Cultural Strategies for a New World

Cultural strategies for a new world

Acts of the Forum d’Avignon 2009

November 19 - 21 2009

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Benefactors and partners 2009

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Contents

Inauguration session Friday November 20th, 2009

Cultural strategies for a new world (p. 6)

Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of culture and communication (pp. 7 – 11)

Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO (pp. 13 – 16)

Hervé Novelli, Secretary of State for Trade, Crafts, Small and Medium Enterprises, Tourism, Services and Consumer (pp. 17 – 19)

Culture: thinking for tomorrow (pp. 20 – 34) With Richard-David Precht, philosopher; Christian de Boissieu, President of the Conseil d’analyse économique, attached to the French Prime Minister; Marjane Satrapi, Cartoonist and Film director; William Kennedy, novelist; Bertrand Lavier, artist.

*** Session « Creating and innovating for a new world » Friday November 20th, 2009

Introduction of the Bain & Cie study (pp. 34 – 36) By Patrick Béhar, Partner Bain & Cie

Round table 1: Innovation in the digital era (pp. 37 – 45) Frédéric Martel, journalist France Culture, writer (moderator), With Amit Khanna, Chairman of Reliance Entertainment; Lawrence Lessig, Law Professor Harvard, founder of Creative Commons; Dan Glickman, Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA); Theodor Paleologu, Minister for Culture, Religious Affairs and Cultural Heritage of Romania; Bruno Patino, Director France Culture.

Round table 2: How to facilitate the innovation in culture and media? (pp. 46 – 56) Robin Sloan, writer and media strategist (moderator) With Régis Wargnier, film director; Alain Kouck, Vice-President and General Director Editis; Christer Windelov-Lidzelius, CEO of Kaos Pilot; Georges Nahon, Chairman of France Telecom R&D San Francisco; Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman of the Board, Vivendi.

Round table 3: Beyond GDP: How can we integrate culture? (pp. 57 – 64) John Thackara, director, Doors of Perception (moderator) With Pier-Carlo Padoan, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD; Pierre Louette, Chairman AFP; Umair Haque, Director Havas Media Lab in London; Paul Andreu, architect.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

*** Session « Considering culture from an economic or symbolic viewpoint: how can it promote the development of territories? » Friday November 20th, 2009

Intervention by Michel Draguet, Director of Magritte Museum (pp. 65 – 66)

Introduction of the Ineum Consulting study (pp. 67 – 69) By Vincent Fosty, Partner Ineum Consulting

Round table 1: The conditions of cultural attractiveness (pp. 70 – 81) Erik Izraelewicz, Managing editor of La Tribune (moderator) With Bernard Landry, Former Prime Minister of Quebec, lawyer, professor and economist; Mitchell J. Landrieu, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana; René Carron, Chairman of Crédit Agricole S.A.

Round table 2: Culture and architecture in a post-Kyoto 21st Century Metropolis (pp. 82 – 95) Erik Izraelewicz, Managing editor of La Tribune (moderator) With Michael Koh, CEO National Art Gallery and National Heritage Board of Singapore; Denis Valode, architect; Kjetil Tredal Thorsen, architect; Ezra Suleiman, philosopher, professor at Princeton; Jean- Jacques Annaud, film director.

*** Session « Towards tax policies to promote the arts and culture » Saturday November 21st 2009

Video of Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment (pp. 96 - 97)

Introduction of the Ernst & Young study (pp. 98 – 102) By Régis Houriez, partner attorney, Ernst & Young

Round table 1: Tax policies in the cultural sectors: priority to the economy or to the culture? (pp. 103 – 111) Alessandra Galloni , Southern Europe Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal (moderator), with Régis Houriez (expert Ernst & Young) With Jake Eberts, producer; Philippe Monfils, Senator and Minister of State; Alexandre Allard, Chairman of Groupe Allard.

Round table 2: Which tax policy is better for culture in a global and immaterial economy? (pp. 112 – 119) Alessandra Galloni, Southern Europe Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal (moderator), with Bruno Perrin (expert Ernst & Young) With Christopher Miles, film director and producer, Milesian Lion; Alain Sussfeld, Managing director of UGC; Antoine Gallimard, CEO of Editions Gallimard.

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Round table 3: What kind of tax competitiveness for the art market? (pp. 120 – 126) Alessandra Galloni , Southern Europe Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal (moderator), with Eric Fourel (expert Ernst & Young) With Laurent Dassault, Vice-chairman of Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault; Xin Dong Cheng, galerist, exhibition commissioner and editor; Julian Zugazagoitia, director of the Museum del Barrio in New York; Philippe Vayssettes, Chairman of the Board of Banque Neuflize OBC.

Closing session: The blossoming of cultures Saturday November 21st 2009

Cartoonist Plantu observes the Forum d’Avignon (pp. 127 – 156) Cartoonist Le Monde

Artists’ outlokks (pp. 157 – 161) With Gloria Friedmann, artist; Barthelémy Toguo, artist; Souleymane Cissé, film director

Proposals and lessons learned (pp. 162 -163) By Louis Schweitzer, Chairman of the Festival d’Avignon, Chairman of HALDE

S.EM. Abdou Diouf, Secretary-General of the International Organization oh the Francophonie (pp. 164 – 165)

Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of culture and communication (pp. 166 – 168)

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Friday November 20th

Opening session Cultural strategies for a new world

Nicolas SEYDOUX Chairman of Gaumont, Chairman of the Forum d’Avignon

M. Minister, you have been in Rome to familiarise yourself with the cardinals’ jousts. We are delighted to be able to welcome you to this setting, where it is not always easy to see who is listening to you. I would just like to remind you that the cardinals were on one side – and the greatest democracies in the world have this sort of set up. While at the end of the proceedings there will be no white smoke, we might just have an extra spark of light. I would now like to invite the Minister to welcome the guests to our gathering.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Frédéric MITTERRAND Minister of Culture and Communication

It has been our custom, as we try to grasp reality, to divide things into what we think are distinct entities. We talk about culture, communication and economics. At first glance, common sense might tell us that there is an opposition between these entities. Culture is about art and economics is about money. This representation is not completely absurd, if you approach it from the creator’s point of view. The practice of one’s art often means that the creator neglects or even sacrifices the other more materialistic aspects of existence. We remember Bernard Palissy burning his furniture to discover the secret of enamel, or Puccini’s Bohemian artists. Creators are often in otium, this studious forum for leisure, which is the opposite of negotium, which leads to negoces, which is trade and commerce. This attitude is doubtless the root of our perception of there being a divide between the two worlds. But for citizens and certainly for a Minister of Culture and Communication, it is not just about continuously trying to improve conditions under which artists work and operate and how they can be best known and loved. A Minister of Culture and Communication – and I think that this is true for all the countries represented here – is not just the Minister representing artists or serving the public; it is a post where the Minister serves the public good through the resources of the Ministry, via culture and communication. If by culture we mean not just creation and heritage in tangible and intangible form, but also the underlying and perceptible features of living together, it is inextricably linked to society, based on solidarity with its economy. It is the linkage and balance between free artistic acts and the huge wealth and richness which is the source of activity, something that we are just now beginning to understand better. Many changes in the modern world serve to highlight and further prove that culture plays a central role in our new economy. The major crisis that we are going through is also a crisis of the values of an economy that has turned its back on the values of sharing, as supported by culture. It is an economy that made speed, superficiality and volatility of trade normal, as if it were a feverish example of mental emancipation, exactly as was the case for the millennia. With artistic creation, we need to protect the wealth of art and culture and a modern Government needs to put together systems which protect continuity. We have to leave total freedom to the artist to invest bravely and boldly, while at the same time to know, almost unknown to the artist, what his contribution to society and its economy can be. Everything that artists reveal to us is our collective wealth, the economic impact of which, no matter how indirect, is huge and totally out of proportion to the amounts invested in its production. It is the human psyche in toto that moves forward and the work of artists continually improves our pleasure in life and our desire to move forward and innovate. It is in this form of balance and linkage that we have to focus our strategy for a new world. We are trying to look at this in terms of strategy and not merely tactics. It is not about lining up troops. Nor is it about getting culture ready for battle. It is about better understanding and developing the effect of culture on investment, because nothing is ever free. In fact, there are two ways in which things in our intangible economy can be free. There is the deregulated approach of the Internet, liberal ad absurdum, which is just a sales pitch that is detrimental to creators and their rights. There is also the creative act, which is not really free either, but for completely different reasons, as it needs to

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org have public support in order to exist and, above all, because it is an inestimable investment in the future and creates lasting wealth for everyone, as long we know how to guarantee its dissemination, which needs to be as broad as possible, such as via the Internet, and be most respectful of creators’ rights. What is true about an individual artist can be found in all the cultures in which we live today. We need to open up to others and in this respect I would like to pay tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss because, to a certain extent, this forum has been inspired by him. Since we learned the lessons of these great minds, know how important it is to allow the entire world’s cultures to flourish. Just like the explorations of artists, they bring us a new look and insight, without which we cannot understand ourselves. That is why I am delighted and honoured to have among us today the Director General of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, who is the champion of cultural diversity. The recognition and affirmation of the dual nature of cultural goods and their quantifiable economic value and symbolic social value, where their circulation must not come under strict market laws, has been a historic achievement. These principles showed their value during the recent upheaval in the face of the economic crisis when cultural economies and expertise and all cultural activities showed how strong they were. It is quite clear to me that the economy of culture will become more and more, day by day, one of the forces of resistance to emerge from the crisis and invent new forms of growth for tomorrow. The public and the list of speakers we have here are proof of this and I am delighted about this because I am sure that we can address these issues if we bring together the broadest possible background and experience. We have economists, artists and people from many different countries and cultures with us today and I would like to thank everyone for taking part in this second Avignon Forum, for which I have the highest hopes. I am sure that the forum will help us build the new world that we are all hoping for. It is not a utopia. I would also like to thank Christine Lagarde, the French Minister for the Economy, whom we will hear from tomorrow, as well as Hervé Novelli. Their participation shows that there is solidarity between economy and culture, and that this is supported by the entire French Government, particularly on the economic side. We are here to build that new world and the keystone – the Archimedes screw, as it were – is digitalisation and the upheaval that is spreading everywhere, particularly in our cultural practices, both in the strict sense and in the broadest possible sense. Digital must be the new strategy driver, focal point and linkage, recreating the connection that has disappeared. It is to be the driver in exponential growth that is unprecedented in terms of cultural offering. It is a unique opportunity for us to reach what I call culture for all – or, in fact, for each and every one of us, because it is not a one size fits all situation. We need to explore new paths so that each and every one of us, be we urban, rural, philosophical or whatever it might be, finds fulfillment. Digital is what the Greeks called a pharmacon – that is, both poison and remedy, depending on the dosage that the doctor prescribes. If it is misused, it can lead to subculture for all – and therefore for no one. Used properly, however, it can become a historic, unique driver for culture for each and every one of us. As Lévi-Strauss said, when writing for UNESCO, the great creative epochs were those when communication became sufficient for remote partners to stimulate each other sufficiently frequently so that obstacles between individuals and groups could dwindle to the point that diversity, despite exchanges, is preserved. As soon as I became Minister of Culture, I decided that I needed to look at the question of Google’s project for the digitalisation of European literature.

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Let me try to explain my principles and what I think of the method. This is a huge priority for me, because we are talking about the digitalisation of our heritage, and not just the printed word, but manuscripts, archives and images. Digitalisation is the basis of modern culture and knowledge economy, and this is an economy that we have to contribute to. The enormous innovative power of the Californian universities has made it possible for Google to grow at an incredible speed, with green shoots – the start-ups, as it were – moving to a rather tentacle-like undergrowth, and even in fact, grow into a plant that possibly has carnivore tendencies. This is such a complex issue that it cannot be left to become a head-on confrontation. We must not imagine that the result here is a foregone conclusion and so give up; nor should we become too jingoistic. I think that the project means that we must not give in to the demons of politicisation, nor be overly naïve, with the result that the Internet impose a dominant culture on some. We are aware of the risks of partnering with Google. What will happen to ownership, or conservation of these digitalised files? In fact, we know that European libraries and others have already entered into partnerships with the Californians, so why should we be over-Gaullist if it means ending up on the Maginot Line? To better understand and develop a doctrine on this subject matter, I organised a task force on library digitalisation which will present its conclusions on December 15. I have asked the group to bear in mind the technical aspects of the problem, as well as its political ramifications, in the noble sense of the term – that is, to say to what extent is the general interest protected. I have asked the task force to take a European mindset and I am sure that its study and discussions will give rise to results that will be of interest to everyone. The study’s remittance will follow a number of principles, particularly the overriding principle of regulation – that is to say that there will be rules of the road reconciling the broadest possible access to culture with protection for creators. Authors’ rights and copyright are an achievement that took such a long time to secure and it allowed more artists to come out of their marginalised and often impoverished conditions to which they had been confined for such a long time. It would be absurd for technological progress itself to ironically relegate them once again. That is why France recently adopted two laws, which some consider to be pioneering work. There is the regulation of the Internet to protect fair rewards for artists for their work. I also set up another task force to examine the extension of the legal offering of creation on the Internet. The French Government turned to the American courts for a ruling on the draft agreement between Google and American authors to examine the situation. French authorities adopted this position during the European Commission’s hearing in Brussels on September 7th. I am delighted to see that my Spanish and Roman colleagues are here, as I was also delighted to be able to discuss this matter with the Director of the German National Library. I hope that we will be able to reach a solution that reflects not just a long and shared process of thought, bringing together common European positions, but I would also like to raise this important issue at the European Union (EU) Cultural Ministers Conference on 27 November. I will defend the idea of accelerating the process of the digitalisation of heritage and together we will try to ensure that there is a joint European position where we will be able to define the public/private partnership conditions that will be acceptable to our citizens and will reinforce the European digital library.

