Inaugural Lecture of the Stirring Culture Series -
Thinking of Culture

Calgary, Tuesday, October 2, 2007

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I am delighted to be with you this evening to think about culture, here in Calgary, where for more than a year, a few people have seen fit to “stir it up.”

In the case of culture, stirring it up and thinking about it strike me as two complementary and even sequential operations: you have to give it a good stir first in order to think about it more productively. The latter depends on the former. They are like the fox and the porcupine in the Invectives of the Greek poet-soldier Archilochus: the fox knows many things, juggles many ideas, runs madly off in all directions and is in danger of being misled by the merest hint. The porcupine, on the other hand, knows one big thing and clings to it. This evening we shall endeavour to combine the agitation of the fox and the stubborn vigilance of the porcupine: on the one hand, we shall give our culture a stir; on the other, we shall strive to give it some thought.

I am very happy to be doing this in Calgary, because I might say that it was almost a year ago here in Calgary that it all began, when I met Lance Carlson right here at the EPCOR Centre, at Colin Jackson’s invitation. At that time, I discovered people involved in critical debate concerning the relationship between cultural development and community advancement. People who are aware that today in our society, “we need to show the value of arts, we need to play the role of translator.” On that occasion, I recall, Lance Carlson talked about a recent discussion with Robert Crampton at Heritage Canada that dealt with what Canada will present at the next world expo in Shanghai in 2010: not the products, but a way of thinking and dealing with things.

I realized then that Calgary could serve as a key Canadian laboratory for the role of culture in social development, as the economic boom makes people hesitate between change and maintaining the status quo.

The need to ponder, to think about culture, that is so clearly felt in Calgary is also a national symptom. It reveals an identical need that is Canada-wide. Townspeople and country dwellers alike ask us the same question: as individuals we have identities, but what are we as a community? I think the time has come for Calgarians and all Canadians to take a risk—possibly a calculated one—and agree that the central challenge of the 21st century is the defence of the human environment. Culture is a vital component of it, and must be defended and protected just as nature must be. That is the issue, if we want a world that is habitable for human beings. We all have a responsibility, because it is clear today that we have to draw a terrible lesson from the history of the 20th century: of all the threats that hang over us, the one we should fear most, the only real one, is ourselves.

That is what I am forced to conclude as I prepare to undertake with you this reflection and debate about culture.

To begin with, however, what are we talking about? Culture, of course—and the word is such a part of our daily lives that it seems obvious. In fact, we are so accustomed to saying “everything is cultural” that we should clarify the use and meaning of the word before we go any further.

So, what is culture, if it is not the momentum that drives humankind to greater humanity? Over time, in fact, culture seems to be what indicates progress in the humanization of human beings. If we go back to the etymological origin of the word culture, in old French its first meaning was religious worship, and the religious practices and rites that bring people together around a shared belief, a world view, what today we might refer to as “fellowship.”

At the same time, the same word designates the process of imparting culture, of cultivating, the first step mankind took in transforming nature, namely agriculture. Thus the cultivation of wheat, corn or potatoes was the first example of how mankind put a human face on nature, making nature subservient in order to ensure survival of the species. Thus, cultivation or culture was both primeval and essential.

Beginning in the 18th century, by analogy, “culture” came to mean human progress, the ascent of reason and enlightenment, and hence the advance of knowledge and critical thinking. It was in the English language that the word would assume its contemporary meaning, particularly with the development of anthropology, which used it to designate the ways, beliefs, modes of expression, behaviour and customs of societies and peoples. It could be said that we are indebted to the English anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871) for the first modern definition of “culture.” He wrote: “Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

Today, for the purposes of our discussion, I would say that culture is a shared asset in the same way air, water and all natural resources are. It is central to modern societies, in many different forms. It might even be added that we can no longer measure the success of a country, a province, a city or a community of any kind by its economic achievements alone. More than ever, the development of a culture—that is the greater humanity essential to a shared life together—contributes not only to individual well-being, but also to economic growth and success.

In Canada, we have difficulty in regarding culture as a whole, given the structural diversity of Canadian society. For decades, for lack of more profound reflection, we have had the habit of describing “culture” as a combination of interrelated cultures tied to the two dominant cultural groups: Anglophones and Francophones. That is no doubt why we have had numerous studies of regional subcultures, with no really exhaustive study of how relations operate within this set of subcultures. People have generally been satisfied with an ethno-geographic description that has more to do with the desire to facilitate administrative management of resources than with a desire to derive a model of the overall operation.

