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 (…)

Audiovisual media in libraries is a political subject

Why support for audiovisual media in libraries begins with local political championing of libraries.

As part of the national project for the future of audiovisual media in public libraries, a series of hearings described as “political” was conducted in June 2026. Here I set out what they taught us, together with the personal convictions I bring (…)

Data Centers: We Fill Them Ourselves

Telling projects apart, deliberating on our tools, bringing our data home, equipping ourselves for collective intelligence: what we can do together as data centres multiply.

In an op-ed published in Le Monde on 14 August 2026, Stéphane Troussel, president of the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council, calls for a pause and for public consultation on the development of data centres. I agree with him, and I propose to (…)

Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab 2026: two days on the performing arts and digital technology

A presentation and critical reading of the gathering held at Chaillot on 5 and 6 May 2026, in which I am taking part.

On 5 and 6 May 2026, Chaillot, Théâtre National de la Danse, hosts the second edition of the « Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab Meetings: Performing arts and digital environments » conference. Around thirty speakers from France, Germany, Belgium, the (…)

Traveling projections: reinventing cinema in public space

A new form of cinematographic distribution.

Traveling projections reinvent cinema by transforming public space into a place of sharing, where residents and passersby collectively experience the magic of images, outside traditional frameworks. A democratic practice of distribution (…)

Attestational Dramaturgy

A concept for understanding the journalistic staging of reality, in dialogue with Bourdieu, Debord, Baudrillard, Chomsky, Colon, Deleuze, Watkins and Virilio.

Journalism traditionally presents itself as privileged access to reality. Its everyday practice, however, very often consists of summoning the real as an illustration of narratives decided in advance. How can we name, with some precision, this (…)

Exchanges in pairs

To give everyone a voice.

A collective intelligence exercise that stimulates thinking and listening. Working in pairs, each participant builds his or her own argument on a given topic, alternating between opposing points of view. A democratic and emancipating experience. (…)

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 (…)

The paradox of digital criticism

When intellectual posturing masks our own contradictions.

Critics of digital technology abound: Airbnb is destroying city centers, instant access to everything is destroying our relationship with time, consumption is spiraling out of control. Yet these same critics massively use what they denounce. This (…)

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 (…)

The machine that writes to itself

How reasoning came to language models.

Since late 2024, language models have been “reasoning” before they answer. I retrace here the path by which reasoning came to these statistical machines, from the discovery of 2022 to Anthropic’s interpretability research, so that this (…)

“Cultural participation”: interview with Benoît Labourdette.

Interview with Benoît Labourdette (4’39s, 2020).

Video presentation of Benoît Labourdette’s approach to the democratic dimension of cultural action.

“Territorial approach, participation, youth and digital technology”: interview of Benoît Labourdette by Serge Saada (52’, 2021)

Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field.

As part of the Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field, Serge Saada interviewed Benoît Labourdette on the impact of the proliferation of digital images on young people and the public in general. Here is the soundtrack of the video. (…)

Plural - Singular - Plurials

It’s the plural that authorizes the singular, and it’s the singulars that add up to create plurals. The singular is at the heart of the plural. There can be no collective, no city, no society, no cooperation if singularities are not encouraged (…)

School is already a society

What this observation changes in the work of cultural practitioners in schools: they do not come merely to bring art into the classroom, they come to shift, for a while, the place each person occupies.

After almost every artistic intervention in a school, teachers say they have discovered their students in a different light. This is not the magic of art at work; it comes from a shift in the places people occupy within the society that a (…)

Art and artists as society’s infrastructure

What cultural rights oblige us to say about the political function of artistic practice.

A society without artists cannot stand. The claim is easy to state and hard to argue for. Here I try to ground it, by bringing together a proposal from Australia, the surveys on amateur artistic practice, and what cultural rights teach us about (…)

Architecture of artistic venues and cultural rights

The impact of location on social roles.

The architecture of cultural venues shapes roles and often limits participation. An approach inspired by digital spaces would enable cultural democratization that respects everyone’s rights. An Architecture That Fixes RolesArchitecture—meaning (…)

Power, potency, domination

Can one take power without becoming a dominator?

We often confuse power with domination, as if wanting one meant wanting the other. By distinguishing them, and by adding a third term, the capacity to act, we can conceive of a form of power that does not turn into domination. This is what I (…)

Philosophy of compromise

How to commit without moralism?

The Philosophy of Compromise explores how we live with the contradictions between our principles and our daily actions. Rather than morally judging this cognitive dissonance, I propose to see it as an essential component of our complex humanity. (…)

“Culture differently: postures and methods for tomorrow”

“L’expert du jeudi”: lecture by Benoît Labourdette for the Cultures du Cœur network (March 26, 2026).

On March 26, 2026, I gave a talk for the national network of Cultures du Cœur, as part of their “L’expert du jeudi” format, a regular videoconference that allows regional coordinators across the network to step back from their daily practice and (…)

Leaving the house in the presence

Reflections on collective presence after lockdowns.

The lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 ultimately revealed our vital need to go out and share collective moments. This experience questions the meaning of presence and cultural action today. Forced domestic withdrawalThe mandatory lockdowns imposed on (…)

Dominating Intelligence and Democratic Intelligence: Two Regimes of Thought

From Geddes to Freire, Another Politics of Thought.