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There is already a dynamic digitalisation process taking place in France, with the involvement of well- known museums such as the Louvre and Orsay. 85% of the collections have been digitalised and are freely available online. The National Cinema Centre is also about to launch a major digitalisation process, where it will deal with 13,000 films and 70,000 hours of audiovisual creation, and the National Audiovisual Centre has done amazing work digitalising a considerable proportion of its film, radio and, shortly, photo archives. To step up this process, I have suggested to the French President that we allocate EUR753 million to the digitalisation of cultural content, as part of the major loan that he intends to take out. I have also decided to have a single portal for French cultural heritage, following qualitative as well as quantitative principles to ensure the classification of content – and I stress the quality side of that. I would just like to tell you a little story at this point, if I may. Robert Musil, a wonderful writer, wrote a novel called A Man Without Quality and there is an interesting chapter where there is quite a nice general, called General Stumm. One day, the general decided to seek the key to knowledge and made up his mind to invade the National Library. He took a reader’s card at the Vienna Library, which held over 3.5 million volumes, and after questioning some of the librarians and scaring them, General Stumm – and stumm means dumb in German, of course – had to leave. He decided that having all the books in the same place at the same time did not enable you to pick the best book. I think that this is a good summary of all human thought because it means that it is a vain task. To be the General Stumm – or the Bouvard and Pécuchet - of the Internet and fall into the same trap as those described by Raymond Queneau in some of his works, we have to create guides, manuals and structures. I rely on everyone here through your discussions in the next couple of days to give us pointers as to what those structures might be and highlight the value of the contribution of culture to an economy of quality. The first session of the forum will explore the contribution of artistic innovation to economic growth and the development of new values for a new world. A session on tax measures will be held tomorrow and this ancestral palace where we are meeting is a wonderful example of Papal sponsorship and a perfect symbol of lasting wealth that public and private actors working together can provide for future generations. You will also be discussing the linkage between cultural projects, where they should be located and what the different levels of attractiveness are. This issue makes me think of a recent American film, by a wonderful English director, which tells us a story that was based on a musical event that took place in August 1969 – Woodstock, a film by Ang Lee. This is about a concert in the countryside where anti-hippy feelings put an end to the project for a concert and the organisers went to Woodstock, a place that no-one had ever heard of. In three days, at the cost of minor investment and the sacrifice of a few worthless grazing fields that soon turned into a mud bath, the local community made a fortune selling an unheard amount of food, drink and accommodation. The moral of the story, as you probably know, is not just the link between cultural investment and regional development, but also the message of tolerance, showing that development, in the past as today, belongs to those who know how to integrate the counter-culture – the marginal, the young and the expected – into their economic processes. It is this quite unconventional aspect of cultural events that I would like to end on in opening the second Avignon Forum and its first session on innovation, which urges us all to look at these areas of creation, which are necessarily young,

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org destabilising and strange, but which a confident and ambitious society must know how to encourage in all its forms of exploration.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Nicolas SEYDOUX Minister, we were expecting nothing less than what you just provided us in terms of an introduction and you have set a very high tone for today’s discussions. I think that it will certainly be with great pleasure that the Director General of UNESCO will follow your presentation, certainly matching your standard and perhaps even raising it, as we will be talking about culture in the entire world and not just in France. We are very pleased and lucky to have her with us today as she initiates her first official function as Director General of UNESCO.

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Irina BOKOVA Director General, UNESCO

Mr Minister, Mr Secretary of State, Mr President of the Avignon Forum, Mr Prefect, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with the greatest pleasure that I am taking part today in the inauguration of the Avignon Forum, devoted this year to cultural strategies for a new world, a central theme in UNESCO’s research and action. For over a year now, the upheaval of economic and financial structures has prompted us, more earnestly than ever, to rethink the ways in which our extensively globalized world functions. The United Nations and particularly UNESCO, in its role as lead agency in culture, did not await, any more than you did, the advent of a crisis to highlight the crucial role of culture in development and a better life. This concept is one of the buttresses of UNESCO, where individual dignity and human development take precedence over purely economic considerations. Central to our action is respect for cultural diversity, regarded both as a protean and essential asset in all aspects of life, and as a fundamental solution going side by side with development projects. I am very happy to observe once more the extent to which France, UNESCO’s host country, is engaging in more and more initiatives in this respect. We are going in the same direction, and I am convinced that these goals we share are going to help strengthen the ties between France and our Organization. Ladies and Gentlemen, In keeping with its mandate, UNESCO gives preference to a broad and integrated understanding of culture, looked on as a unique asset, at once essence and material, an intimate expression and a vector of communication towards the other. UNESCO’s role in the field of culture is consequently very vast. It covers the past and the present alike, the protection of buildings, of the intangible heritage and of languages, and the promotion and protection of cultural expressions or contemporary creation. To carry out this array of activities, UNESCO has adopted very broad cultural policies that culture needs to be preserved, to flourish and to be strong enough to constitute a core ingredient of development. It is thanks to this very broad approach that UNESCO makes the difference. To carry reflection and pragmatism further, I have taken the decision to relaunch the debate on culture and development. By postulating that culture makes the world more human, we can anticipate that more culture will make development more human. Cultural industries can play a major part in resolving the present crisis, and the strong cultural policies promoted by UNESCO are there to turn this axiom into reality. It seems fitting to outline the road travelled in recent years, which led UNESCO to adopt the 2005 Convention. What makes the strength of UNESCO, its value added, is that it functions on the basis of multilateralism, since it has 193 Member States and seven Associate Members. I think I can say that UNESCO occupies in this respect a unique and privileged position, as watchdog or explorer alike. Our research on including the “culture” vector in strategies is the fruit of an international brainstorming between politicians and experts. Our dialogue and our projects emerge from constant exchange between countries of the North and countries of the South, and developed countries and developing countries. There again, UNESCO makes the difference. During the last 10 years, given the extent of globalization, which at once emancipates, threatens with standardization and accentuates inequalities, it seemed urgent to make a fresh and dynamic appraisal of the subject culture taking into consideration the new global parameters.

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UNESCO then enlisted a group of intellectuals from various world regions to provide together a dense clarification and a keen and up-to-date understanding of the many dimensions of culture; we were faced with the immediate need to intensify respect for culture, seen as an asset and a benefit, and to incorporate its driving force in the development process. All that work done resulted, in 2001, in the adoption of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. It is a very profound text which, as I see it, extends the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It mentions, inter alia, “aspiring to greater solidarity on the basis of recognition of cultural diversity, of awareness of the unity of humankind, and of the development of cultural exchanges”. The strong point of the text is that it links up cultural diversity and pluralism, human rights, access to knowledge and freedom of expression. It is also postulated that cultural goods and services are not commodities like the rest since they conduce to identity, values and meaning. The 2001 Declaration is a powerful defence of humankind and of individual dignity. But UNESCO, in agreement with its Member States, considered it necessary to go further, to go beyond that Declaration by adopting, in 2005, a binding legal instrument, which is the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It is a standard-setting instrument so far adopted by 103 States Parties and the European Community, which formally pledge to respect its guiding principles. The Convention covers a very full spectrum, and its articles are of very great importance. I should like to cite two of them which are more particularly relevant to what we are discussing today. The first seizes the essence of the Convention, as it were, and I quote: “Parties shall also endeavour to recognize the important contribution of artists, others involved in the creative process, cultural communities, and organizations that support their work, and their central role in nurturing the diversity of cultural expressions.” For me, that is an explicit clarification, above all in this period of upheavals where the time has come to introduce or restore humanistic values in order to open the way to a fairer and more harmonious form of development for each and all. By consolidating the role of thinkers, scientists, creative artists and intermediaries, we open the way to a more balanced and more human future. Another article of the 2005 Convention provides a response to the challenge of the present Avignon Forum. I quote: “International cooperation and solidarity should be aimed at enabling countries, especially developing countries, to create and strengthen their means of cultural expression, including their cultural industries, whether nascent or established, at the local, national and international levels.” That is a still broader form of openness, an opening to the world, which is the doing of UNESCO. In our globalized universe, international mutual assistance is a necessity. To disregard it would be a mistake; none of us is an island unconnected with others. We all benefit from the multiple diversities that coexist. International cooperation is a form of solidarity, of respect and of tolerance that I consider fundamental. These are values central to my vision and to that of UNESCO. The 2005 Convention aims to give culture its rightful place in the international political agenda, particularly by recognizing its twofold symbolic and economic nature, which is inherent in human well-being. It sets out to protect the cultural expressions of the various social groups, notably those of minority groups and indigenous peoples. To be sure, it highlights the importance of culture for social cohesion in general, and its contribution to improving the status and role of women in society, which is also a determinant of peace and development. The 2005 Convention naturally also encourages the development of partnerships between the public and the private sectors. As new Director-General of UNESCO, not only shall I throw open UNESCO’s doors to the intellectuals and the artists of all regions, but I shall also promote our Organization and build forms of cooperation with the private sector, contending that culture is a powerful asset permanently capable of renewal; it is the creativity of individuals and the creativity of societies, from which any form of elitism is debarred. In the field of culture, UNESCO – I repeat – covers a very broad spectrum. Many of you are familiar with the other international conventions that offer systems for protecting culture. I shall just mention two whose links with the 2005 Convention on cultural expressions are self-evident: the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage; and the 2003

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Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. They are fundamental resources constantly proving their worth. Ladies and Gentlemen, The value added of UNESCO lies in the fact that it deals with fields which, at the same time, compel recognition as a whole and require an approach and implementation that is intertwined. There again, UNESCO makes the difference by working simultaneously in often separate disciplines; there is no watertight partition between education, science and culture, which are central to the mandate of our Organization. Quite the opposite, they are interdependent and interact at a great many levels. They form an extremely dense matter which cannot be dissociated when it comes to combating functional illiteracy, reducing poverty or protecting biological and cultural diversities. Advancing global projects in a holistic manner is therefore highly complex, but it is also a challenge and the only possible solution for the future. One of my priorities is indeed to develop interdisciplinary approaches in which diversity and cultural expressions will have a strategic place. This is one of the ways of making a success of the 2005 Convention. The second way is to encourage as many States as possible to ratify it in order to universalize the process. The third way is to help countries put in place legislation and policies in favour of cultural expressions. The fourth way is to disseminate internationally the message that culture, as “capital stock” and mainstay of development, is a key for the present and for the future. This can be seen from the World Report on “Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue”, published by UNESCO last month. This recognition of the cross-cutting dimension of culture is advancing substantially and very tangibly by being integrated into projects at present under way in connection with the Millennium Development Goals. Development projects rest, in Ecuador, on the promotion of cultural diversity to reduce poverty and facilitate social inclusion; in Cambodia, on creative industries; or, in Mauritania, on heritage, tradition and creativity for sustainable development. Eighteen projects of this kind are being carried out thanks to funding by Spain. Other Member States have announced their intention to make funds available to the same end of integrating culture for development. Let me add that we jointly organized in Monza, last September, with the support of Italy, the UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries, in order to bring into closer contact decision-makers, creative artists and the private sector around the issues of creativity, innovation and excellence. That meeting enabled pointers to be identified for common action to put culture back at the heart of the revival process. Ladies and Gentlemen, Yesterday we celebrated World Philosophy Day, devoted this year to dialogue between cultures. In the spirit of this Forum, seeking as it does to draw upon culture for the sake of a better future, I think, like all of you, that we have to reflect on what at present governs the relations of exchange, transfer and movement that fashion our humanity. This reflection is set to continue since, in 2010, the United Nations will be celebrating the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures, under UNESCO’s leadership. To go further into reflection on the potential for outreach offered by culture, I have decided to set up a high-level panel on peace and dialogue among cultures. I shall invite eminent figures of the intellectual world to work in partnership with UNESCO in order to carry forward reflection on culture, tolerance and reconciliation but also on balance within our own societies and throughout the world. I should like in conclusion to pay a renewed tribute, in common with you, Mr Minister, to Claude Lévi-Strauss, a signal humanist who, throughout his life, rested the depth of his research and of his perception upon the sense of the human being. The history of UNESCO will for ever bear his intellectual imprint. In La pensée sauvage, he gives a description which casts light on the fact of artistic production, and I quote: “Art is halfway between scientific knowledge and mythical or magic thought; for everyone knows that the artist partakes of the nature of both the scholar and the bricoleur; from a range of available things, he makes a material object which is at the same time an object of knowledge.”