As a result, there seems to be no end to the divisions: from Western Canadians and Central or Eastern Canadians, and their respective and contrasting mentalities, we move on to the subcultures that spring from divisions between Northern Ontarians and Southern Ontarians, Quebeckers from Abitibi, Beauce or Lac-Saint-Jean, or residents of Calgary or Edmonton. There are also contrasts between the mentalities and characteristics that urban legends have assigned to Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and so on.

Confusion reigns supreme when we take into consideration the ethnic multiplicity of Canada, particularly resulting from immigration, and add the distinctiveness of the First Nations—the Aboriginal peoples—of which at least six cultural groups made up pre-colonial Canada. With that, no one will be surprised to learn that since the 17th century, Canada has been the primary arena of cultural conflict in North America.

The initial confrontation in cultural terms between Europeans and the Aboriginal peoples came through evangelization and the imposition first of French and then of English ways. In some senses, this is still going on today. This confrontation, I would say, is both our glory and our misery. It has been at the root of destructive conflict, but has also produced a society whose cultural diversity could be a model of harmony. The greatest challenge we face today is precisely that of not only recognizing this diversity, but incorporating all its aspects into an original and harmonious way of living together. A Utopian view, you will say, but there is many a slip twixt cup and lip, between the dream and the socio-political reality. My own view, on the other hand, is that the 21st century elevates this challenge to the global level, and we must resolve it or risk the experience of a fourth world war that would be very much like a war between civilizations.

I believe that dialogue between cultures, far from being Utopian, is a primary necessity. Humanity and a habitable world have been developed through such dialogue, in good times and bad, because there have been bumps along the road and barbarity has frequently triumphed.

Dialogue between cultures within Canada’s diversity existed well before “cultural diversity” became an administrative concept. It is the central means of socialization in our country, our cities and our communities. It is indispensable, the special case that has been produced by nearly 200 years of misunderstandings. Dialogue is the only way of overcoming the distrust of others inherent in our animal nature. Our first reaction to others is fear, perhaps followed by flight, at worst by confrontation, and at best by dialogue. “Conversation” between cultures can take place only if we move beyond our original fear and distrust that is still all too often the primary obstacle in relations at the community, national and international levels.

Today, our identifying, artistic and scientific culture, on at least an equal basis with our technology-dominated material output, constitutes a broad universe of essential activities, the open logic of which cannot be made dependent on industrial or financial performance without exposing civilized humankind to the mortal danger that will follow the inner destruction of its democratic pluralism.

From the moment my wife became Governor General, on September 27, 2005, my wife expressed the desire to “break the solitudes.” To my way of thinking, art and culture have a dominant place in the progression from words to actions.

Within the constitutional framework that defines the non-political role of Canada's head of state, we ventured to imagine new realms of dialogue and debate giving prominence to youth, belonging and emerging cultures.

Last January, here in Calgary, we inaugurated the first of a series of community forums on the urban arts.  There, we engaged young artists in a dialogue on their essential role in fostering open communication between the have and have-nots of our society and in bringing people together around common aims. Here, as in other cities across Canada, participants explained how for many young people, urban art constitutes a locus of critical resistance against the culture of isolation and indifference so pervasive in our society. They described how it enables them to behold the sublime in the midst of the concrete landscapes many call home, stirring a renewed desire to participate in democratic life. 

Similarly, we are testing new models of democratic communication through the use and development of our Web site, Citizen Voices/À l’écoute des citoyens, which went on line in September 2006. For the first time, the Governor General of Canada can use chat mode to engage in direct dialogue with all of Canada's citizens.

These new information technologies are unique tools for the enrichment of citizen dialogue. Their development is inevitable, yet it seems clear that traditional media and politicians have not fully grasped the issues of this radical change.

In the wake of mass media, these are the new platforms that constitute the media of the masses, as Joël de Rosnay puts it, emerging almost spontaneously and driven by the newest information and communication technologies. To varying degrees, these changes entail the development of new aesthetics, new economic models, and new ways of living together.

The new platforms are changing the relationship between politics and citizens. The individual is increasingly disaffiliated, like a free electron: free of the Church, free of the family, free of the state and thus of political considerations. People are gradually coming together on the basis of a community of interests, and we can see this on our new site, Citizen Voices. Citizens are developing networks and stimulating debate about very specific themes: youth, women, culture, the environment. We are barely beginning to measure the impact of these major changes on civil society, political life and culture.