A thought can be transmitted in two ways. In the first, someone states their ideas from a position of height, and those who receive them, even when the ideas are valuable, are placed in a position of being dominated, their freedom diminished. In (…)

Is pedagogy revolutionary?

For an education policy.

Education is torn between two visions: preparing for a competitive world or fostering democracy in schools. In my view, true effectiveness lies in cooperation, making pedagogy an inherently revolutionary act. Two Pedagogical ApproachesIn The (…)

“Participatory creation as a laboratory for democracy?”

4^th edition of the biennial festival of participatory creation - Les Rencontres de la Poudrerie - Théâtre des habitants - May 16 & 17, 2025.

Les Rencontres de la Poudrerie are a moment for reflection and co-construction, at the intersection of art forms and the practice of social life. They bring together citizens, artists, elected officials, professionals from the cultural and social (…)

Secret violence

The roots of authoritarianism: what elementary school really teaches.

In France, the transition to middle school exposes young people to a secret violence, reproducing school authoritarianism in their autonomous social structures, where silence becomes the norm for survival. Self-organized adolescent communities (…)

The Dead End of Digital Conscientious Objection

On the necessity of inhabiting our technological environments rather than fleeing them.

Faced with the deployment of generative AI, some researchers proclaim conscientious objection. I defend instead the requirement of critical presence and empowerment through practice. The trap of disembodied critiqueSeveral researchers, notably (…)

The cage of representations

When the absence of care locks the other in our imaginary constructions.

Human relationships break down less through conflict than through construction: we fabricate characters, we assign them roles, and in this seemingly innocuous gesture lies a violence that can go so far as to symbolically kill the other. The (…)

Freedom and Cultural Rights

A renewed approach to democratic dignity, through the contribution of two new rights.

Cultural rights, seemingly guarantors of human dignity, are emptied of their meaning when they fail to forcefully articulate the question of freedom. Their full recognition requires renewed vigilance, particularly against any authoritarian (…)

Social distancing

Series of 58 photographs on a train platform in 2022.

Human beings were led to believe that they had suddenly become dangerous to each other and that they had to step aside to save themselves from the danger posed by the other.

Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence

The way a training day is facilitated already shows how much respect one has for people.

Training people in cultural rights means transmitting knowledge to people while affirming, at the same time, that their culture and their knowledge are legitimate. The way one facilitates (the layout of the room, the instructions, the room left (…)

"Create your own film on the memory of the neighborhood in Villejuif

Presentation of the project by Benoît Labourdette to the Villejuif City Council on February 9, 2023 (5’53s).

On February 9, 2023, the “citizen hour” of the Villejuif (Val de Marne) city council was devoted to culture for all in the city. Several projects were presented, including “Create your film on the memory of the neighborhood”, a film-making (…)

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 (…)

Too Easy Forgiveness

When indulgence toward elected officials betrays the democratic pact.

Following an exchange with a member of parliament, one question obsesses me: why do we so easily forgive the moral failure of those who govern us, when their function demands exemplary probity? The genesis of indignation: the denial of faultMy (…)

A Hand in the Picture

In 2025, with the Institut pour la photographie, the association Hors Cadre and the youth justice service of the Hauts-de-France region, I trained youth workers and ran with young people the first workshop of a photographic project on secularism and conviviality, whose results were exhibited in Roubaix and then in Lille.

The youth justice service (Protection judiciaire de la jeunesse, PJJ) invited some sixty young people in its care, and the youth workers who accompany them, to photograph laïcité, French secularism. Rather than explaining it, we had them go (…)

Viewer freedom

For an ethics of the relationship between film and viewer.

Screenwriting often relies on narrative mastery to control the viewer’s emotions. Yet this quest for control can conflict with an ethic of viewer freedom. Why not consider film as a space for sharing knowledge, where viewers are free to think and (…)

Citizen contribution beyond the cultural field

Carrying the contribution methods proven in the cultural field towards the co-construction of public policies, with the people concerned.

The contribution methods we practise in the cultural field hold true beyond it. We are opening a line of work to put them at the service of the co-construction of public policies (social, educational, youth, health) with the people they concern, (…)

Regulating the Regulators Too

Cultural rights call into question what our profession takes for granted, and this questioning unsettles even the people who chose to be trained. Training courses and support programmes run in their name need instituted spaces where the process itself, facilitation included, can be put up for discussion.

In a training course or a support programme on cultural rights, each person present is asked to re-examine assumptions that are part of their professional identity, and this re-examination produces resistance, projections onto the person (…)

Digital sovereignty, a democratic emergency

When our public institutions jeopardize our collective autonomy.

The loss of our digital sovereignty does not result from the thoughtlessness of citizen-users, but from a form of political unconsciousness regarding the power issues carried by industrial tools, including and particularly digital tools. This (…)

Digital technology, a tool for mediation and cultural democracy

Webinar on Monday, October 9, 2023 from 10am to 1pm.

Restitution of the “Digital Workshops” project by Cultures du Cœur and Benoît Labourdette Production, offered as part of the Été culturel program with the support of the French Ministry of Culture.For the past 2 years, Cultures du Cœur, in (…)

Pedagogy of Artificial Intelligence

Creating rather than explaining.

The educational tool “Dans le regard de l’IA” (“Through the Eyes of AI”) by Média Animation sets out to question the biases of generative artificial intelligences. Its theoretical content is solid. But its pedagogy, very school-like, seems to me (…)

Cultural Rights in Light of Personal History

At the beginning of my journey as an engaged cultural actor.