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I wish you very rewarding debates and I hope that, in the course of this Forum, new paths will be uncovered, of which I shall learn with the greatest of interest. Thank you.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Hervé NOVELLI French Minister of State for Commerce, Craft Trades, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Tourism and Services

Director General, Minister, Ladies and gentlemen, Bringing together the Minister of Culture and one of the Ministers from the Ministry of Economy on the same rostrum is a clear indication of what this forum is about – the linkage between culture and the economy. The two should be mutually profitable. The presence of Irina Bokova is an even stronger symbol of this and her presence, as Frédéric Mitterand said, honours us and highlights the international ambition of our event. The linkage between culture and the economy is something that, as Secretary of State in charge of Tourism, I see quite clearly on a day-to-day basis. There is a virtuous circle between economic activity and cultural heritage. When cultural sites are properly exploited, visitors come and so too do the revenues, which we can use for the upkeep, renovation and refurbishment of the sites to make them even more attractive. Heritage generates 500,000 jobs in France and contributes EUR21 billion to our gross domestic product (GDP). Heritage is a vital and precious good that needs to be strengthened and protected. For this reason, with Frédéric Mitterand, we have decided to set up public cultural sites and various tourist facilities, as well as conference rooms, hotels and restaurants, to increase the value of heritage sites and make them more durable rather than be allowed to spoil heritage sites. That is why an agreement was signed between our two ministries two weeks ago, whereby we will draw up a framework for public/private operations. The Spanish example of the paradors – the wonderful palaces and monasteries that have been transformed into hotels without betraying their nature – are an excellent benchmark against which we can measure our efforts. This is typical of the win-win type of approach, which illustrates the mutually beneficial interaction between culture and the economy and between public and private funds. For Europe as a whole, making the most of its cultural heritage is an economic driver that attracts people to places and facilities that used to be closed, with elements of transportation and the increasing standard of living in the countries concerned, and all this has revealed a growing appetite for culture in a broader sense. People are turning their backs on the sea and sun to go for thematic, cultural tourism, where they discover all aspects of culture – heritage, works of art, local traditions and gastronomy. More and more, there is a tendency towards dialogue between arts. Eating wonderful food and drinking wonderful wines is enhanced by being in the sort of setting that we were in last night. Music and living arts are growing in importance, as well as exhibitions of paintings. Culture is a driver of territorial economic development today. Those involved in the culture and heritage industries are therefore more aware of public demand, without turning their backs on the need to protect the intrinsic value of their cultural goods. However, it is of course more than just natural historic sites. The heritage of a country is culture in toto – that is to say, all the elements which constitute customs and lifestyle. The inclusion in

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

UNESCO’s charter of intangible heritage is important, where, for example, French gastronomy hopes to be included. This kind of approach, aimed at promoting intangible cultural heritage, has the advantage of being international. A site is necessarily located in a particular place, whereas intangible cultural goods can travel. As part of the Union for the Mediterranean, we have organised activities between European countries and countries on the other side of the Mediterranean to develop and share the cultural goods and heritage legacy left to us by previous generations. The linkage between the economy and culture is clear because developing one necessarily has an effect on the other. We know that the amount of income dedicated to cultural activities rises with increasing economic strength, and economic growth and increased income are therefore culture’s best friends. In most countries, free time – that is, time not spent at work – has increased hugely and working time is now 10%, as opposed to 40% in Europe, 100 years ago. With economic growth, we can free up public and private funds for investment. However, that definitely does not mean that in the current crisis, investment in the cultural sector should be sacrificed. I am quite convinced of that. The crisis has shown that people need to find a meaning in their lives and exchange views on solidarity and humanity, and only culture can do that. Culture also needs to be seen as a growth driver for emerging from the crisis because by investing in culture and in knowledge and understanding we lay the foundations for lasting growth. The potential at the global level is huge. In recent decades, many countries had no access to global culture and human and physical exchange with the rest of the world, and celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall reminds us of this. The future will be for the countries that can create and innovate and produce the signs and symbols that can travel the world and to this extent globalisation can also be seen as an opportunity, with customs and regulatory barriers coming down. With the digital revolution, a creator has the potential to disseminate his works around the planet. Economic paradigms and models change very quickly in film, music, video games and books. It is the first unit that is so expensive – that is to say, the creation of the work – and it then costs less and less to disseminate it. However, this of course means that there are the growing dangers of piracy and counterfeiting and that means that we have to talk about how we can attract and reward creators by setting up the correct regulatory and fiscal framework. Many countries have schemes to support those involved in cultural creation, from artists via publishing houses, producers and sponsors, to the general public, and with the Société pour le Financement du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel (SOFICA), this innovative and efficient system we have for funding and supporting the film industry has done a lot. Investment in film and audio visual works provides tax breaks of up to 48% of the amount invested and also provides the possibility to write down the amounts paid by companies by 50%. Thanks to Christine Lagarde, the Minister for the Economy, the Government set up a special scheme in 2008 to create funds to develop sponsorship, based on the model of the English and American endowment funds, these funds are huge. There were USD30 million from Bill & Melinda (Gates) for example, or the Harvard Endowment Fund. The sponsorship funds we want to create, will bring a very efficient forum for leveraging cultural development. An experimental fund has already been run through the partnership between the Louvre and the Abu Dhabi museum and other countries have interesting ideas. The United States has a scheme for protecting intellectual property rights through charitable organisations, which is an innovative scheme and deserves a closer look.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

These examples show that culture serves a long-term development and innovation goal and it is why it has been part of the recovery plan in France this year. We have earmarked EUR100 million in cultural investment to run 150 operations of historical sites throughout the country and I have also speeded up the implementation of major cultural projects, such as the Mediterranean Museum of Mankind. This is proof that the cultural economy is one of the ways out of the crisis for the French Government and it also shows that in the long term France is willing to support the economy of culture and those involved in it. It demonstrates too how vital this forum is and I wish the Avignon Forum 2009 every success.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Opening session Culture : Tkinking for Tomorrow

Nicolas SEYDOUX We have been talking about building genius and I think that the Minister has got us off to a good start. However, we will have to shake things up a little bit now. Germany has, of course, given us many talented philosophers and geniuses. Unfortunately, I do not know the philosopher who will speak next. I met him briefly yesterday and we touched on the fact that when it comes to this philosophical reflection on artists and culture, it is usually not the young philosophers who write the best works. He pointed out that Kant’s first big work was written at the age of 40. We will, therefore, be hearing from Richard David Precht, who is not yet 40, and I will be very interested to hear his views on the topics that we are talking about today in terms of putting culture and the cultural world where it needs to belong, namely at the very pinnacle of human thought.

Richard-David PRECHT Philosopher (Germany)

Thank you for the kind introduction, which were a little friendlier than they should be, as I am actually 44. I suppose that you can, therefore, say that the best years of my life are already four years in the past. Thank you for inviting me to this event. In these times of crisis with a tangible and visible downturn in the financially oriented Western society – and this was touched on in the speeches made by Mr Mitterand and Ms Bokova – there is a thirst for new forms of culture and moral values. The question in society is therefore, who is in favour of new culture and new values and who is responsible? In earlier times, these questions were easier to answer because philosophy played a greater role than it does today. Dividing things into two major epochs, if we look back at the Attic democracy and Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, philosophy was a way of defining society. Philosophers were scouts, pointing out moments of senselessness to correct them and improve society. They were responsible for areas such as the economy, culture, society and, of course, morals. Philosophy was the answer to the question, how should we lead our lives? There was a similar situation during the Enlightenment. Between 1750 and 1832, the Enlightenment in Germany ended with the death of Hegel and philosophers worked on defining our world view and the view of society and laid the foundation for the liberal revolution, which paved the way for today’s freedom, democracy and rule of law. Today, however, the role of philosophy is diminishing and you can say that it really has no role to play. It is largely absent from public debates, and this is particularly disastrous if you look at universities. You just have to look at the syllabus of the average Germany university and I am sure that the situation is similar in France - 80% of philosophy courses

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org at universities are historical. Analytical philosophy per se – and this is also important – is not seen as something which can be used to analyse politics and society. These questions are simply cast aside. In what I am presenting today, I would like to pull philosophy out of this hole of irrelevance and impoverished thought. This is what I would like to call an impact assessment of anthropology. There are all sorts of impact assessments in society today, but nobody carries out anthropological impact assessments. What will be the societal impacts of these socioeconomic changes – changes in culture, the economy and the way we live? These are the questions we need to ask and I think that we, as philosophers, can respond to these challenges positively in bringing values forward. I think that Musil did this in A Man Without Quality, with his character of General Stumm – with stumm meaning ‘mute’ in German – who goes into the National Library in Vienna to try to bring order to civilisation and find the book that will explain everything and provide order for the broad panorama of human society, classifying societies and providing the broad key to overall understanding. However, he did not find the book and Musil really points out what we need. We need a kind of General Secretariat of Exactness and the soul – in other words, bringing together the exact, hard natural sciences and culture. We need to join the two and have responsibility for both aspects. Since Musil’s days, we have had hundreds and thousands of General Secretariats in various international organisations and I do not see the future of philosophy in any bureaucratic sense. What philosophy needs to do is bridge the gap between the hard sciences and cultural work and ensure that both can benefit society. The starting point for society can be seen as follows. As you all know, we live in the wealthiest society that has ever existed. We live in the West and have a degree of freedom that the thinkers of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century would never have imagined, even in their boldest dreams. At the same time, there is an unparalleled degree of freedom – we live in the world’s freest societies, and again all this has no precedent in history. Even in the Classical Greek era, freedom was not widespread. Just look at women in Ancient Greece, for example. We have, therefore, brought this far further than any society in history. The Enlightenment philosophers thought that freedom would automatically lead to prosperity and that prosperity would automatically lead to happiness. These thoughts can be found in Adam Smith and the Marquis de Condorcet in the French-speaking world. If, however, we look at today’s society and take a look around this room, some people might be happy, but we also know that society has an unprecedented degree of neurosis and psychosis, which are provoked by our Western money-oriented society. This tells us that something has gone wrong. The old view of freedom held by artists and philosophers was that freedom would lead to happiness – has this been the case? Our societies are flooded with freedom, but this freedom is often a threat. The unprecedented degree of freedom is actually a threat to us because freedom requires choice. We have more choice than any other generation in history and the freedom to choose also implies the requirement to choose. Even when you choose your mobile phone provider, you have to choose, and it is not just about choosing between option A and option B. There is a dizzying array of choices, and that is true not just for yourself, but for your partner, your lifestyle and everything about your life. You have to choose. We are becoming increasingly individual and, indeed, we are individualising ourselves to death. I do not want to relativise the idea of individualisation or cast freedom in a negative light, but we have to try to understand where the fault lines and conflicts are in our society, and these are things that no one in the Enlightenment could have anticipated. The big problem with our drive to individualisation as a result of freedom is that we equate individualisation with individual

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org self-determination – everyone wants to have the maximum of self-actualisation and self-development. That is our leitmotif and guiding light, and is a basic liberal tenet. However, if you look at some liberal philosophers of the 19th Century, such as John Stuart Mill, these philosophers already pointed out the inherent ambivalence in that concept. Increasing freedom for individuals leads to complicating situations for other individuals. Let me make this clear through an example. People of my age want individual personal fulfillment. That is what Mum and Dad wanted – that individual self-actualisation. Another question is what happens to the children of Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad’s personal development threatens and tramples the self-actualisation and personal development of children. John Stuart Mill already mentioned in the 19th Century that individualisation was not just relevant for individuals, but also for groups and societies. Groups and societies can individualise themselves. Can social categories individualise? These problems have been exacerbated in the modern era. On the one hand, we have the development of personal rights and prosperity, driven by capitalism. We have all become capitalists, even in our personal relationships. We invest. We invest in leisure activities and hobbies, and in our careers and our personal relationships – our friendships and romantic relationships. We want to benefit from that capital and if this personal investment proves unprofitable, we withdraw our capital. We want freedom, happiness and joy, and we withdraw the capital investment if we do not get it. This is a constant dilemma and a frontline in societal conflict today. We must not just have to look at equality versus freedom. Even with freedom there are new zones of conflict, which provoke suffering. Freedom has a price. If we broaden this to communication as a whole, Minister Mitterand nicely stated that the Internet is a pharmacon and can be either a remedy or a poison. He then talked about the Internet as a remedy, but not so much as a poison. I fully approve of everything that he said about the remedy, but I would like to add a few words about the poison, the other aspect of pharmacon regarding the Internet. Our access to information is increasingly individualised and fragmented. If we look at our view of democracy as developed by the Greeks, democracy is linked to the agora, a marketplace – the forum of the Ancient Romans and the piazza of the Renaissance. The wellspring of society was in the idea of the public and the political body and the fact that everyone talked about a common theme. However, if we continually fragment society and make it more individualised, will we still be talking about the same thing and can we then still have a debate? The pre-enlightened societies had the advantage of having an unfragmented world view, and while I of course do not want to go back to that era, we have a fragmented society that leads to a fragmented world view and a corresponding loss of values. The question, therefore, is if we create information individually, everyone will be living in their own parallel world, with their own parallel truths, and that is problematic. For example, what do we do with the major, leading media of our day, such as public television and the main newspapers? What will their future role be and how will we support them? What should be done for them? These media are constantly undercut by society’s fragmentation. As you can therefore, see individuality is a double-edged sword and the question that I want to ask is who should be responsible as a kind of supervisor to view this process and just to even describe it? I think that the economy could do this. If you work for a company, your company is responsible for this. You can also think that politics are not bound to society. Business can serve as that observer because people are bound to companies; politics cannot serve as the observing force because while politicians are bound to voters, there is a lack of accountability. There is an increasingly short-term view in both economics and politics. If you want to have an impact assessment of these underlying