In these circumstances, then, how do we rethink the relationship between art, culture and society?

New, professional-quality tools are enabling citizens to progress from being mere consumers to being creators; even the expression “pro-am” (meaning professional and amateur) has even been used.

The new technologies enable them to produce perfectly usable—and diffusible—digital content whose image, sound, graphic, video and text quality rivals the production quality that in the past was achieved only by the mass media. Thus, the new technologies and the new platforms are having a real impact on production and dissemination processes that used to be the exclusive preserve of mass media.

Last November at Rideau Hall, we held the initial gatherings under the title Art Matters/Le point des arts that are part of a broader reflection on the status and future of creativity in Canada. The first meeting was devoted to audiovisual media and new technologies. For example, the group homelessnation.org, which is made up of homeless people, came to talk to us about the videos they produce themselves and post on the Internet, thereby creating thousands of first-person short films. Through new technologies, and with very modest resources, people of no fixed address and no voice now have their own space, and a way of speaking out.

In the information society, economies of scale are becoming less certain, shaken out of their autocratic and monopolistic status by new technologies. Today, digital content can be reproduced at nominal cost and disseminated instantly, worldwide.

If we believe what Joël de Rosnay says in La révolte du pronétariat , or the revolt of the dictated-to, it is the actual process of creation that is being altered by new technologies and the intellectual behaviour they generate. He believes that collaborative or interactive creation relies on networks of collective intelligence, and no longer on pyramidal human organizations.

We are therefore going to see—and are already seeing—a clash between those who possess the means of producing and disseminating information, and those who were once thought to be permanent members of a captive audience of viewers and readers who were regarded as passive users. The portable culture of iPods, iPTV, iTV and Mobisode is revolutionizing the way we receive and enjoy music, movies and so on. Portable media are not just wireless: they are also disconnected from time and space. Spectators are no longer captives of movie theatres or their living rooms. They can watch what they want wherever and whenever they want to.

In other words, times have changed: the relationship between the creator, his or her work, and the spectator is undergoing radical alteration.

So is the Internet the medium of democracy? Is it the cultural tool that is vital to renewal of the relationship between the citizen, the city and society?

Perhaps. It is promising, and Utopia is working for the time being. However, we have to be careful.

The Internet revolution and the digital revolution call into question our ways of producing, writing and disseminating. Globally, they challenge our relationship with the image, with images, with the imaginary, with what is true and what is false, with truth and lies.

Where is reality? Where is illusion? Who takes the time to step back and analyze things? Who guarantees the truth of what we see? We see more, of course, but do we gain a better understanding?

Are we moving towards a world in which the expansion of the virtual will lead us not to open up more to others and to the world, but to turn inward on ourselves, our fears and our spectres?

Do the democratization of meaning and enhanced ethics go hand in hand with universal access to the use of the images to express ourselves, to create, to communicate and to exchange ideas, as much as to challenge, question and denounce?

It is definitely questions of meaning and ethics—rather than mere means—that will generate the social and cultural issues implicit in the new kinds of production that have been made possible by the combined impact of new technologies and new platforms.

In order to avoid the worst outcome—a turning inwards, isolation and virtual captivity—and make possible the best outcome—improved socialization, participation in democratic life and contribution to the humanization of humankind—we shall have to invent new ways of bringing together individuals and their energies and talents in new networks of meaning, based on new economic models of alternative funding, because it is essential to maintain the role of direct dialogue and debate, as much as room for critical thinking, since they are necessities as vital to the survival of democratic societies as oxygen is to ecosystems.

It is from this point of view that my answer to the question “Can the artist still play a prominent role in a plugged-in world?” is “Yes.” I shall explain why.

From the appearance of the first cave paintings to today's urban graffiti, I believe that the artist’s central mission has been to give meaning to the world that surrounds us. As the philosopher Castoriadis put it, art is a window on chaos, the chaos of the world, the chaos of meaning.

Yet today, how can the artist still be a bestower of meaning, a sentinel, with a sentry’s eye to the future, serving as both a visionary and an eyewitness?

The question is all the more topical when our hyperconnected societies, the Net, the Web, with its blogs, forums and seemingly infinite, omnipotent and omniscient networks, threaten artists as the builders of social relationships and disseminators of culture, explorers of learning and adventurers of the mind.