The question of cultural rights has long shaped my commitment, well before the term came to light. Through my story, I attempt to show how a living cultural democracy rests on recognition, diversity and sharing, and how digital technology (…)

The Evolution of the Love Contract

An ethnological approach to a rapidly changing object.

From the 1804 Civil Code to dating apps, what we call loving in France has been constructed as a historically situated contractual regime. Analysing it through its social functions allows each person to exercise their freedom with discernment, (…)

Cultural rights and professional postures

Tools for the concrete implementation of cultural rights.

Cultural rights, stemming from the Fribourg Declaration (2007), represent a major advancement for cultural democracy. However, their practical implementation remains a challenge, as they are often perceived as too theoretical. This text explores (…)

“On the ineffectiveness of our works in real life”.

Commentary on the text by Eva Doumbia & Kader Attia (2023).

In July 2023, visual artist Kader Attia and director Eva Doumba published a text (in Analyse Opinion Critique) in response to the youth “riots” that followed the killing of young Nahel by a policeman. Their text questions the usefulness of (…)

Art bleeds

Feminism and Free Love

From 19^th-century anarchist feminists to contemporary decolonial perspectives.

Feminism has maintained a relationship with free love as ancient as it is fruitful, traversed by tensions that remain unresolved and that I believe are important to continue exploring. From its origins, the women’s emancipation movement has (…)

“Women and Architecture”: in Villetaneuse, residents film the women who made their town

Cut-paper animation film workshops, held in February and March 2026 in Villetaneuse with the town’s cultural action department and the Annie Ernaux media library, around nine women who built or marked the town.

A travelling exhibition about nine women who built, named or defended Villetaneuse, five cut-paper filmmaking workshops in four places across the town, a public screening on 7 March 2026, and an online space where everyone can find the films. I (…)

Must You Have Something to Say to Facilitate a Discussion?

Between the dream of a facilitator who would fade away and the fear of imposing a point of view, the place of the adult voice in discussions with young people is one of the knots of cultural mediation.

A facilitator who steps back does not neutralize the power relations in a group, they let them play out freely; a facilitator who imposes their vision closes thinking down. I defend here a third position, which consists in speaking in the first (…)

When Cultural Professionals Question Their Approaches to Adolescents

Reflections on a day of professional cross-fertilization.

An interprofessional day organized by the Réseau Jeune Public au Centre at Équinoxe, Scène nationale de Châteauroux on November 19, 2025, which I co-designed and co-facilitated, brought together one hundred and fifty professionals. Here is an (…)

Non-rival emancipation

I propose a concept for freeing our struggles from the economy of scarcity inherited from domination, and tools for going through the destabilisation that accompanies any genuine emancipation.

Patriarchy organises rivalry between women by making scarce the very things on which it makes their worth depend. I propose the concept of non-rival emancipation, to name struggles whose object, like knowledge or the gaze, grows when it is (…)

The presumption of competence

A definition of cultural rights: they address people in positions of power, and ask them to presume the competence of others.

Cultural rights are often presented as rights of access to culture, which each person could claim. I propose here a definition that reverses this reading. Cultural rights are addressed first and foremost to people in positions of power, and ask (…)

The political dimension of organisational frameworks

When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.

We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. This inconsistency, which I have observed for years in my own practice and in that of my peers, (…)

Should We Feed Artificial Intelligences?

A new stage in our collective relationship with knowledge.

Three years after ChatGPT, AI access to digital heritage raises questions. Between technical costs and civilizational challenges, I defend the necessity of maintaining this feeding. Generative AI, an anthropological mutation of our relationship (…)

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, (…)

Presence and nuance of thought

Psychosociology of democracy.

Nuanced thinking, unlike dogmatic simplism, embraces the complexity of the world and acknowledges the subjectivity of viewpoints. It is the source of democracy. It requires safe spaces for dialogue where everyone’s presence is legitimized. Nuance (…)

For More Interactions with Machines

Artificial Intelligence as a Space for Emancipation from Social Violence.

Systematic critiques of AI technology denounce a dehumanization through technology. But this vision idealizes human relationships often marked by domination, and ignores the emancipatory potential of machines for those excluded by the system. (…)

Presence and confrontation

Dialectics of world thinking.

Faced with the impossible dialogue between our divergent world-thoughts, which threatens our identities, a path opens up: building together around a common project. The impossible dialogue of world-thoughtsIn public debates, when someone (…)

A fixed point (thought 383)

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’15s, 2023).

How do we know if we’re right or if the other guy is right?In the staging of this film, the text appears as a single piece. This may seem simplistic. It’s meant to symbolize that a way of thinking about the world must take into account all (…)

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 (…)

The sovereign contribution wall

An online contribution wall whose contents belong to you, can be exported in full and remain accessible over time.

We are developing an online contribution wall: a space where a group posts texts, images, sounds and videos from a phone or a computer, during a workshop, a consultation, a training course or a participatory project. With sovereign hosting and (…)

Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage

Bernard Stiegler’s technical philosophy sheds political light.

Have you ever tried to find a video you loved on YouTube from ten years ago? A blog post that made an impression on you? Your friends’ photos on MySpace? There’s a good chance this content has vanished. The Internet Archive’s “Vanishing Culture” (…)

The Land We Cultivate

The ownership of the means of computation is becoming a major political question, as the ownership of land once was.