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org processes, you need to have a long-term view, and politicians do not have that long-term view because electoral cycles are never more than four years and politicians constantly keep an eye on the next election. This means that there is no one left in society who can take a long-term view and have a focused view to support and accompany society. No one is responsible for society as such. This is a functional difference. I do not want to go back to a previous functional situation where we have someone in a totemic way being responsible for society, but I find it horrifying in universities that this issue is not dealt with. Following recent elections in Germany, we have a new coalition government and experts coming into the Government say that the policies will not work, while politicians say that they will. There is no contract with society and there is nothing left in academia that binds experts and academics to society. In that case what will the future of academia be? We live in a party democracy and it is impossible to really have an overview. There is nobody to view the decision-making processes. My question is, therefore, why do we still have a majority democracy in Germany? It is said that 49% of all votes in Germany are lost because people vote for the opposition and this harks back to an era when parties were willing to have a world view. The working class voted for the socialists and Catholics voted for the centre-right wing parties or other right wing parties, but that world is a thing of the past. Outside of elections, that world has disappeared. France’s Socialist Party, for example is not really socialist anymore and the Social Democratic Party in Germany is not really socialist either. Parties are therefore no longer bound to world views. Why do parties even confront each other in elections? In this system of freedom, there is no long-term view because there is a constant stream of elections. Someone somewhere is constantly voting. For example, Switzerland is a direct democracy and has a lot of referendums and is a proportional democracy in which parties play a proportional role in Government, based on their share of the vote. It is interesting to see that sociologists, philosophers and others are trained in the universities, but they do not address the basic societal problems concerning political representation and other matters. This is a cultural issue, with two opposing cultures. On the one hand, there is culture or natural sciences and on the other there are the social sciences. These were previously united as one. In the 18th Century, with the rational examination of physics and the examination of the heavens, along with the natural differentiation in the natural sciences, this rational approach led to a schism between the natural and social sciences. If we look at genetics and the cognitive sciences and all the new scientific findings that open up all sorts of ethical issues of manipulating humans, we need philosophy and anthropology. We need to examine the impacts of all of this. Scientists sometimes convene ethics commissions to decide whether or not a certain research application is ethically acceptable or not, but philosophers need to be involved earlier in the process, right from the very beginning. That is essential. We need to get away from this idea of culture being pretty and science being useful. We need to unify science and the soul and see them together. All good social scientists have a good basic knowledge of hard sciences and know, for example, how the brain works. That should be the case, but it is not the case currently and we need to reform our universities so that this becomes the case. There is an old Jewish saying that everything that exists demands its right, and I think that that means that it is very difficult to go back in history to the way things were. I would like to see culture and hard sciences living together, which is not something that can happen bureaucratically in some sort of commission or Secretariat General. We need to see the two as being intertwined from the very beginning. We want to have growth, but we know that society cannot

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org grow inevitably. A society that grows forever threatens its own future. Innovation is the code which governs the way growth works and if that code does not work, we need a new code. We therefore need new ways of compensating work – it must not just be monetary compensation. We need new incentives for work and progress. Earning money is great when you are poor, but when you increase your income to a certain point, your happiness does not increase directly in proportion to your increasing income. We therefore need to find new incentives and we need to have new growth. We need a new type of religious credo in our society because we have not been able to find ways of getting these things to work. In all sorts of indexes on happiness and human satisfaction, France is ranked 70th place and Germany is not far, whereas poorer societies often rank at the very top in terms of personal satisfaction. This raises the question, what are we doing wrong? Can we continue to measure happiness in terms of wealth and GDP? How do we measure overall satisfaction and not just GDP? I think this will require a revolution in culture and social sciences and natural sciences. We have to make that approach widespread in our society. A General Secretariat of exact sciences and the soul is what we need. In fact, we need a new Enlightenment.

Nicolas SEYDOUX Where, then, is the representative of GDP which can respond to that and tell us whether we are really happier in Vanuatu or the New Hebrides than in France? Christian de Boissieu does not just take an interest in economic wellbeing, so we will listen with interest to see what kind of index he will talk about or perhaps there will be no index at all.

Christian de BOISSIEU Chairman, Conseil d’analyse économique (France)

There are three things that I want to cover, including the point that you have just raised. I want to talk about the knowledge economy, looking towards the end of the crisis. I would then like to look at indicators. I will not try to defend GDP, but will say something about the Stiglitz - Sen Report and where we need to integrate the reason why we are here into our thinking – that is to say, a better linkage between economics, statistics and culture. Finally, I will ask a few questions regarding the political economy of our subject of cultural goods and services, and I will give a few examples of that. Starting with the end of the crisis and the knowledge economy, let us be tangible, as there is no point in having theory for its own sake, and I will refer to what I have been doing for the past three months. I have been a member of the Major Loan Committee. This was not my idea, but the idea of Nicolas Sarkozy. However, once the idea was out, the point of our committee was to try to make the smartest possible choices. My issue was what would we do with several tens of billions of euros that we were trying to raise in France? We are still in the recession, as far as I am concerned, and if you engage it in terms of unemployment, in most countries the recession will probably last for another year. We expect the unemployment rate to rise for a year, so we are still in a recession and it is in this context that we need to see what we can do to make sure that, once we come out of the crisis, growth is sustainable. The problem with sustainable growth is that it essentially refers to environmental criteria. We are talking about sustainable development and climate change, and in a few weeks’ time we will have Copenhagen, and I do not need to explain what I mean by that. I do not necessarily have an answer to this point, but it seems to me that the notion of sustainable development should include a much larger cultural component than it does today, which is virtually zero. As an economist, I repeat that when I think of sustainable development, I think of long-term

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org environmental and societal standards, as well as what I would call cultural references, which are not sufficiently present in what we mean by sustainable development. We know that in France, Europe and everywhere in the world the crisis has driven down actual and potential growth, and if we want to prepare for the medium and long term, we now have to implement measures to increase potential growth so that when we emerge from the crisis we have what I would call a glass roof over growth that is not too low. When you are faced with the issue of the economic outlook for 2011 and 2012, you come up against the question of culture in terms of the Lisbon Agenda. In 2000, the Europeans had some good ideas and the heads of Government said that Europe’s future would be determined by the knowledge economy. For various reasons, such as the electoral cycles that our German friend was talking about and short-term requirements, while this recession is terrible for many people, it is also an opportunity to put Lisbon back on the agenda in the broad sense, but strengthening its cultural side. Because while the Lisbon Agenda talks about innovation and research and development (R&D), the knowledge economy and employment, I am not sure that culture per se – that is to say, culture, apart from education and training – played a major role. Now that it is almost 2010, if we want to boost growth when we emerge from the recession, growth must be part of sustainable growth and for us in France that means that we have to tie the Lisbon Agenda to some of the things that were discussed at the French Environmental Summit. This means that we need to work on what I would call ‘grey growth’, which is cultural and intellectual growth, as well as green growth. We do not want grey/green, but something that is a real combination of both and culture will play a major role there. I would like to wind up this first section with a little story. I was in China a few days ago and met the manager of the Central Bank there. I thought that we were going to talk about matters that we had in common, such as inflation, monetary policy and various other monetary issues that you usually talk about when you are in a Central Bank. My Chinese colleague did not talk about currency at all, but about culture. He talked about the linkage between culture and the economy – what we are here for today. As a Chinese person, an economist and a citizen, for him, the role of the Central Bank in China was to anticipate the consequences of Chinese economic growth. The rural population is about 70% of the country’s population today and they think that that will come down to 50% in 20 years. He considered that the shift, which would be a major one, would have a major cultural impact on China in that it could be a challenge to various rural cultural values that play a very important role in Chinese society. He said that apart from the question of short-term Chinese development and issues connected to the visit of President Obama, which had occurred that day, what really interested him was how this would challenge cultural values and what impact it would have on China’s economic performance. You see, therefore, that you have to take this broad view, and this brings us to the second thing that I want to talk about, which is indicators. I am no defender of GDP and was not a member of the Stiglitz Commission, but as an economist I feel that it was a major piece of work. However, it was not completely new because we have been trying for 40 or 50 years to broaden our measurement of economic output and we know that human activity indicators have been developed. I had a look at this to see whether culture was included in the indicators developed by the UN. In fact, there is little in terms of educational performance, but in the human development indicators (HDIs), there are specific gauges of good or poor health performance and there is a debate on the relationship between health and culture. Everything is connected and comes back to the idea of human capital, which is seen in terms of health and education and is therefore very important for culture as a whole. The Stiglitz Report goes a bit further and confirms the need to more effectively take on board various cultural components, such as education. The report also refers to the social links, a very vague term, which obviously have a

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org cultural component, such as the need to include services more effectively, as culture is both very service oriented and service intensive, although that is not the only area. I am sure that we will integrate collective and public services more effectively, thanks to our efforts, and that means an opening up and an outstretched hand to culture. In preparing for this morning’s presentation, I read the 300-page report in detail and what I was wondering was what it actually says about culture and the relationship between culture and the economy. As I said, it is an indirect approach via the aspects that I have just mentioned, which are important but limited – education, services and social ties. The Stiglitz Report is sacrificed on the altar of current thinking in that, in a way, it just extends the normal thermometer – GDP – to environmental factors and the normal sustainable development indicators. Three or four years ago, I produced a report for the Government on France’s activities on greenhouse gases. We did not have the Stern Report at the time. As an economist, even if I was something of a latecomer, I considered that sustainable development, in terms of the environment and the fight against climate change, was obviously vital, but if I were to give advice – and perhaps I am not in the best position to do so – it would be that you and others who are totally immersed in the production of cultural goods and services should organise yourselves as a lobby vis-à-vis statisticians and lobby a bit more vigorously. This is not about playing culture off against the environment. These are two pillars and we need both of them. I remember Paul Samuelson, a well-known Nobel Prize winner for economics, who used to say that if we have two eyes it is so that we can follow at least two indicators. I think that this quip is very important for economists and we should also use it in connection with the enlargement of GDP. We can widen it to the environment, but at the same time we could also try to extend it in the other direction towards culture. This may have to be done in sequence and not in parallel, but your federations, it seems to me, should do much more with the statisticians because you are not yet well represented. To wind up with the Stiglitz Report, it is about trying to enlarge the definition of GDP and what we mean by economic activity. However, with respect to culture, it seems to me that the notion of cultural heritage is possibly more relevant than production and consumption flows. The report says very little in addition to flow indicators, even the broad ones. In cultural terms, we should probably look at cultural stock – heritage. To conclude on my second point, I would say the following. In the Major Loan Committee, when we tried to develop a list of priorities of what should be funded from the EUR35 billion that would be provided, there were various parameters. There was the question of profitability and cost effectiveness and another parameter, which was not at the top of the list, was CO2 intensity, which was obviously a negative factor. We should not support things that will produce too much greenhouse gas. However, people who work full time in these areas, which is not the case for me, should gradually try to develop cultural criteria. When you have to choose at a political level or even at a business level between projects, one of the criteria, although not the only one and not necessarily at the top of the list, should be the cultural intensity of the activity. This is, of course, very difficult to gauge and there are problems with definition. However, I do not know of many criteria or indicators today that cover cultural relevance or intensity – and when I say ‘cultural intensity’, this is what the Minister and Irina Bokova have talked about with you. Is there a cultural diversity indicator for assessing a project?

CO2 is, of course, important, but preventing CO2 emissions is not all we do in life. In conclusion, I would like to say a few words on what, even though it may be a misnomer, I would call the political economy of the production and consumption of cultural goods and services. I am interested in two or three things today, to which you probably have answers, although I have to say that I do not. A recent book by the Minister of Culture and Communication is about the cultural

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org practices of the French in 2008. When I read the book, which came out recently, I thought about the following element from an economist’s point of view. As regards the production and consumption of cultural goods and services, when you look at film, TV, the writing press and so on - all the things that make up culture – there is this question of where the borderline lies between complementarity and competition. Seen from the supply and demand sides of these cultural goods and services, the book uses data from a survey of the French in 2008 and there are some results that are not surprising, while others are more surprising about how the French approach complementarity and competition. The second thing is crosscutting, and I think that this is very important when we are talking about innovation, specifically cultural innovation, its distribution and the protection of rights holders. Where do you draw the line between two apparently contradictory targets? In terms of dissemination of knowledge and innovation, how can your reconcile them? That is an economic, cultural and social objective. On the other hand, there is the need for protection. How do you strike the balance between the two? This raises issues of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and industrial patents, and what is the best place in our economy to strike the balance between these contradictory objectives is an unending debate. Finally, I would like to come back to the general issue of digitalisation, which has also been touched on this morning, and pick up on a few things that have been put in the press about this loan and the EUR35 billion for public investment. We will see what the Government, Parliament and the President decide, but we want to put about 10% - EUR4 billion - into support for digitalisation and speed up broadband. We need to speed up the digitalisation of various activities and areas. I am a member of the Science Committee at the French National Library and while I was not the person who started this summer’s debate, I was involved in it. There, we had the whole question of Google and the library and, as economists, the real issue for us was market structure and how we could organise a diversified supply, given that Google had a virtual monopoly. The Minister mentioned Europeana, the European online library. Even if the French National Library is not mentioned in the loan proposals, out of the EUR4 billion that we want to put into the acceleration of digitalisation, there is an explicit reference to the acceleration of the digitalisation of our national heritage. I am also on the Economic Council, working with the Prime Minister, and François Fillon made a speech at the end of October to art professionals. He said that funds for art and culture were very important, but that they had been so neglected by most economists that he wanted this economic think tank to produce a report on the issue. I will not be doing this myself, as I am not a specialist, but Françoise Benhamou is here, and she helped me prepare this morning’s presentation. She will be working on this with a number of other people. However, you should rest assured that the economists will give their view on culture and heritage, and in the same way as Google should not have a monopoly on digitalisation, economists should not have a monopoly on the subject. The recession has shown that if we got a bit above ourselves sometimes, thanks to the crisis we have been brought down a peg or two and that is probably a good thing.