At a time when everything seems to have been said, or rather when everything seems capable of being said, it is in fact very difficult for an artist to appear as a discoverer of meaning, a necessary intermediary to illuminate the chaos of the world, strengthen social relationships, and ensure collective communication in a universe of multiple interconnections that provide every subject with a range of resources that make it both the vector of the problem and the repository of the solution.

Underlying this proposition is the idea that new communication technologies can at a single stroke resolve both the problem of communication between oneself and others and that of the circulation of learning and knowledge: on the one hand by clarifying the misunderstanding inherent in social communication, and on the other by ensuring a democratic sharing of knowledge that is the corollary of universal access to culture.

This is what raises pointed questions about the place and function of visual and media arts, but let us not be concerned: there is doubtless a good measure of magical thinking there. Indeed, how can this exponential increase in technologies that connect us resolve the communication conundrum and spare us careful and critical thought about the production of meaning? Is hyperconnection the only possible way to uncover what things signify? Is there not a risk of replacing the chaos of the world with another chaos born of the multiplicity of networks and the loss of benchmarks? How can interconnection guarantee a better—in particular, a more accurate—grasp of reality? Rapid and easy access to the various fields of learning, and to all the rumours and rumblings in the world, cannot replace individual negotiation of the pathways of knowledge and discovery, and do not take away the necessity of learning.

We would therefore do well to clear away some of the mist surrounding people’s ideas about the new networks of learning and communication spawned by new technologies. As the multimedia capacities of computers have expanded, they have opened the way to possibilities for new explorations and digital creations, but this does not make all of us potential creators, nor relegate artists to the archives of history.

This is not the first time the arrival of new technology in the world of the arts has created upheaval in modes of representation and shattered the very concept of beauty. Painting, sculpture and drawing have already been joined by collages, photography, happenings, performance art, video art and installations.

In 1935, when Walter Benjamin published The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he tried to draw political and esthetic lessons from the “mechanization” of the artistic process: he anticipated that technology’s ability to reproduce works of art through lithography and photography would lead to the loss of the author’s aura and the unique work of art. He predicted that uniqueness would be replaced by ubiquity.

Today, the computer poses an even more radical problem. It is both potentially the best and the least appropriate tool for artistic expression. The best, because never before has a single tool made it possible to produce and process sound, images, text and format at the same time. It has opened the door to multimedia production. With a computer, one person is now capable of results that they otherwise could not achieve without monumental, not to say superhuman, effort. We can only marvel at the feat, provided we do not forget that in many cases, the machine does what it can do, and not necessarily what we want.

Thus, there is a new and inescapable technological challenge confronting artists in their relationship with the public and with society. Many creators are aware of it, and their work is a reminder that a necessary function of art is to be provocative. In their work, they stress the importance of taking possession of the tools of technology and interconnection, the use of which they often push to an extreme as if to test their limits. It is their way of embracing simulation and imitation, and of questioning the artificiality of this earthly machine in which we live. This leads to the production of works—in Canada, those of Vera Frankel, Istvan Kantor, Dominique Blain and a few others come to mind—that dismantle closed systems of power, communication, politics and aesthetics. The task of the genuine artist is to refuse to yield to the power of the machine, and to make their act of resistance an artistic defiance of the stifling systems of technological control.

In so doing, the artist reveals how technology can transform human minds and bodies into a colossal robotic machine. The artist’s critical attitude is essential in a society in danger of losing its way in the illusion of a technological hyperconnection through which we can magically transcend the boundaries between us, whether those of overpowering individualism, or prejudice. By rejecting a roseate view of new technologies, the artist thus responds to the urgency of destroying the illusion implying that new media, by their very nature, will bring us closer together as citizens.

There remain many solitudes we have yet to bridge, and to help us we are in dire need of artists who can decipher the chaos of our world. Art and beauty are still essential in our relationship with the infinite enigma of the meaning of the universe and of our humanity.

This is why we must encourage and protect art and artists, celebrate their presence and acknowledge the need for them in our cities and throughout our country. At Rideau Hall, we believe that the relationship between culture and society in all its diversity is the vital engine of our living together. Hence our priority is to help develop and encourage dialogue among citizens across Canada by all democratic means, emphasizing the creative contribution of our young people and the energy of emerging cultures.