We used to own our tools; we now rent our means of thinking. Software, music, films and artificial intelligences are used by subscription, on distant machines that belong to others. I propose to read this situation across two long spans of time, (…)

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 (…)

Instituting oneself in one’s rights

Having a right is not enough to be able to exercise it. Cultural rights find their method in institutional psychotherapy and institutional pedagogy: creating the institution with people, rather than bringing them into an institution that is already built.

Everyone has the right to enter a library or a museum, just as everyone has the right to vote, and yet many people never exercise these rights. My argument here is that what is missing is not legal but institutional, in the symbolic and psychic (…)

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 (…)

John Dewey : an inspirer of cultural rights?

Sharing my interest in an inspiring personality.

The notion of “cultural rights” is increasingly present in the debates within the cultural sector. They are seen by many as being at the heart of the issues and processes of change in the field of culture. But they are controversial, their very (…)

The State of Openness

For democratic and transformative facilitation.

How can we cultivate a welcoming posture that allows everyone to contribute fully? Openness is not a method but an inner state that transforms our facilitation practices. The facilitation posture: creating the space of possibilitiesIn any (…)

Youth and culture: for a radical change in posture

Giving young people the power to create, not just consume culture.

How can cultural institutions break out of their chronic failure with young people? By abandoning condescension to embrace a genuine cultural democracy based on trust and creative autonomy. I was invited on October 17, 2025 to speak about youth (…)

Generative AI, education and culture: recommendations drawn up between three countries

A look back at the colloquium “Between Creation and Simulation”, held within the framework of the Weimar Triangle (France, Germany, Poland) by the Genshagen Foundation and the Initiative Urheberrecht, 7 to 9 July 2026.

From 7 to 9 July 2026, twenty-two experts from France, Germany and Poland drafted together a set of educational policy recommendations in response to generative AI. I took part. Here I explain why this meeting took place, how we worked and what (…)

Artificial Intelligence in the Service of Human Connection

How generative AI tools can paradoxically enrich our social bonds.

Generative AIs worry us with their mimetic capacity. Yet, by freeing us from time-consuming cognitive tasks, they offer us more time and energy to cultivate what is essential: our human relationships. An ancient fear facing a new reality (…)

« Artificial Intelligence and Creation: Stakes and Practices » (free book - UNESCO)

A perspective on a collective work to rethink transformation.

The publication “Artificial Intelligence and Creation: Stakes and Practices” (2025), the result of an unprecedented cooperation between eleven UNESCO Creative Cities from six countries, constitutes an interesting initiative designed to (…)

For a Political Consciousness of Digital Technology

When our technological choices shape tomorrow’s world.

Every click, every application used, every digital service adopted constitutes a political act that participates in building our collective future, far beyond our individual uses. Digital technology as an artificial environment of existenceI (…)

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 (…)

OPC Media: “What if we changed our posture?”

How can we learn to consider the richness of teenage digital practices and avoid giving in to preconceived ideas?

How can we learn to consider the richness of teenagers’ digital practices and not give in to preconceived ideas? For Benoît Labourdette, if we want to design cultural projects that are attentive to the aspirations of young people, and therefore (…)

Podcast: “For a democratic and feminist pedagogy”

Dialogue between Noémie Rubat du Mérac and Benoît Labourdette on June 25, 2022.

Overview of the fundamentals of the pedagogical actions conceived and carried out by Benoît Labourdette, linked to the deconstruction of systems of domination. And concrete methodological proposals.This podcast is built from the recording of a (…)

Artificial Intelligence, or the End of Demiurges

Towards a Radical Democratization of Power in the Era of Generative AI.

What if, far from heralding a new servitude, AI signaled the end of the demiurgic figures who shape our lives? A revolution of power, silent and profound, may be underway. The New Tech Titans Facing Their CreaturesWhen we hear statements from (…)

The contributive infrastructure for networks

One hour a week, drop-in, for a professional network to know itself better, cooperate and work on its robustness.

We are designing a system for maintaining cooperation across a professional network: a weekly one-hour videoconference meeting, which everyone attends freely, with no attendance requirement, backed by a contribution platform that keeps a record (…)

Success without persuasion

Judging a workshop or a meeting by the agreement it won means rewarding whoever imposed their point of view most effectively. If we care about democracy within a group, we have to look at something else: whether disagreement and debate were able to take place, and whether everyone knows better, on the way out, what they think.

When we lead a workshop or a meeting on a divisive subject, we are tempted to judge it a success if people leave agreeing with us. I suggest judging it by the quality of the exchanges: were people able to build arguments and express different (…)

Will Heritage Still Be Part of Our Lives in 2045?

Digitising collections is not enough: the challenge is to enable their appropriation by citizens.

Cultural practices in 2045 will be as different from ours as ours are from those of 2005. At that time, YouTube did not exist, no one had a smartphone, and content creation was reserved for professionals. For heritage to remain alive in future (…)

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 (…)

Covid and Fear

Reflections on collective anxiety and its defense mechanisms.

The Covid-19 period revealed unexpected psychological mechanisms in individuals we believed to be free in their thinking. This observation led me to question the springs of belief and the role of anxiety in our relationship to reality. The (…)

The three ecologies of co-resilience

Reread with Félix Guattari, Serge Tisseron’s co-resilience answers the accusation made against resilience of manufacturing consent.