Nicolas SEYDOUX It is quite rare to have an economist calling on artists to defend their field, so thank you very much for that. It is exactly at this point that we will be hearing from three artists. You have heard what has been proposed and seen the challenge that has been set out. Let us defend our field. Where have our artists gone? If they have disappeared when the economists have called on them, that would be a sorry state of affairs indeed.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

The politicians and economists have not left us a lot of time, but we will try to answer the questions asked. I would like to hear first of all Marjane Satrapi’s reaction to what was said earlier in terms of how through film and her favourite means of expression we can ensure that what we say is heard better and that our concerns are taken into account to ensure that in the future there will be an analysis that takes happiness more into account, alongside economic wellbeing. The philosopher was saying that we are less happy now that we are richer, but can we perhaps be wealthier in terms of culture and have that as a source of happiness?

Marjane SATRAPI Film Director and Cartoonist (France / Iran)

I think that the question that you have asked is extremely complicated and I am not sure that I will be able to answer it, because I am not sure that I have understood everything that has been said here today. Economics is not really my field. However, I agree with the German philosopher. As an artist, I think that there is something very important in the act of creation, namely pleasure. When I read a book or make a movie, what is important is the pleasure of creating something. We live in a world that is deeply conservative and I think that the world as a whole does not like the idea of pleasure. We live in a world where posters are censored. There was recently a case in France of a censored movie poster and the cigarette in Gainsbourg’s hand was removed. We therefore live in a world where there is all this censorship and cigarettes are removed from movie posters because cigarettes cause cancer. It is even impossible to talk about love because love makes people think of AIDS. We live in a deeply conservative world and my question therefore is, what is the role of artistic creation in this world? I fully agree that culture should be accessible and available to all and that the more culture there is, the better. I am someone who does not believe in very much, but I do believe in education and culture as the only response to fundamentalism. When you push people’s emotional buttons and get them to react – to scream and laugh and cry – culture is a way of asking questions without necessarily providing answers and as such it is anti-fundamentalist. I therefore think that culture and democracy go together. However, art is not necessarily democratic; it is also elitist, which is not something that we can forget either. We need to remember that art is elitist, otherwise, we will just end up in a sea of mediocrity. We keep hearing about the Internet, which is wonderful and effective. However, Internet voting on America’s Next Star, or that type of thing, leads directly and inevitably to mediocrity, and that is also a reality that we have to keep in mind. When thinking about economics and culture, I am not sure if we are asking this question in the right way. As someone who firmly believes in art and culture as a solution to a lot of the world’s problems, I am aware that in Nazi Germany in the 1930s there was perhaps a higher density of intellectuals per capita than anywhere else in history. Germany, however, fell into Nazism because there were economic problems and a problem of national humiliation. When talking about culture, therefore, we should proceed from an economic basis – there has to be a basic standard of living for all. You cannot ask someone who has nothing to eat or a roof over their head or who does not know how they are going to survive the next day to think about freedom of expression or this or that book. There is a certain basis, which is a basic standard of living, and that is where economics comes in, and it is through starting from that basis that culture can become pre-eminent.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

However, without that economic basis, civilisation would be perfectly hollow. You cannot have civilisation with basic economic means. If things are a little bit better in Europe it is because Europe is bit more prosperous. Paris is such a wonderful city of light, art and love, but if you were to empty all the supermarkets and cut off the electricity, people would start killing each other, and that is certainly what happened in the Second World War when towns were bombarded. I do not think that some civilisations are superior to others; rather, there are economic situations that allow people to offer themselves the luxury of civilisation, or civility. I have two cultural heritages, as I spent half of my life in Iran and am of Iranian descent. I do not call myself French of Iranian descent; I am both Iranian and French. Therefore, what I would like to speak out against is the idea of a clash of civilizations, because I think that that expression is perfectly meaningless. Cultures are interlinked, like the links of a chain. They do not exist in a vacuum. Persian poetry, for example, had a huge influence on European poetry, which in turn influenced modern Persian poetry. Everything is therefore interconnected and I do not think that we can talk about a clash of civilisations. That is a totally useless thing. Therefore, instead of talking about a clash of civilisations, let us talk about differences, and differences are things that are cumulative rather than exclusive, leading us to a kind of panoramic view of culture, which I think is very interesting, not just in terms of a purely European culture, but culture in a broader sense. Look at me, for example. I was not born in Europe and did not grow up here, but I live and work in Europe now and feel European and have contributed to European culture. I think that everything has to be taken into account as well. However, as regards economics, I am not sure that the people who control money are necessarily fans of artists or that they like us, and I am not necessarily sure that I like them. I am sure that there are financial experts who are very nice, but I think that these are two worlds that are unfortunately mutually exclusive.

Nicolas SEYDOUX It is nice to have a dual culture represented, but it is also nice to have someone who represents a melting pot country and it is good to get the reactions from that perspective to everything that has been said this morning.

William KENNEDY Novelist (USA)

I will take my entry point into the discussion from one of the themes from this conference - the interaction of the artist with the city, and how cultural activity can transform a city. I would like to tell a couple of stories, both of which take place in Albany, New York, which is my home and a place I always write about. The first story is about Nelson Rockefeller, who was the Governor of New York State from 1958 until the early 1970s when he retired from the governorship and began to think about the Presidency again. He was Governor when I came back to Albany after being in Puerto Rico for six years. I used to equate the once-vibrant and throbbing city with the desolation of post-war Frankfurt, Germany, where I had been during the Korean War. Albany’s hotels and the theatres were gone or closing; there was racial trouble; and the flight of commerce from the downtown area to the suburban malls was in process. It was an extremely sad city. This had also

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org come about because the old Irish boss who had controlled Albany politics for 45 years was indifferent to the decline and not interested in urban progress, only the perpetuation of political power. Nelson Rockefeller’s point of view on the dismal quality of Albany was much like my own. He was an artistic powerhouse, one of the great collectors and benefactors of art. He was living in the Executive Mansion in Albany and was about to receive a visit from Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands. Albany is an old Dutch colony and its origins date to 1607, and the story goes that Rockefeller was deeply shamed at having to drive the Princess through the deep slums of Albany to get her to his Executive Mansion. So in 1962 he decided to do something about it. He expropriated 98 acres in the middle of the city and decided to build a government centre, which turned out to be the largest and most expensive project of its type in any capital city in the United States. It also had the reputation of being the largest marble project in the history of the world. Rockefeller hired the famous architect, Wallace Harrison, who had taken part in building Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, and their collaboration transformed the city. Rockefeller had been inspired by the palace of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa that sits on a plateau and he actually wanted to move the capital buildings 15 miles out of the city in order to get to a comparable mountaintop plateau. This might have doomed the old city to irrelevance, but Rockefeller was talked out of it and he built the center – called The South Mall – quite appropriately on another plateau that is Albany’s Capitol Hill. At the same time, Rockefeller was building a new university system -- consolidating state and community colleges, and creating four major university centers, one of which was in Albany. Eventually, in the early 1970s, I went to work there. I had been a newspaper man but had become a free-lance to commit myself to writing novels; I took a job teaching journalism, literature, and writing at the new University at Albany, which grew from being a teachers college with 2,000 students to a sprawling university with 16,000 students, a major escalation by Rockefeller not only of my city but of the cultural life of the state. He was obsessed with art and – his apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City was like a wing of the Museum of Modern Art. He had huge Picasso tapestries in the Executive Mansion and he installed the work of dozens of modernists everywhere in his new South Mall. When the Mall was finally completed after more than a decade it received terrible reviews. It was described as Fascist architecture -- designed to demean the individual. One critic referred to the Mall’s 44-story tower, the tallest building in the state outside Manhattan, as an “ugly anachronism – the City Beautiful’s last erection.” A legislative leader said it would be Rockefeller’s last erection. Mr. Rockefeller retorted that it might be his last erection, but it was going to be a beauty. And it was. Despite the negative criticism the Mall was a stupendous transformation of many parts of the city. Everything touching its periphery suddenly became valuable; almost overnight major office and bank buildings sprouted Downtown, and slum streets became high-rent neighborhoods. A renaissance had begun and it is still going on because of Rockefeller’s cultural vision. Meanwhile the new University at Albany was radically changing another wide swath of Albany, and I was in the middle of it, teaching journalism and writing courses in the English Department. My income was below the Federal poverty level. One day I tried to bring to the university an established novelist to talk to writing students. He was willing to do it for USD150, since he would pass through Albany on his way home to New England. But the English Department did not have USD150 to pay him, which I found to be incredible, but true. And I never forgot it. I left the university after about eight years and went to Cornell University as a visiting writer where I tripled my teaching salary as a visiting writer. In 1983 while I was there my novel Ironweed was

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org published, along with two of my earlier novels; and that same week I was given a MacArthur Foundation fellowship for USD256,000 tax-free over the next five years, and my poverty days were over. The MacArthur Foundation also gave me an ancillary grant of USD15,000 a year for five years, which I could give away -- as long as it went to a non-profit organization. I was very mindful of that USD150 that I never got from the English Department, so I decided to give the USD15,000 a year to the Department with the proviso that they use it to bring serious writers, poets, and playwrights to the Albany campus. The English Department did not know how to accept or use such a bonanza, but the President of the University loved the idea and matched my 15,000, and so from having no money for writers, we suddenly had USD30,000 a year. We formed The Writers Institute and as our first visitor we brought in Saul Bellow, who had been a teacher of mine for a semester in Puerto. He said to me, ‘You get a little money and suddenly you turn into a patron of the arts’, which was weird but true. I never stopped writing, but with the appearance of Bellow on campus we suddenly had great attention in the press and some legislative people asked me if I would run this if they institutionalized it. And I said yes. By this time, Rockefeller was gone and a new Governor, Mario Cuomo, who had just electrified the nation with his keynote speech to the Democratic Party convention in 1984, signed a law creating the New York State Writers Institute, giving us another USD100,000 a year on top of our 30,000. Solvency was on the rise. Our first guest as a state institute was Toni Morrison and we have brought in a thousand writers since then -- every major writer you can think of – Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Seamus Heaney, Norman Mailer, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer. We started a weekly classic film series and brought in directors such as Costa Gavras, Merchant and Ivory, and Spike Lee to talk about their work. We started a program called Authors Theater with such major playwrights as Edward Albee and Stephen Sondheim. People who had never been seen at a podium talking about their work were suddenly in common conversation on our campus. We have writers and poets constantly in residence as teachers; we offer classes in screenwriting, and periodic seminars with from five to thirty-five writers. And almost everything we do is free and open to the public. When I was an aspiring writer Albany was a cultural wasteland, literarily speaking. In my early days I couldn’t find anybody to talk to or listen to about serious writing, but now we have a weekly invasion of Albany by the great writers of every discipline. And the program is highly regarded nationally. The people of Albany support us seriously – the reading public, students, and the publishing world, which sends us their best writers for our stages. Our audiences range from a dozen people to a crowd of 3,000. We sometimes have to turn away 500 or more people from an event. We now have a website with a vast archive, and 4,000 hours of dialogue are being put on tape for the Internet. So our cultural penetration of the society is entering yet another level. We celebrated our 25th anniversary recently and Mario Cuomo came to the celebration and helped us celebrate a milestone. He lauded the founding of the Institute as a classic example of government doing for the people what the people could not do for themselves. I personally think the whole chain of events is a social and cultural miracle. I am very proud of what has been achieved; and our story also seems to be instructive about what is possible in society. Bertrand LAVIER Artist (France)

I would like to come back to some of the issues that we have heard this morning. To quote Godard, ‘Competition is the rule and art is the exception’, which means, I think, that an artist can feel out in

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org the left field in a forum like this. However, I was very interested in what the German philosopher said this morning about having a horizon that is possibly five years, but certainly very short term. We have a completely different relationship with time and compared with economists, we are talking about a very long-term investment. I am in a kind of niche position – using the language of the economists – because I am a painter and sculptor. When I go to a group exhibition that has 500,000 visitors, for me, that is huge. It is what you would get for two or three years in museums, but for filmmakers it is a flop. Nobody boasts about 500,000 people coming through the box office and it will not do much for the industry. We are therefore talking about a completely different timeframe and pace. It is not even about moving with the public; it is almost moving against the public as a counter current. This might be a bit of a spanner in the works, but it is thanks to this pace and process that we make progress.

