art was the oasis in the desert where confinement and remote work stretched endlessly. TV series, books, and podcasts offered some solace to audiences, while enhanced subsidies provided comfort to live artists. By this gesture, we believed that finally, we understood the importance of our role, financing our embryonic ideas so they could unfold when emerging from dark days and accompany the public day by day.
It is undeniable that the era when the masses turned to the arts in times of crisis is over. As performances are canceled due to lack of substantial funding and audiences, the public seems to turn away from one crisis... to learn about another. The succession of wars, natural disasters, and socioeconomic downturns leaves no respite for the soul, which finds itself involuntarily drawn to new draining issues. The common enemy that we could combat with poetry and creativity has multiplied to such an extent that we – as a society – have unlearned how to tackle it on multiple fronts. The result: we scatter attention and public funds, weakening the institutions that carry beauty and inquiry.
So, what should we wish for in 2024? Simplification of issues to make more room for art in the collective consciousness? A return to the 1920s, when excess light only covered a forthcoming even greater fall? Amid social media glorifying echo chambers and newsrooms magnifying the ends of the world, where is the space to dream?
At CAPAS, we believe in reconnecting with popular culture!
Not in the populist sense, which seizes every opportunity to present shows without research or virtuosity. Nor popularity, where mass appeal outweighs a genuine critical view of our world.
Popular in the sense of plural, democratic, humane. A diverse, sensitive living art that speaks to everyone and questions everything. In response to the multiplication of crises, let's respond with the multiplication of works. Well-produced and well-integrated into an ecosystem currently saturated.
Popular in the sense of facing the real light of the people. Moving away from the distorting and abyssal prism of the virtual to rediscover the unique warmth of an ephemeral, rare, sacred spectacle.
Popular in the sense of unifying. The return of outings together, with family, friends, to be moved by a work that makes us vibrate. Inviting as many people as possible to recognize themselves in the excellence of our work, to remember that we create to reach out to them. To speak to them. And to listen to them.
Popular in the sense of accessible. An art that chooses to counteract financial inequalities by providing the necessary structures for contemporary creation to be accessible to the largest number without compromising the future of our professionals.
Popular in the sense of rigorous. Offering audiences quality works that appeal as much to their intelligence as to their emotions. Giving local creators the means of their ambitions to show that with the support of their institutions, they can illuminate the shadows.
Popular in tune with the current world. Acknowledging the influence of artificial intelligence and the importance of sustainable development while being aware of the resources available to the arts community to integrate them harmoniously into its practices.
Popular in the sense of close to our audiences. Producing and disseminating with open eyes on our society, its desires as well as its challenges. Propelling works that will truly attract audiences to sustain the sector, without compromising on the depth of art.
Just as the Dadaism of the 1930s was the raw response to the absurdity of wars, the art of the 2020s must be the sensitive, rigorous, strong, luminous, and solid response to the harshness of the world. In 2024, we can thus wish for a more popular art due to its resilience, its outreach to the public, and its desire to see beyond the storms. Faced with an abundance of crises, there is only one solution: to dream louder, all together, of what the future should truly look like.
As Geneviève Desrosiers once said:
« Nombreux seront nos ennemis. Let our enemies be numerous.
Tu verras comme nous serons heureux. » You will see how happy we will be