The researcher Thierry Ribault sees in resilience a “technology of consent”: training populations to adapt to disasters would exempt us from tackling their causes. This criticism is serious and documented. I argue that it hits individualised (…)

Inside the Mind of Conspiracy Theorists

Philosophical reflection on the political use of the word “conspiracy theorist” and its implications for democratic debate.

The term “conspiracy theorist” functions today as a defamatory label that prevents any critical discussion. I propose to explore how this word, born in a specific context, has become a tool of intellectual censorship that threatens the very (…)

Webinar presenting the findings of the AI Monitoring Committee of the Forum des images

Humanize AI rather than robotize humans.

For eleven months, philosophers, artists, educators, institutional leaders, and corporate experts worked together within the Artificial Intelligence Oversight Committee, launched by the Forum des Images and TUMO Paris. I facilitated this (…)

Artificial Intelligence and Educational Institution

For a large language model in service of the republican project.

The announcement in September 2025 by the Ministry of National Education of an artificial intelligence intended for teachers constitutes a good first step, which is necessary. For my part, I suggest going further, through the creation of a (…)

The presence of we

When universalism masks domination.

Many texts employ an undefined “we” that claims to speak for everyone. This posture denies otherness and creates antagonisms. Preferring “I” allows respect for differences and opens a truly democratic space. Should we think for others?In (…)

How to Enact Freedom?

The collective and transgressive dimension of a fundamental political exercise.

Faced with the erosion of associative freedoms, rethinking freedom as a collective and transgressive practice becomes an urgent democratic necessity.The French Republic bears three words on the pediments of its public buildings: Liberté, (…)

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 (…)

Listener contributions via digital tool

Unleash the power of the brains involved.

In a conference where one or more people address a large audience, it is common, after the presentation, to have a moment of discussion or Q&A between the audience and the speakers on stage. This is a very useful practice, but in my opinion, (…)

Nuanced Thinking

Why simplistic ideas are so convincing, and why we need a concept to name the way of thinking they lack, if we care about democracy and humanism.

Some ideas convince with astonishing force, and the people who share them feel that they see clearly. Yet these ideas are simplistic, because they rest on the denial of part of reality, and since it is a denial, these people do not know that (…)

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 (…)

Absence and privileges

The dynamics of citizen action, between the reproduction of privileges and genuine openness to the other.

I propose exploring two approaches to civic action: starting from one’s privileges to act altruistically, or opening oneself to the real needs of others. Without imposing a moral stance, I aim to illuminate their characteristics, biases, and (…)

Conference: “EAC and cultural rights: convergences to be identified and implemented”

Dans le cadre des Rencontres territoriales “Artistic and cultural education & Territorial cultural projects” (Foix, February 5, 2025).

How can cultural rights be a tool for better implementation of artistic and cultural education projects? And how we can identify convergences between the two, and how one can help the other, or the other can help the other!As part of the (…)

In object life?

Collective film (2’54s, 2019).

When objects from a carving workshop wake up...

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? (…)

Authorization Regime and Freedom Regime

When the confusion between authorization and freedom reveals a deep democratic crisis.

The management of the Covid-19 crisis revealed a fundamental confusion in our societies: we have overwhelmingly accepted to call “freedom” what was its exact opposite. This misunderstanding is not anecdotal but symptomatic of a deep cultural (…)

Distraction

Cultural democratization, cultural democracy: situated definitions

Professionals who aim at the same horizon nonetheless define the words of their trade differently. I propose to read this divergence as a sign of coherence between each person’s position, their words and their acts.

In cultural policy, we debate the definitions of cultural democratization, cultural democracy and cultural rights as if a single one would eventually have to prevail. I propose another reading. Each of us builds our definitions from the position (…)

Educating about images, organising disagreement

Practical concepts and tools for building a shared understanding through images.

A detailed account of the lecture given on 10 June 2026 at the Archives départementales de Loire-Atlantique, for the Grandir avec la culture network: cultural rights, regimes of images, critical thinking and concrete devices, to build common (…)

The Lack of Nuance in Thought

When self-proclaimed intellectual virtue masks voluntary servitude.

The Covid crisis acted as a revealer of the fragility of critical thinking among those very people who proclaim themselves its guardians. A reflection on intellectual ethics in the face of fear and power. The mirage of intellectual virtue, or (…)

Caring for Artificial Intelligence

Moving beyond the for/against impasse and cultivating our relationships with machines.

Faced with AI, we exhaust ourselves in sterile oppositions. Inspired by Bernard Stiegler, I propose to “care for” this technology: not to control it, but to tend to our relationships with it and among ourselves. Beyond posturing: the impasse of a (…)

Legitimate participation as the horizon of cultural events

From legitimacy to participate: how cultural rights transform our practices.

Cultural rights are often misunderstood. Their strength lies in their capacity to transform our practices: moving from a top-down programming logic to the creation of spaces where everyone can legitimately contribute. Legitimacy as foundation: (…)

Digital politics

When clicking becomes voting: the hidden face of our technological choices.

Code is law: digital tools are not neutral. Our daily technological choices are political acts that shape the world. Here are concrete elements for personal and collective awareness and action. The Choice of Hosting: A Masked Political Decision (…)

Selected excerpts on Artificial Intelligence

Bibliographic sharing.