The big problem today is that culture is the subject of the forum and ratings therefore obviously begin to matter. Today’s big museums are wondering whether they should invite a particular famous artist because that will put bums on seats, as the expression goes. It will often fill the house. It was different 25 years ago when you were aiming at a much smaller audience and were more selective. For example, you would pair a well-known author with one that was less well known, Frédéric Beigbeder and Pierre Guyotat. Today, because of the obsession with ratings, the whole criteria in relation to choice and excellence have changed. I am not a decision-maker, but I see the people who make decisions. With museums, for example, that is curators. Experts are inwardly devastated and all this almost happens against their will. I often meet politicians and am flabbergasted at how ignorant they are of contemporary culture – not to mention art. While there are obviously exceptions to this, the culture of politicians is TV guide culture. However, that is fair enough because these are publications with the biggest circulation in the country and they therefore reflect voters. We nevertheless have a mix of the obsession with ratings and the artists’ long-term view. When I started, five people were interested in what I was doing. Today, that has probably gone up to 15. That is what we are talking about. This is therefore a very select, small circle and it is through capillarity that creation escapes from the creator’s hands, although at a different pace. We should try not to be overly threatened by this obsession with ratings.

Nicolas SEYDOUX As far as culture is concerned, this is no spanner that you can throw in the works. If we did not have differing views in the room, this event would be a failure. What we are therefore trying to do is to make it possible for different worlds to express themselves. I think that Christian de Boissieu clearly showed that on the economic side they do not all think along the same lines, although it is quite clear what their priorities are. Godard attracted 15,000 people to the box office – he was not even aiming at 500,000 – and Bertrand might be happy when he gets 15.

Bertrand LAVIER Absolutely.

Nicolas SEYDOUX However, despite the fact that all artists are not seeking to attract the broadest audience, we all know that you do not judge a book, film, painting or sculpture on the basis of the number of people who want to see it.

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Bertrand LAVIER Actually, this threat exists.

Nicolas SEYDOUX I think that we are all mature enough to know that, even though, as Bertrand says, this is a threat. As we heard yesterday and from our philosopher today, there can be no culture without time and our society is suffering from being an instant fast-culture society. We will be talking later about tax systems, the attractiveness of locations, and issues that were referred to by politicians, the Ministers and the philosopher showing that modern culture and the economy are on the same wavelength, with everything being intertwined. All of us involved in the world of culture and the economy want more culture because, as was said by Ms. Bokova, for people to understand each other and get along there must be peaceful discussions and different opinions. Artists should not feel that we are trying to impose a one size fits all culture on everyone.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Creating and innovating for a new world

Introduction of the Bain & Cie Study for the Forum d’Avignon : “Getting Out of the Recession : A New Innovation Model for the Cultural Economy?”

Patrick BEHAR Partner, Bain & Co. (France)

We are very much at the heart of the topic of creating value in culture and artistic creation in its broadest and most diverse sense. Therefore, I would like to talk about the study I carried out, called ‘Getting Out of the Recession: A New Innovation Model for the Cultural Economy.’ Our view was that we should approach culture from the broadest standpoint possible. Faced with the economic, financial, social and moral crises, our belief is that culture is relevant and that we need to discuss it in designing a new world. I am sure you all share this belief. Creation and innovation have often been placed in opposition, but our opinion is that we have to combine them to recover from this unprecedented crisis. First of all, however, we need to take a look back. The ecosystem of cultural industries worked well up to the end of the 1990s. We like the word ‘ecosystem’ at Bain & Companie because it refers to a living, changing system and the idea that all the parts of the system interact. The ecosystem was not perfect, but artists had both private and public funding and were able to find an audience. Content could be economically promoted by the private sector and the government could serve as a kind of regulator. Cultural industries were protected to a certain extent by high entry barriers such as technology and strict regulatory barriers in a lot of countries regarding broadcasting and other cultural areas. This entailed a high investment threshold in order to broadcast on TV or print and circulate a daily newspaper. These entry barriers, therefore, enabled media to serve as major economic motors, and our analysis shows that media industries performed better than the energy sector or automobile industry in terms of profitability and annual growth until the mid- to late-1990s. The digital revolution, or storm, has changed that model and kicked us out of the Garden of Eden, as it were. We refer to this as a storm because we do not see digital technologies as just another revolution, as cultural industries have constantly faced technological changes and revolutions. Here, however, we have a storm of innovation that has completely changed the entire ecosystem. It is a kind of perfect storm that has affected all cultural industries. Therefore, we have new technologies as well as new economics and new ways of using these models, and all these factors have led to this sea change.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

One could question the sustainability of these new economic models, and talk about the potential destruction of value in moving from a paying model to a quasi-free model. There is also the fact that, though consumer leisure time has increased, this increase will not go on forever, and in the urban US, for example, the number of available leisure hours has stagnated. Looking at the rate of supply and demand on the Internet, the number of sites continues to increase dramatically but the number of users is increasing at a slower rate. Therefore, one has to look at all the links of the value-added chain in this cultural ecosystem, and all of them are affected by these changes. We looked at changes in the cultural ecosystem from a number of different angles. First, we looked at content production on behalf of artists, publishers, producers, directors etc. Then we look at content aggregation on behalf of group press companies, TV companies, videogames and new players on the Internet. We have business in cultural goods, telecom companies, pay TV companies, satellite TV etc on the other end of the spectrum. The complexity of the cultural industry means that all three groups interact, and most media companies have a piece of each pie. Therefore, let us look at how value creation and transformation have changed over the past 10 years. Content publication in the broad sense accounted for 70% at the end of the 1990s, but now it is about 20%, and its operating margin has decreased by half. The economic crisis, the crisis in advertising revenues and the digital crisis have led to a shift in value, where the importance of content distribution has doubled both in terms of its share of the ecosystem and its profit margin. The stability of content production, however, is important, because it ensures stability for artists. We must bear in mind that there are differences between Europe, the US and other parts of the world, and that there are major sector differences. We can, however, say that the economic storm and the digital storm have created a big challenge, and inertial growth will certainly not be enough to allow cultural industries to overcome them. According to our models, which are optimistic, the level of cultural value creation will not recover until 2013. Therefore, we have to build a new ecosystem together, and we have to think about how innovation can be used to do this. There are three aspects we need to bear in mind. Firstly, we have to bear in mind how value creation has been transformed. We cannot return to the previous status quo, and the players in this ecosystem have to accept the changes that have been wrought. Secondly, because the creative process has been revolutionised by the Internet, innovation has to be an open and network based process which can overcome geographic, temporal and ideological boundaries. Thirdly, artistic creation has to be at the very heart of our globalised economy, and we have to find a way to bring supply and demand together in cultural industries without impinging on artistic freedom and diversity. Every player in the ecosystem has a role to play in moving towards this new model, and in conclusion I would like to sketch out how I see this new model. Let us start with artistic creation. An individual artist will be increasingly multidisciplinary in a creative world which is increasingly multidisciplinary, cutting across categories and across old and new media. Network based innovation is a powerful tool for individual artists and other actors in the cultural ecosystem to interact with audiences. We cannot consider the cultural ecosystem without considering the important role played by large media groups. Media groups have an increased role to play in the context of new economic models in terms of anticipating audience tastes, and that allows us to rehabilitate the concept of marketing as a way of anticipating demand and cultural content taking into account future public taste, which will be important for creating value and bringing creators and the public together. Audiences themselves will bring cultural industries to new shores, and will be ever-more active in this increasingly interactive cultural world.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Roundtables will pick up on these topics. The first will concern innovation on the digital era, how to create convergence between creators, the role the public’s taste plays in creating contents for audiences, how these factors impact the public, the role played by public authorities, and tax and regulatory issues. Thank you all for your attention.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Round Table 1: Innovation in the digital era

Frédéric MARTEL Moderator Journalist, France Culture (France)

We have people who are mainly from other countries on the first roundtable, as the organizers thought that this was important. We will be looking at three different areas. First I want to introduce Amit Khanna. The first time I met him was on a beach in Mumbai in India, which is well known to Bollywood people. Amit Khanna has been a media writer and a scriptwriter who was involved in a lot of Bollywood films, but was best known as a lyricist for Bollywood soundtracks, having written 400 songs. Amit recently became the head of Reliance, which is one of the largest media and creative groups in the world. It belongs to an Indian billionaire, one of the richest men in the world, and provides services to 450 million people. Reliance owns Bollywood studios, radio and TV stations and cinemas. They decided to invest over EUR200 million in DreamWorks SKG in 2008 and another EUR600 million in Brad Pitt’s, Jim Carrey’s and George Clooney’s production companies. When we met, Amit said that there are 1.2 billion people in India, representing a quarter of the world population, and who want to play a key economic, social, political and culture role. He said they wanted to take on Hollywood on its own terms, not just to make money but to promote Indian values. My first question is whether a world cultural war has started.

Amit KHANNA Chairman, Reliance Entertainment (India)

I do not think so. Culture is not about war, but about tradition. I tried on the way here to put down in a few words what culture is, and this is what I came up with. Culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, customs, and any other habits or capabilities acquired by man as a member of society. Culture is basically ideas of the mind, and I do not think they call for any kind of war. However, what Frédéric is talking about is simply the harsh reality, and it is time the global order starts to appreciate this reality. India has 1.2 billion people, the Indian subcontinent has about two billion, and China has another 1.4 billion. Putting these together, we have almost 40% of the global population. More interestingly, we are among the fastest developing economies. China will grow by 9-10% this year while most economies either stagnate or grow 1-2%. India will grow by 6-7%, and that is because of a bad monsoon, as otherwise we would have grown upwards of 8%. What is even more important is that India has a culture dating back 7,000 years, and China too has an ancient culture. Therefore, it is almost inevitable, given these parameters, for there to have been a social, cultural and economical power shift. This is what we are witnessing today. We have to be ready to face this upheaval as a global community, and since we are talking about innovation in the digital age, one of its biggest achievements is that we are all connected. There are over three billion TV sets, over two billion computers, and close to three billion phones in the world. We have never been so interconnected as a global community, and as an advertisement for a satellite phone company said a number of years ago, geography is history.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

We need to understand this on a more philosophical level. I think my friend from Germany is still caught up in the dialectic of the last century. We need to reinvent our thought processes and social concerns and to go beyond totemic and symbolic championing of the most obvious concerns facing humanity, whether these are climate change, fundamentalism or overt capitalisation.

Frédéric MARTEL You said that you are building the industry of the 21st century. How will you achieve that? What is your rationale in terms of creation and innovation?

Amit KHANNA We need to think afresh and to understand where we are heading in the next 20-50 years, because it is not about losing cultural identity. We achieved independence from Britain in 1947 after being ruled by them for nearly 200 years, and prior to that we were ruled by the Moguls, who were descendants of the Mongols from Central Asia, but we never lost our culture. In fact we created a composite inclusive culture. Therefore, I think this fear of cultural imperialism is a residue of the last century, and I do not think there is a danger of any culture being overwhelmed. I would like to ask a fundamental question. I was just going through some numbers. Today there are more Greeks living outside Greece than inside, so where is the Greek nation? Does it exist in Greece or in the virtual space where Greeks are connected with each other? These are the new realities which we need to understand, and the new concepts we will need to grapple with as we go on. Coming specifically to your question on how we see the industry, when we looked at Hollywood it was not from an antagonistic viewpoint. We do not see ourselves as capturing a market or displacing existing players. We see ourselves as serious global players in the cultural and entertainment space, so there is no reason why we cannot work with the huge talent which is available in America. Therefore, we approached the business differently. It was not about buying assets, but engaging with some of the most brilliant talents such as Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider of DreamWorks. It was about engaging with them and supporting them. We are not financial but strategic investors, bringing our own thoughts and processes but not driving the business. We have also developed a unique business model in Hollywood where we entered into partnerships with some of the top talent there, and we actually decided to fund the development of new projects. This does not contradict their existing deals with other studios, but supplements them. We have deals with actors like George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Jim Carrey, Nicholas Cage, Grant Heslov and directors such as Chris Columbus, Jay Roach, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Brett Ratner, Jay Stern.

Frédéric MARTEL Is the fact that you need the Americans not a weakness as well as strength, especially when you have three million Indians living in the US?

Amit KHANNA Talent is everywhere. We would like to engage with talent in Europe or Africa too. The issue is that you cannot remain confined to one culture if you are trying to be pan-global. India is a multicultural, multilingual, multiracial society, so that is our background. Not a lot of people realise that 300 million of our 1.2 billion speak English, so we are the largest English-speaking nation in the world. These are the factors which determine the issue.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

The other important thing that the world needs to know is that India is ideally positioned demographically. 70% of our population is below the age of 35, whereas China has an ageing population because of the ‘one child only’ policy of the 1960s and 1970s. For culture, entertainment and media to thrive it is important to have a young population. This is where India has an edge over China. All innovation in terms of cultural activity happens on the edge, not in the core, and it is from that perspective that we view the new cultural-media matrix. It will come from people who are living on the edge, who are willing to experiment and look at everything with new eyes. The economic fallout of that will be inevitable and natural and positive and you will not have to go and look for it.

Frédéric MARTEL We would like to listen to you for hours, but now I will give the floor to Lawrence Lessig, who studied at Stanford and is now at Harvard and is the founder of Creative Commons. He is a defender of ‘copyleft,’ the opposite of copyright. He is therefore well qualified to talk about the new cultural landscape.