The Governor General’s awards and the Art Matters forum that now precedes each ceremony clearly show the Governor General’s and my commitment to recognizing the role played by creators and the social role played by their creations. Let us hope Canadians become more and more aware and have a clearer understanding of how vital arts and culture are to the development of a healthy and harmonious society. To that end, we should remind the traditional mass media—newspapers and television—to give much more prominence to artists. In order to influence society, they still have to be integrated into the modes of representation of our community, whether a city or country. In this connection, there are a few gaps in our collective memory; we cannot ask creators and artists to do everything: to produce the most original and powerful works possible and be promoters at the same time, to meet their own immediate needs while often guaranteeing the future and the timelessness of their creations.

We should never forget that the first traces of mankind’s humanity, the first step beyond barbarity, are works of art from the farthest reaches of our history: stony mountainsides, cave walls or the middle of an African desert. Today, art is still a powerful tool for communication, socialization and the intermingling of cultures. You can find China in Montreal, the Louvre in Quebec City, art Nègre in Vancouver, Haitian paintings in Calgary, a Palestinian artist in Toronto. It offers an antidote to stifling nationalism, and is in fact the most beautiful way of bridging our solitudes.

We must leave to the artist the job—and the duty—of exploring new territory, new avenues and different media, and make the artist our sentinel and our courier, using technological change to explore radical change.

Personally, I can bear witness as a filmmaker. For the last 25 years, documentary filmmaking has enabled me to go where I would never have gone, if I had not had films to make that ask questions about identities, nationalisms, exile, revolutions, barbarity, the relationship between the artist and politics, freedom, tolerance and racism.

Making films has enabled me to go out and discover other people, to follow the pathways of knowledge, and share things with my audience. In my films, I pursue an itinerary that is as much philosophical as cinematographic. I challenge the obvious “media truth” that relies on the illusion that everything can be said about an event, a person, a situation or a plight, because I know that it cannot. Instead, I try to say everything that can be known about the event, the person, the situation or the plight that will lead to a heightened awareness, impelling the spectator and society to do their duty as thinking beings. I know that when faced by the tragedy or the beauty of this world, our duty is not to laugh or weep: our duty is to understand.

The Quebec writer Jacques Ferron has said that reality hides behind reality. I agree completely.  The fact is that truth is not a given, it is often plural, and it is this complexity that an artist’s work must reflect, at the risk of inviting controversy, because in the search for truth, confrontation is inevitable.

My filmmaking is based on this philosophical precondition. The spectators themselves are challenged by this relationship to the truth:  they cannot sit idly by on the other side of the screen like attentive observers of the story, as it unfolds, passive witnesses of the unexpected outcomes of a clash of personalities; on the contrary, I do everything possible to compel them to abandon their exclusive role as witnesses or spectators. I make every effort to drive them into the arena of the film by provoking the controversy that is a precondition of awareness. The creative approach lies in a highly complex interpretation of reality: it is an attempt to reveal. Filmmaking is like painting, theatre or any other art that tries to represent, or rather to construct, the reality that lies behind the apparent reality.

I know that what I am saying about filmmaking, which is what I do and what I love, I can say about artistic creation in general. Creation is not a realm for the humanities or for cultural intervention, still less for social work; I believe that its role is the more basic one of resistance, founded on critical thinking. It is in this sense that art is a primary locus for lively thought within a culture and a society. It is a space for freedom and expression by the younger generations, often their only way of feeling included, just as it is the last resort of the outcasts of society. 

In this sense, the artist does not have a monopoly on critical thinking and resistance, and that is a good thing, but the artist does have a basic right to a fair share of respect and attention. The destiny of a people is not something that can be left to the experts alone. Culture and thought cannot be managed as you manage an organization chart. History is replete with unfortunate examples in which creative activity in a society perished at the very hands of its benefactors, whether well-meaning bureaucrats or short-sighted monarchs.

Calgary could be the place that prevents Canada from neglecting this radical issue of culture and art by reminding Canadians that it is a central question for the destiny of our society.

The country that no longer listens to its creative people is culturally doomed. Artists must be allowed to remain on the periphery of the present, sometimes indicating where what we think of as our ideal world has gone astray or failed to complete its journey. It is therefore important to make room for those whose task it is to explore the tragic vagaries of human existence, its beauty, sometimes, and its ugliness, and to find the sublime, the unexpected or the unpredictable obscured by the commonplace. It resembles the work of those who pan for gold: just as futile but just as essential, with its need to dream, its painstaking labour, and its sublime revelations.