Artificial Intelligence has been a hot topic in the general public and in organizations ever since ChatGPT, a powerful tool for generating structured text from a query, went public in November 2022. Indeed, as stakeholders, we are touching the (…)

Placing ourselves after the fact, or during

On what it costs, inside a situation, simply to ask a question, and on what retrospective judgement allows us to ignore about our own present.

Wondering what we would have done under the Occupation costs nothing, and that is how the retrospective position can be recognised. Inside a situation, the question is paid for before its content has even been examined. I lived through this (…)

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 (…)

The word

Domination at the Heart of Culture

How laudatory terms mask power relations in the cultural sector.

The praise we bestow upon “great artists” reveals, beneath its flattering appearances, a structure of domination. Behind admiration lies the legitimization of a power that operates against cultural democracy. The Vocabulary of Admiration as the (…)

Rebuilding the Democratic Function of Major Performing Arts Venues

At a time when anyone can be a creator, what could theatres, national stages and drama centres become for the people who live around them?

Digital technology has made each of us a potential creator. This anthropological transformation calls for a rethinking of the political function of publicly funded performing arts, and of what their major venues could become for the people who (…)

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 (…)

Making Room for Adolescents: Rethinking Our Approaches in Cultural Action

From democratisation to cultural democracy.

Cultural action and mediation with adolescents challenge the foundations of our practices: between framework and transgression, between physical presence and digital practices, what place is there for horizontality? Two models of cultural policy (…)

Authorizing Creation

For a radical democratization of the creative act.

How can artistic creation become a political act of collective emancipation? By carrying within itself, in its form and process, the authorization for everyone to risk themselves in it. Learning by doing, or the genesis of my practiceMy desire (…)

“Droit à la parole!” (The Right to Speak)

A documentary film by Benoît Labourdette (2026, 1 h 05), shot with the pupils of the École Nouvelle La Source in Meudon and produced by Sources Vives, about democracy as something children learn, from nursery school to the end of secondary school.

Speaking up, listening, debating, deciding together: at La Source, children learn this from nursery school onwards, just as they learn to read and count. I made “Droit à la parole!” in the school where I went to primary school, handing cameras (…)

The Périfééries project’s heritage council of influence

Facilitating collective intelligence in a short space of time.

As part of Saint-Denis’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, I led a collective intelligence session to collect proposals on the subject of “Making local residents active players, from the production to the editorialization of (…)

Engagement in Time

What matters in cultural mediation is not the duration of actions, but the quality of shared time.

The duration of cultural actions is often considered a guarantee of quality. I defend here a different approach: what transforms people lies in the intensity of shared presence, not in the quantity of time spent together. Duration is not a (…)

Show me a white paw

Feeling legitimate, or not, depends first on the place one holds within a system. I propose to think of another kind of legitimacy, one we receive from the people we work with, and which has to be remade on each new ground.

The feeling of not being legitimate is usually read as a lack of self-confidence, to be treated by working on oneself. Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu and Pierre Rosanvallon help us see it as a social relation, which says more about the place one (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability

For a cultural policy adapted to digital spaces.

Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be very constructive tools. Here’s how. Limits and opportunities of digital discoverability policies (…)

Reflection on the Evolution of Audiovisual Media in Libraries

For a citizen-driven heritage preservation of territorial audiovisual creations.

Libraries are facing the disappearance of physical audiovisual media. This technical transformation calls, in my view, for an anthropological redefinition of their missions (in the audiovisual field) around participatory creation and digital (…)

The living abecedary

Building, during an event and with artificial intelligence, the abecedary of the words that run through it, and keeping it alive with the participants.

We propose to build, right in the middle of an event (a colloquium, a seminar, professional gatherings), the abecedary of the words circulating there: from the recordings of the talks, artificial intelligence helps retrace how the debates have (…)

15-25 year-olds have not deserted politics

A survey of recent research on the politicisation of young adults, and concrete ways of bringing democracy to life with them.

Young adults vote intermittently, express themselves first of all online, and young women and young men now diverge in their political orientations. I bring together here the recent research that documents these shifts, by Anne Muxel, Vincent (…)

Democratisation or cultural democracy: what these two words do to theatre

Why the houses of subsidised theatre do not look like their city, and what cultural rights make it possible to change.

Cultural democratisation and cultural democracy resemble each other and name two different projects. Retracing the history of the first with socio-historian Marjorie Glas, then unfolding the second through cultural rights, helps to understand why (…)

A definition of feminism

A thought movement in dialogues.

Here is my definition of feminism, from my place as a man: it is for me a movement of thought and action for equal rights between women and men, whose effects also go beyond.“Feminism” is a word that scares many, whether you are a woman, a (…)

Political awareness and political conscience

Between social conformity and authentic commitment.

What are our moral values worth when tested by reality? Between deep conviction and reassuring conformism, how do we distinguish authentic engagement from the illusion of good? What separates those who risk for their ideas from those who follow? (…)

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, (…)

Big Tech Did Not Impose Itself on Its Own

On 6 October 2026, at the Métropole de Rouen, several thematic groups worked on the revision of the Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights. I was in the one devoted to the place of digital technology in the text, with four other people.

In our group, we found that the articles of the Fribourg Declaration that set out cultural rights already apply to digital technology, and that what the text mostly lacks are tools for thinking about governance. We proposed adding creation and (…)

Cultural rights: what do they mean in practice?