Lawrence LESSIG Law Professor, Harvard (USA)

I want to start with a story about John Philip Sousa, who on a humid June day in 1906 travelled to the US Congress to talk about the talking machine. He said that ‘these talking machines will ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house on a summer’s evening you would find young people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left,’ Sousa said. ‘The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.’ I want you to focus on the image of the young people together ‘singing the songs of the day or the old songs.’ That is a picture of culture, which we could call, in computer terminology, a kind of read-write culture. It is a culture where people participate in the creation and recreation of their culture. Sousa’s fear was that we would lose the capacity to engage in this read-write capability because of these ‘infernal machines.’ They would displace it, and in its place would be the opposite of read- write creativity, which we could call a kind of read-only culture, where culture is consumed but the consumer is not a creator, a culture which is top-down, in the sense that the vocal cords of millions of ordinary people have been lost. Looking back at the 20th century, at least in what we call the ‘developed’ world, it is hard not to conclude that Sousa was right. Never before in the history of human culture has its production become as concentrated or as professionalised, and never before has the creativity of ordinary people been as displaced by these ‘infernal machines.’ What explains this passivity, and who took away these vocal cords? The answer is largely technology, which invited people passively to consume and enabled efficient consumption, what we could call ‘reading,’ but inefficient at least amateur production, ‘writing.’ It is a good culture for listening, but not so good for speaking, a good culture for watching, but not so good for creating. The Internet extended this read-only culture. It originally made it possible to get and consume culture created elsewhere, but unfortunately the birth of this was in illegal technologies like Napster. The most recent version of this is Apple’s iTunes Store, enabling anyone to download whatever song they want for 99c, only to their iPod, but at least in America you are guaranteed to be cool if you engage in this form of cultural consumption.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

However, around 2004 something important changed around this new digital form of culture. What technology had taken before it now gave back, because we saw the revival of what Sousa would have recognised as the read-write culture. Wikipedia is the poster child of this for many people, but I want to focus on a particular version of this read-write culture, which I call remix. We can think about it in a lot of contexts, such as music. Everybody knows that The Beatles’ The White Album inspired Jay-Z’s The Black Album, which then inspired The Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse, which literally synthesises the tracks of The White Album and The Black Album. The 2009 equivalent is Girl Talk, who can mix 280 tracks in one song. There are AMVs, anime music videos, which are made when people take the anime and re-edit them to a soundtrack. [Video presentation - http://blip.tv/file/3049115]. Maybe the most important has been in the context of politics. There is a wide range of these, but in the five years I have been talking about this, my very favourite is one produced by a Swedish creator named Johann Soderberg. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. This is what I mean by remix, and the importance here, of course, has nothing to do with the technique, because the technique in these videos and music tracks has been around since the beginning of each of these forms of expression. The importance is that this technique has now been democratised. It is the fact that anybody with access to a USD1,500 computer can take sounds and images from the culture around us and remix them in a way that expresses ideas differently from how those who controlled those forms of media would have expressed them. Then this changed again around 2006. We began to see something of a call and response in the way these forms of expression were being used. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. About 1.7 million people had watched this video at the time I saw it, and that inspired this one. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. About 3.2 million people watched this, and the point is that there are about 12 other remixes. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. That inspired this video. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. That then inspired this video. [Video presentation (see weblink)]. The point is that we have recreated the culture Sousa was romanticising. ‘The young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs’ are not gathering on corners or in back yards, but are now doing it across the world on this digital platform as they create and respond to other people’s creativity. The lawyer’s view of all this is very simple. The lawyer says that read-only creativity is great, but that read-write creativity is illegal, and we will either go forward with one or the other, but we cannot have both. However, this view is a mistake. The future is a future of both, something that we can call a hybrid. People are sharing economies, meaning they are creating not for money, but for the love of creativity, and if so, the hybrid will be commercial entities leveraging these sharing economies. There are plenty of examples of this, such as Flickr the photo site, which encourages people to share photos, Second Life, which is a virtual world built by the inhabitants, and Google itself is a kind of hybrid. Indeed, the president of Microsoft said in a conference about a year ago that every successful Internet business will be a hybrid.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

A more recent example is Purefold, a joint venture between Ag8 and Scott Free. Scott Free is Ridley Scott, the creator of Blade Runner. Ag8 and Ridley Scott’s company are putting together a project to do a prequel to Blade Runner, produced by the extraordinary number of fans on the network, who will produce video in conjunction with commercial sponsors to build the story before the emergence of Blade Runner. This will be a JV by the community to construct a new way to see the old work. The question that is asked is on what terms these workers will work, and I do not know what these terms will be. However, we do know one thing that this contract cannot be. It cannot be a sharecropper’s contract, where they do all the work and the owner gets all the rights. The contract Purefold and others are adopting is more like that behind Linux or Wikipedia, freely licensing the content under the Creative Commons attribution, stating that anybody can take what is made as long as what is taken is freely licensed again. Therefore, this commercial venture will build on this freely created content under a license requiring that any derivative also be freely licensed. This is a kind of cultural ecology, and this is the ecology of the hybrid. My view is that the economy of creativity needs this, first for the purpose of profit, because it will produce an extraordinary amount of value which, properly managed, will mean large profits for commercial entities. However, my real reason to push this idea of the hybrid is that I also think it will help secure peace. We are in the middle of a war. Americans are in the middle of many wars, but the one I want to talk about is the copyright war, one which my late friend Jack Valenti used to refer to as his ‘terrorist war,’ where the terrorists are apparently our children. The point is to recognise that these wars are premised on an old view of how these worlds can interact, and we need to recognise that we will not kill these forms of expression, but can only criminalise them. We cannot stop our kids being creative in ways we never were before, but can only drive it underground. We cannot make our kids passive the way I was growing up, but can only make them ‘pirates.’ The question we need to ask is whether this is good for any of our societies. My culture is one where kids live in an age of prohibition, where all sorts of activities in their lives are against the law and where they live life constantly against the law. This is extraordinary corruption of the rule of law in a democracy. Therefore, this view of the hybrid pushing for peace is essential not just for this industry but for the culture.

Frédéric MARTEL The executive pastry chef of the White House was originally supposed to be here, but I have Dan Glickman, who has succeeded Jack Valenti. He is the president of the MPAA and was a Democratic representative from Kansas for quite some time before being appointed Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration. He worked on tariff barriers and international trade issues in that capacity, which is a good preparation for becoming president of the MPAA. We met several times in Washington, and one time I said that he was in the wrong line of business, having been in agriculture and suddenly ending up in the movies. We had a similar example in France, where a Minister of Agriculture became Minister of Culture, but you said that in the Clinton Administration you worked on agricultural quotas, particularly corn, now you worked in cinema, and the main aspect of cinema was popcorn. You told me that you were clearly not in the wrong line of business. My question for you is how is the popcorn industry doing today?

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Dan GLICKMAN Président, Motion Picture Association of America - MPAA (USA)

I was uniquely qualified, because the biggest part of the word ‘agriculture’ is ‘culture,’ and people in France and elsewhere who are involved in agriculture know exactly what I am talking about, because it is very much part of the production of food. I cannot answer for the popcorn business, but if you are asking about the movie business, my friend Amit probably knows more than I do. It is interesting that he mentioned that India is the largest English speaking country in the world, and half the attendance for all movies in the world is in India, which is an astounding statistic. The US is the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world, and in fact there are more Spanish speaking people in America than in Spain, and only Mexico has a larger Spanish-speaking population. The world is therefore much different than it used to be, and the kind of business Amit is doing is the kind you will see more and more of in the film industry. There will be co-productions involving actors, actresses, writers, directors from all regions of the world, and one classic example is Slumdog Millionaire, which was almost passed up by Hollywood as an Indian movie.

Frédéric MARTEL It was distributed by Pathé, not so much by the Indians.

Dan GLICKMAN It became an instant success. Therefore, one of the biggest changes in this industry is internationalisation, and that will be very positive for people worldwide. The cinema business is doing well this year, and the numbers for the movie houses were up 4-5%. I think the same is true in Europe. The DVD business is not doing very well. This has been a cornerstone of the industry for some time, and revenues are coming down. This reflects that more and more of the home video and aftermarket business is being done online and people are less inclined to want to own the product, though there are different business models that make the product less expensive than before. These are very challenging times, and there is no question that the Internet has had a dramatic impact on all aspects of the entertainment industry. However, that is good. Sometimes the industry tends to look at the Internet as an enemy.

Frédéric MARTEL You have now decided to work with the Internet. What is the change?

Dan GLICKMAN There are hundreds of millions of people who do not get to watch movies, TV or video products because they do not have ways to receive it, and the Internet gives access to people who did not have it before. Therefore, we should look at the Internet as a positive thing, not a negative thing. There are, however, also challenges. The Internet is ubiquitous, and people think that if something is on their computer screen it is theirs. Most of you have children or grandchildren who look at the Internet and think that whatever product they see is theirs because it comes into their house and therefore they should not have to pay for it. We have to recognise at the same time that new business models are needed to deal with these issues, and they are emerging all the time. However, if we do not deal with this issue of controlling illegal material on the Internet, it will be a dagger in the heart of the creative industry. When I say

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org illegal material, I am not just talking about piracy but about other things, for example, sexual exploitation of children, pornography, and terrorism. And the wonderful side of the Internet, its anonymity, also gives people the opportunity to play around with other people’s lives. Wikipedia is a marvelous encyclopaedia to which individuals can add information about biographies etc. Unfortunately, it is often very wrong. They had me as secretary of the wrong cabinet on my Wikipedia page, and that is a benign example. The fact is that the Internet gives people opportunities to engage in perfidious activities, but at the same time gives them enormous opportunity to watch the product. Therefore, we in the entertainment industry should realize that the Internet gives the potential to reach hundreds of millions of more people by involving directors, writers, producers, and actors in ways of creating material they have never created before. However, we need to work together on trying to solve the problem of illegal material, and the French government is one of the leaders. Most countries around the world are trying to deal with this problem sensibly and responsibly. I was in Spain where they are working on their own measures. We can deal with this, while at the same time foster and nurture creativity and imagination using modern technology.

Frédéric MARTEL We would of course like to listen to you for longer, but I have one last question. I like the English expression ‘one billion plus,’ where countries have more than a certain number of inhabitants, and all these figures we have been hearing about for India and China are mind-boggling. We have heard in other contributions that Hollywood represents the past, while Indian and Chinese companies such as Reliance represent the future. What does it feel like to represent the past, since you represent the seven major movie studios, and how will you organize the markets in the future in competition with India and China? Things seem to have failed in China, and you are now turning to India.

Dan GLICKMAN The creative world, in the first place, is trans-global, and there is no such thing as the past. Amit has taken a huge financial interest in the Los Angeles entertainment world, and there are huge amounts of foreign capital and a large number of foreign stars coming in. The world’s future is international and global. It is transnational. The truth of the matter is that America has had great leadership in this business for a long time, and part of that has to do with the nature and history of the origins of the business, and the people who emigrated to America, were very imaginative. These facts have now been transferred to people all over the world. I do not think Hollywood’s industry will decay and end anytime soon. People still love the product of the American entertainment industry, and we still have the majority of the cinema revenues in most of the countries represented here. Shakespeare said that the play is the thing, and people like the play that we make. However, more and more countries and people are becoming engaged in this business, and it is becoming much more international than it ever was before. That is great, because it represents opportunities for people all over the world to produce their own movies with their own talent. However, if they are not compensated for them and are not in a position to create resources out of them, they will not do it, at least in a commercial way, and without a commercial business entertainment is basically dead.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Frédéric MARTEL Thank you very much. Our last guest, Theodor Paleologu, was born in 1973, and is the Romanian Minister of Culture. Those involved in the 1989 revolution will probably remember his father, Alexander Paleologu, who was the Romanian ambassador to France after the fall of Ceausescu. His son did his doctoral degree in the US, where we met, and studied for a time at Harvard. My question for you, since you are Minister for Culture, Education and Heritage, is how Europe can assert its existence in a world that is being revolutionized by digital technologies.

Theodor PALEOLOGU Minister for Culture, Religious Affairs and Cultural Heritage (Romania)

I will see if I can answer that question. I have a few ideas and will pick up on some of the ideas that have already been touched on. One thing that often comes up in these discussions is communication technologies, on the one hand, and communication itself on the other. Facilities for rapid communication have their good and bad sides, but they often foster disputes. I have never had such arguments as I have had via text messages, because you always want to come back immediately without necessarily taking the time to reflect. Emails are the same. I am sure that many of us have been in situations where one person on the recipient list steps in, another person misunderstands and it all gets out of control. Therefore, my point is that regarding communication, the easier and faster it becomes, the more problematic it also becomes. Your question is very complex, as it could concern the diplomatic relations between countries. You forgot to mention in your quick CV that I was ambassador to Copenhagen the only time anything happened there. Danish policies are so sensible and reasonable. You have been in Romania, and you know that it is the exact opposite of Denmark, as everybody gets excited and agitated. The only time diplomats and ambassadors had any time to write anything was during the issue of the caricatures. This dispute touched on questions of cultural and religious sensitivity, as we know, but it was also fuelled by new communication techniques. Thousands of people were able to see these cartoons immediately, and it was possible to organise a boycott against Denmark very quickly through texts and emails. Therefore, these wonderful communication channels can fuel disputes, and it is important to remember that. It was interesting to see the reaction of the Danish Government, because they started to rethink the role of diplomacy. You have some diplomatic experience, and know that it is all about routine. What makes it so charming and elegant is that you can be anachronistic and still fit in. This highlights the importance of a very old form of activity, but one that is going to be important today, as diplomats will play the role of cultural mediation in order to counteract some of the downsides of globalisation. Another aspect I would like to focus on was discussed by our Indian colleague, that of diasporas and their role. I have spent half my life outside Romania, so I am aware of this phenomenon, and the Internet plays a key role in enabling you to stay in touch with your home country. It is interesting to note that whenever there is an article in the Romanian press, the first reaction in the chat rooms comes from people in the US. They are always the first to post because of the time difference. It is for better qualified people than myself to explore this, but it is up to the Internet to provide a solution to the problem of loss of roots due to global movement and the need to re-establish roots. The Internet meets this need to restore roots, though, again, it is for experts to analyse that in depth.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Frédéric MARTEL We have heard from four people from different countries, and to finish we will hear from a Frenchman who has lived in Latin America: Bruno Patino, the director of France Culture.

