The Free Institution

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 corporatist pathways.

Cultural corporatism as an obstacle to creation

The fundamental problem of professional cultural circles lies in a constitutive tension: art and culture, when they benefit from public funding, should serve creation, its sharing, and the benefit it provides to people. Yet corporatism and the compartmentalization of functions (production, distribution, mediation, lighting, sound, logistics, etc.) too often lead technical actors to occupy a position disconnected from the artistic project they are supposed to serve.

Take the example of people who work in reception at a theater. They may have artistic aspirations, but their duties in no way call upon their creativity: they must conform to a pre-established artistic hierarchy: they must absolutely not be artists! Yet their creativity could, on the contrary, nourish their profession. This domination is also exercised in the relationship with the public, maintained in a position of passive receiver. Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel demonstrated, as early as 1966, that the « need for culture » is socially constructed and that the theory of aesthetic « revelation » rests on an ideology of gift, which naturalizes cultural dominations without questioning the privileges that determine them (The Love of Art, 1966).

I do not claim that all methods of making subsidized art are non-artistic. But the system remains pernicious: instead of cultivating art, relationships of domination, competition, sexism, and power too often prevail. Symbolic power, the kind that confers legitimacy, permeates and dominates, far too much in my view, the entire institutional cultural field.

Early resistance to logics of domination

When I was in high school and then university, I intuitively began organizing short film screenings. I made films and was happy with this practice, but something in me resisted the game of hierarchy and domination, the obligation to follow a corporatist path. I found this trajectory violent and problematic, to the point of never really integrating into a professional milieu by accepting its dominant/dominated logics.

I made films personally, I accompanied other people in their creative process, I organized screenings. Then I began to stimulate creation: I proposed themes, I invited people to create for the next screening. I envisioned my role as a supportive one, inviting everyone to do, including those who did not feel legitimate. As Paulo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968): « No one liberates anyone else, no one liberates themselves alone, people liberate themselves together. »

This is still my approach today, because I know that self-expression is good for oneself and for others, it builds us. It can also play a role in building a career, but that was not my primary goal. My subject was creation, the meaning of creating and sharing. This is why I felt as much at home creating films as showing them, mine as well as those of other people, without establishing hierarchy, as well as in transmitting techniques.

The power to institute without dominating

I certainly made an editorial choice: I did not necessarily show everything that was proposed to me. It was a subjective choice that I assumed as such, and there was animosity toward me from people whose films I had chosen not to screen. But I envisioned that these people could organize their own screenings themselves if they wished. I did not position myself in a place of power: I was willing to support them in organizing their events.

This is what I call a free institution. The films I showed were instituted, recognized, legitimized by the simple fact of being screened in public. But this free institution was completely distinct from a logic of domination and corporatist pathways. People could make films and were supported in this process: I legitimized them, I instituted them even before they had made a film. This prior legitimization aligns with what the Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights (2007) calls the right to « participate in cultural life » with respect for everyone’s dignity.

I am convinced that some people might never have made a film without this framework, because they would have felt too dominated by traditional legitimization circuits. This approach I describe, I implemented it starting in 1988 at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, but also on many other occasions.

The Pocket Films Festival: democratizing the tool of creation

Another emblematic example is the Pocket Films Festival, which I created in 2005 at the request of the Forum des images. At that time, mobile phones were beginning to film. I then understood that we were entering a new era where everyone could create very easily. So I founded this festival to recognize and legitimize these emerging practices. This corresponded perfectly to my approach of the free institution: providing a framework of legitimization for creators who would never have taken traditional paths.

I also taught for a long time at Le Fresnoy, National Studio for Contemporary Arts, at La Fémis, in many universities, and led many professional training sessions, with non-academic creativity methods, non-conforming to standardized professional work methods. My role consists of opening doors. This is the function of the free institution. As John Dewey reminds us in Art as Experience (1934), « the value of experience lies not only in the ideals it reveals, but in its power to unveil various ideals ». Art conceived as experience allows us to restore everyone’s power to act.

I speak of « institution » because in these short film screenings I organized, the films were instituted, projected to spectators. But it was an institution that was completely distinct from a logic of domination. Some certainly succeed in making works within the framework of a traditional corporatist path. But we know that many works never see the light of day, because their authors do not possess the aptitudes to evolve in professions and corporations that remain violent systems of domination, also marked by sexism (knowing that the latter is obviously violent for women, but also harms men in their construction).

Authorization as a founding gesture

This approach could be qualified as amateur artistic practice. Certainly, this can apply. But it also concerns professional practice: it is about reinventing ways of doing. I do not claim to be the only one working for a free institution, but if I allow myself to write about it, it is because I believe it is essential for the renewal of creation.

Opening spaces for free institution whenever possible requires, as a professional, fundamental questioning of one’s posture. They make us change position, they invite us to step down from the pedestal of knowledge (as if we knew better than others simply by occupying the place of the « teacher »), to enter into a horizontal relationship of mutual exchange, of shared inventions.

This is an essential point in the workshop protocols I lead. I myself often discover the films at the time of their screening. I have people work autonomously, and I am the first spectator, with the collective. And as much as possible, I also participate in creation, to risk myself as well in this expression. I have not accompanied anyone step by step: I have provided a framework, a free institution, creation happens autonomously, and then an opening occurs.

If instructions have not been followed, it is not problematic at all, because the issue is not a value judgment, but this particular framework, which has authorized people to do, people who would never have authorized themselves without this framework of free institution. This is truly the essential point: this authorization produces major artistic and social openings for the renewal of living creation.

A republican requirement

I am referring here to funding through public contribution, that is, funding that aims to defend the Republic and the emancipation of citizens, for themselves and for those around them. Let us never forget this: power mechanisms are, in my view, in radical opposition to the values that found our republican texts. The Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights (2007) states that « cultural rights aim to guarantee everyone the freedom to live their cultural identity ». These rights invite cultural democracy rather than top-down cultural democratization.

The free institution I propose is not a marginal utopia: it constitutes a concrete response to the democratic challenge of culture. As Jean-Luc Godard said, whose technological dream is being realized today by TikTok, the challenge is to « freely make films for one’s friends, to be able to edit and distribute them ». What we must build are spaces where this freedom to create is not only possible, but legitimized from the outset, without obligatory passage through the filters of cultural domination.

This approach demands a profound transformation of professional postures. We must step down from our pedestal as experts to enter into a truly horizontal relationship. Only under this condition can the cultural sector reinvent itself and rediscover its emancipatory function, in service of all citizens and their creative dignity.