Possible talks on cultural rights, for local authorities, culture departments, networks, and teams writing or revising a project.

Cultural rights have been part of French law since 2015 and 2016, they appear in almost every territorial cultural plan, and many professionals admit to me in private that they could not explain them to a colleague. Vocabulary has much to do with (…)

On Being a Good Enough Professional

Cultural rights require respect for everyone, not everyone’s approval. On the projections that cultural professionals attract, on the fair measure of their responsibility, and on methods to prepare for it.

In 1987, Bruno Bettelheim published “A Good Enough Parent”, inviting parents to give up the ideal of the perfect parent in order to remain genuinely available to their child. I propose to transpose this renunciation to the cultural professions: (…)

Cultural Rights and Digital Technology

Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.

How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of the eight fundamental rights, to open concrete democratic pathways. From democratization to (…)

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 (…)

The Fribourg Declaration analysis tool

Analyse your project through the eight cultural rights of the Fribourg Declaration, and draw from it a working basis for the team.

We are developing a tool that guides a team through the analysis of its project using the eight rights of the Fribourg Declaration: the project is described, examined right by right, and the tool produces a written synthesis that serves as the (…)

The elsewhere of the in-itself

Conceptual and methodological proposal for complementarities between in situ and remote cultural projects.

The Covid-19 crisis revealed the potential of remote cultural mediation, but it seems that the public cultural sector has largely returned to focusing on physical presence. I propose a complementary approach between the “in-itself” (digital and (…)

Culture 2027: reading the proposals for culture side by side

With Juliette Bompoint, in October 2026 I opened a space where people can read, compare and discuss what parties and organisations are proposing for culture ahead of the 2027 French presidential election. It is a beginning, and we are making the platform available to anyone who wants to use it.

The parties have so far published little on culture for the 2027 presidential election, while professional organisations, local authorities and researchers have written a great deal, each on their own. We have gathered nearly a hundred and fifty (…)

The evolution of law and symbolic power in the age of social networks

When traditional institutions lose their grip on new power players.

Faced with the emergence of new forms of authority, our democracies must rethink their relationship to dialogue and respect for otherness so as not to lose their legitimacy. The challenge of contested authorityDuring a National Assembly (…)

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, (…)

The Too-Rapid Inversion of the Value System

For a Democracy of Dialogue in the Face of New Totalitarianisms.

Faced with the rise of extremisms, let us question our collective responsibility in the stigmatization of the other. I propose paths to reconnect with authentic democratic dialogue. The Banality of Evil and the Trap of DemonizationSince Donald (…)

How do you stand up for culture when the money runs out?

Possible talks on cultural policy and the future of the sector, for local authorities, culture departments, networks and subsidized venues.

Budgets are shrinking, and the cultural sector most often responds by defending what it has. I believe that response is a losing one, not for lack of courage but because it places us on our opponents’ ground. I have written an entire book on (…)

Banning social media for under-15s

The symptom of adult domination, or how to deal with it.

The law banning social media for minors under 15 was passed by France’s National Assembly on the night of January 26–27, 2026. Rather than simply deploring it, I propose here to understand it as a symptom — that of adult domination — and to draw (…)

Raisons d’Agir Festival: When Collage Gives Voice to Ideas

A photography workshop at the Le Local community centre (Poitiers).

Strangers coming together around scissors, glue and quotes from Bourdieu. And leaving with images that say something about who they are. Workshop produced in collaboration with Guillaume Cuny and the team at Le Local community centre.On (…)

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 (…)

Raising awareness of cultural rights - Nantes métropole (September 30, 2022)

Co-design and co-hosting of a one-day event for Nantes’ cultural players.

Taking ownership of cultural rights concepts and approaches through cooperative creativityA small group of cultural players from Nantes, led by Véronique Guiho-Leroux, Head of the Publics and Cultural Citizenship Mission at the Directorate (…)

Conformism versus Sovereignty

The comfort of digital dependence versus the requirement of data mastery.

Our digital lives rely on standardized tools. While this conformism simplifies usage, it exposes us to a loss of control. Let us reflect on this societal choice that shapes our collective future more than we think. The Seduction of Digital (…)

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 (…)

Culture and youth: two professional cultures a city chose to connect

The story of the training-action programme “Getting to know each other to work better together”, carried out in Fontenay-sous-Bois from November 2024 to June 2025, at the request of the city’s cultural affairs department and youth department.

In many cities, culture teams and youth teams have to work together even though their professional cultures differ profoundly, and the service delivered to residents suffers from it. Fontenay-sous-Bois chose to invest in addressing this problem. (…)

The transformative power of speech

On what living speech brings into being, and the work that makes it possible.

In French culture, the written word prevails over spoken speech, which is held to be fleeting and less solid. From years of facilitating groups, I have come to see that this hierarchy is false. Living speech is a mode of thought in its own right, (…)

Giving Ourselves Permission to Create

Creativity and the kind of space in which we welcome people.

Public consultation mechanisms have become widespread in public policy over the past fifteen years, almost always in the form of the questionnaire. Yet the questionnaire freezes the very way of thinking within which people are asked to respond, (…)

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 (…)

Sovereign Digital, a Micropolitical Choice

Escaping the Hegemonic Imaginary of Digital Tools.

Our daily choices of digital tools lock us into a capitalist imaginary. Moving from Microsoft to Free Software is not just a technical issue: it is a political act. Why and how. The Unconsciousness of Our DependencyWe are prisoners of a (…)

Immersion VR, second season: democratic debate in 360°

On 14 October 2026, at Erasme, in the Pôle Pixel in Villeurbanne, launch of the second digital cultural class devoted to virtual reality, which I lead for the Métropole de Lyon with Festivals Connexion and Réseau Canopé.

This year, four lower secondary school classes in the Lyon metropolitan area will make virtual reality films that stage debates they will have invented themselves. On the day of the launch, the plan I had designed for six classes and a joint (…)

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 (…)

AI in Service of Democratic Transformation of Cultural Institutions

Methodological proposal inspired by process management, adapted to cultural sector values.

Artificial intelligence is most often deployed to optimize production chains, for example through their digitization to create a digital twin in order to find ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency. In the subsidized cultural field, the (…)

Crafting cultural narratives with artificial intelligence

A one-day training session for the staff of a local authority’s cultural service.

A proposal for a one-day training session for staff of a local authority’s cultural service. The aim: that participants leave able to produce, on a regular basis and using methods drawn from collective intelligence and artificial intelligence, (…)

A new season with 220 voices

The story of a morning on young people’s cultural practices, facilitated for the 220 staff members of the culture department of Laval, on 2 September 2026.

The “Cultures pour tous” department of Laval and Laval Agglomération entrusted me with facilitating its back-to-work gathering, a full morning devoted to the cultural practices of 15-25 year olds. 150 people were expected, 220 came, from the (…)

Presence and freedom of expression

Who is responsible for freedom?

Freedom of expression, a democratic pillar, is threatened by shifting censorship depending on those in power, even those who claim to be democrats. To preserve our democracy, let’s create micro-citizen assemblies where all speech is allowed, to (…)

Contract

Creating with people

Methods of cultural mediation for shared creation.

This text brings together the principles that underpin my approach to cultural mediation. They are not rules. They are reference points, shaped by twenty-five years of practice with very different audiences – autistic children, Roma teenagers, (…)

Giant digital brainstorming

Design and implementation of a digital collective intelligence tool.

Method of activating a vast contribution for the axes of a cultural project. The needIn the solidarity I had with the city of Saint-Denis’ bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, Juliette Bompoint, the general delegate, had told me (…)

Trouble in Intelligence

For a polyintelligence: moving beyond anthropocentrism in the era of thinking machines.

The emerging AI seems to me to reveal our age-old fear of otherness. But what if this encounter offered us the opportunity to rethink our relationship to all forms of intelligence that surround us? The illusion of human superiorityA large part (…)

Presence in culture

For a conscious emancipation.

I allow myself a critique of the Freudian paradigm: what if human nature were intrinsically good? And I propose the concept of “presence in culture” to move beyond the id-ego-superego triad, in order to cultivate a consciously chosen (…)

Taking the Risk of Truth

Why sincerity matters in the pedagogical relationship, how to put it into practice, and how to tame the risk it seems to carry.

Lying to a child « for their own good » is an ordinary gesture, practised by nearly every adult. I argue here that this well-meaning lie spares us a discussion at the cost of the child’s trust in others and in the world, and that sincerity, (…)

Presence, commitment and denial of fear

A new approach to civic engagement.

Current political engagement, based on the denial of fear rather than authentic presence, creates fertile ground for figures like Trump and perpetuates the very system he claims to oppose. Reality and Fantasy of Political EngagementAt the (…)

Professional meeting “Public participation”: presentation by Benoît Labourdette

Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Jean-Yves de Lépinay (11’37s, 2020).

Sharing examples of audiovisual creation workshops conducted in the spirit of cultural rights: moving from “participation” to “interaction.”This trust we choose to put in others is a risk we take, it changes us. We take the risk of being able (…)

A clear conscience as a system

When the cultural sector funds its own critique without changing its practices.

The most resilient structures of domination are sometimes the ones their beneficiaries believe they are fighting. The subsidised performing arts sector, of which I am part, offers a ground for observing this, and I want to share that observation (…)

The post-covid inversion of power

Political absence in times of crisis.

The Covid crisis revealed how censorship, lies and manipulation of information by public authorities and mainstream media weaken our democracies. Today, the inversion of power fortunately rehabilitates yesterday’s dissident voices, but (…)

Helping young people and professionals to speak out: “Cultures and youth policies” national meeting

Observatory of Cultural Policies / Villeurbanne (TNP, May 11 & 12, 2023).

As part of the Rencontres nationales “Cultures et politiques de la jeunesse” (“Cultures and youth policies”), which brought the year of the French Capital of Culture to a close in Villeurbanne, I was commissioned by the Observatoire des (…)

Presence and “objective facts”

Collective beliefs and the construction of truths.

The objectivity of facts is often illusory: our perceptions, power, and interests influence their definition, making reality complex, subjective, and always partial. Media and Information EducationFor several years, there has been a strong (…)

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 (…)

Cultural data and cultural rights

For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.

Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a constructive collective memory for future democracies. The technical foundations of an interoperable digital (…)

Our fragile memory

For a digital archiving policy.

Our lives are now inscribed in digital form: emails, photos, documents, etc. But this collective memory is excessively fragile. Without active archiving, our heritage disappears completely, threatening our history and our democracy. The new sites (…)

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 (…)