Bruno PATINO Director, France Culture (France)

I found an interesting paradox in what people were saying, in that the man of culture was talking about yesterday’s law and the lawyer about tomorrow’s culture, and this paradox is important. I will just make three comments about what we have heard today. The first concerns what I would call confrontation, rather than conflict, between artists and creative industries. De Tocqueville said that monarchy is an ornament and democracy is entertainment, and one might wonder whether the Internet has not produced a kind of hyper-democracy in the area of hyper-entertainment, and I think there is something at stake there. The second comment concerns the notions of open and closed culture and the distinction between owning something, as in equipment, DVDs etc, and what would be called experience, where something is happening and you are not merely passive but are involved in it. More people are going to see films, which are experiences, whereas sales of DVDs, leading to possession, are down, because this is not as interesting. Therefore, perhaps there is a confrontation between experience and possession of culture, and what we are seeing today is the rise of experience culture.

Regarding innovation, I think all the panelists have referred to technological innovation, but that is not the driver. Technology has been around for a long time, so I would say that innovation today is about usage. It is about how you use it around the world. This is the issue in economic and legal terms, and I think the key point touched on by the panelists is how to deal with content and distribution of content. We had one form of economy, but now we are looking at an experience based economy, where the defense of rights can sometimes stop new experiences. The Internet and its regulation is where the future of culture will be decided.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Creating and innovating for a new world

Round Table 2: How to facilitate the innovation in culture and media?

Robin SLOAN Moderator Writer and media strategist (USA)

It will be hard to keep to schedule, because we have a rather large mandate, as we have to talk about how to facilitate innovation in culture and media. That is the sort of thing that becomes so abstract and overwhelming that you get lost, so I want to start by focusing on the idea of risk. So much of the economic crisis we find ourselves in had to do with risk. It was about measuring, buying and selling risk, accounting for it and often accounting for it badly, and ignoring it in many cases. The great danger in the aftermath of a crisis like that is you become too risk averse, but that is the last thing that media and culture need now, because too much is changing too fast. Everybody knows innovation is important. We keep using the word a lot, everybody wants to be innovative, and everybody says that they are. What the real innovators will tell you is that the process of innovation is really that of failing over and over again. It is frustrating, as there is so much wreckage, sadness and disappointment. Innovation requires real risk taking, and people who have not started companies do not understand the kind of courage it takes and the kind of existential risk it requires. People, at the same time, who have not created art and tried to put it out into the world do not understand the courage it takes and the existential risk it requires. Therefore, the idea and experience of risk is a point where commerce and culture meet, in a way. Most of the examples people use when talking about risk are technical, as we have this odd bias towards gears and circuits when it comes to innovation. You always hear about Thomas Edison and his hundreds of failed attempts to make a commercially viable light bulb before he actually found the one that worked. However, this applies to culture as well, and what I hope we can do is to map out a frontier across different media to determine where the most exciting risks are to be found, those with the biggest potential rewards. What questions should we be asking and what risks should we be taking if we want to be innovators? Amit Khanna said very decisively that cultural innovation always happens at the edge, not the core. The truth is that the core is here in Avignon , and we will need to stretch and reach. The people in this room are distinguished, successful and connected, so we need to find the risk. I will start with Régis Wargnier, who is a director of acclaimed and award winning movies such as Indochine, East-West, and most recently Have Mercy on Us All. Film is a terrific place to start because it feels very established. What could be more central to our global culture than movies? However, it is a baby as formats go, as it is not yet 100 years old, and it is still changing very quickly regarding tools, modes of distribution etc. We have had a taste of this already.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

My question to start is what it means to take risks as a film director today? Are the boldest risks aesthetic, in terms of how a film looks, are they economic, in terms of how it is produced, or is it something else entirely?

Régis WARGNIER Film director (France)

I would just like to clarify something. We have been talking a lot about creation and art this morning, and I think that film directors are not artists but artisans in the best sense of the term. Art is a solitary activity, so think of painters, composers and sculptors who work alone, whereas directors work with a scriptwriter, then a producer, and then you have 200 people or more from the beginning to the end of the process. We are craftsmen, artisans. I think, in answer to your question, that it is interesting that the key word is innovation, because as a filmmaker of the post-war generation I grew up in cinema’s golden age. Perhaps you do not share my view, and this would be interesting to debate, but the golden age of film was in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It was in that era that the movies were really works of art. I am not sure why that was, or whether it was because in the post- war era we had to sublimate feelings to conjure away the recent history of death, but I think that that golden age has melted away. We have good movies today, but they are different, and getting back to the subject of the artwork, a filmmaker starting on a film does not know they are going to make an artwork. A filmmaker knows that a film sometimes proves to be a great work of art when it is finished, but not always. Therefore, there are two questions I feel I have to answer as a filmmaker. I grew up in a world where the cinematic image was enclosed in a circumscribed space. You had to go to a movie theatre to see a movie, whereas today we are flooded with the moving image, it has become totally banal. There are screens everywhere in subways, stores etc, so we are drowned in moving images. However, I grew up in a world where each image was an artistic expression. Today images in the society as a whole are just information, they do not necessarily express something, and that raises the question of what the role of the filmmaker is today, how can images be created which are not the flood of everyday images. Images are fundamental to communication and advertising, and there is also the issue of financing. The TV stations have a certain amount of power over what we do, as they fund and also influence us. Therefore, maybe filmmakers unconsciously make their movies with a view to who is going to fund them. The question is whether cinema will be able to produce works of art again as it did in the golden age, and I am not so sure. I was expecting the turn of the century to be a turning point in terms of exceptional movies, but I have only seen a few that have been amazing since 2000. I consider Minority Report and The Matrix to be amazing movies. I’m waiting as everybody else the new movie of James Cameron, Avatar. The director of The Terminator is someone we should applaud, having closed the chapter on large-scale romantic movies, looking at films like Titanic. There are some directors, such as James Cameron, who manage to create images that are not just like the images we see all the time in our daily lives. However, there are far too few of them.

Robin SLOAN I like the association of a risk with a work of art, and that may be something we can work with, so that if a work of art is not taking a risk it is something else. Perhaps it is a work of commerce, but it is

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org not a work of art. Let us go back in time. We were just talking about movies as a young medium. Let us talk to Alain Kouck, who is Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Editis, which is the second largest publishing group in France, publishing literally every kind of book imaginable, from literary fiction to textbooks to travel guides. Books are quite a bit more established than movies, and we tend to think of them as very fixed, but they have been developing all along as well. Books are a technology, and maybe we should think of Editis as a technology company, one very skilled in producing these amazing high-tech objects. Think about it. They are wireless, they are compatible with everything, and the batteries never wear out. This is technology in the truest sense, and it has been a very reliable one. I will pose the same question to you. When you think about the world of publishing, what does taking a risk mean today? What are the risks you want to be taking in your business? Alain KOUCK Vice-chairman and Managing director, Editis (France)

Our sector is certainly impacted by digital technologies, but it is just beginning to enter the world of the book. We were the last to be impacted by the digital revolution to a certain extent, so it is interesting to compare experiences across cultural industries. Publishing covers a number of different worlds, of course, because if you look at specialized publishing, the digital revolution has already taken place, and most professional publishers have digital sales that are higher than paper sales. Specialized publishing, however, is different than general audience publishing. Book publishing is 100% offer-driven. More than 60,000 books are published in France every year, 6,000 are published by our house, and every book is a risk. The editor has to choose a manuscript, and may have a huge success on his hands, but it may turn out to be a failure depending on the circumstances. Therefore, risk is a part of what we do, and that will continue to be the case with the digital revolution. Digital technologies certainly represent the biggest change for our business. We are an offer-driven industry, and until now the consumer or buyer has never actually influenced the product. The process was driven by the fact that you had a created product, the manuscript, and the editor and publisher simply brought that finished product to the audience. Things are different, however, with the Internet revolution. We now know who our buyers are and who the reader is, and we do not yet know what the ramifications of that will be. It is an opportunity in one sense, because we finally know who is buying and reading our works, but the issue is whether we will become subservient in that relationship. Looking at the changes in a number of worldwide publishing groups that have grasped the extent of these issues, there is a risk that we will be harnessed by this opportunity rather than harnessing it ourselves, and that we will not use it to our advantage. Then there is the issue of creation and whether it is the same thing as innovation. Will knowing the taste of our consumers have an influence on authors themselves? The profession of being an author is disconnected from fads and trends to a certain extent, but that may change, and I think it will take years for us to understand the ramifications of this. Will the fact that we know our consumers’ tastes influence what we produce? That is an unanswered question. Furthermore, I think these changes should provide us with new audiences. I can give you a number of examples. It is often said that teenagers do not read print books very much, but it turns out that they read a lot in different formats, and I think we need to win back readers through these new formats, these new ways of reaching an audience. The format of a given artwork, whether this is paper, CD-ROM, the Internet or cell phones, ultimately does not matter so much. There should be an opportunity for us if the reader is satisfied. Look at

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org mangas for example. People will say that this is not literature or publishing, and indeed 40% of mangas are read in Japan on cellphones or digital reading devices. The manga has become a box in which you put text, and there are a lot of readers who use manga to learn foreign languages, and educational publishers use manga as educational materials as well. Therefore, we need to find new readers and new forms, and we can do so. Furthermore, I think it is fallacious to divide readers into print readers and digital device readers. People who read print books the most also use digital reading devices, because people who like to read do so in lots of different formats, so it is nice to have these new formats as a way of reaching our traditional audience and providing them with something new. We should also showcase our catalogue more effectively. There is a temptation to say that our artworks are disseminated across the world, but the publishing world is segmented in terms of language, for example between Italy, Spain and English speaking countries. However, the fact that artworks can cross borders easily could represent an opportunity. The application of e-commerce for marketing print books globally has already been explored to a certain extent, and it is much easier today to connect speakers of the same language across the world even if they are not located within the same geographic boundaries. That also provides an opportunity to create new artworks, as in the future I think there will be a convergence between text, image and video. We are not sure how that will happen, and whether it will be spearheaded by print or other companies, but clearly a new genre is emerging which we can provide to our readers. Printing will also, for better or worse, be focused on information and consulting. We often sell chapters of books, and this was quite controversial in our business. People want to be able to consult a book, and that means consulting or buying only five chapters of a book before deciding to buy the rest, so there is a sort of channel-surfing mentality involved. That is a sea change, and we have to take that change in reader behaviour into account. I hope this serves as a means to extend our work. It sometimes takes three or five years for an author to write a novel, but its shelf life is three or four weeks, and perhaps digital technology will allow us to extend the shelf life of books. Our products often have a short lifespan in our national markets and it is difficult to maintain them. Therefore, there are major opportunities for our profession. We are creators, and we live thanks to creators. We are craftsmen, and authors are craftsmen. We need to ensure with all these changes that authors still want to be authors, that it is still an attractive profession. That is really where it begins, because with the exception of best-selling authors, most people write as a side job in their free time. That is the strength behind this business. We publish too much, but it is hard to resist doing that, so we need to ensure that we publish authors who still feel free to write and are not hemmed in by marketing plans, contracts etc. We have to pay authors, of course, and this is true of all cultural sectors, as it will be very challenging if you do not provide some form of compensation. Furthermore, everything I am saying in terms of opportunity is true around the world. There are issues of the critical size and skills required to deal with these trends, and there are some significant challenges, such as illegal downloading. This is something we are facing, just as other businesses are. A second technical challenge requiring a critical science to tackle it is the idea of archiving or conserving works. Books and papers have been archived for centuries, but currently there is no solution for how to store and consult digital works 10 years from now or over a longer time period. A further risk is that of monopoly, the risk that a company, through its organisational or technical skills, will be the only company capable of managing these challenges. I think we may have a kind of shift in the value chain, as was said in the consultant’s study this morning. Those who distribute and disseminate works may get the biggest piece of the pie, and a monopoly in terms of distribution and

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org dissemination may come at the expense of authors. We need to have a balance between the different segments of the value added chain in order for all of us to be able to continue. Diversity is another important point, and this harks back to what I said at the beginning. The issue of cultural diversity is raised by the prospect of a company or organisation knowing exactly what people want to read. You cannot do all this alone on a global scale, of course. Publishers cannot ask governments to do everything, and governments cannot ask publishers to do everything. Both sides have to step up and take their responsibilities. Creators need to know how to publish, disseminate and distribute, as you cannot just create a great work of art and leave it at that. However, it is very difficult to ask people to change what they do. French and international publishers need to unite. We compete for authors and manuscripts, and we need to unite in promoting works. Just as it is regarded as uncontroversial for a store such as Barnes & Noble to sell books by all competing publishers, we need to pool our distribution and marketing efforts. We also need to take steps against illegal downloading, as we need to uphold copyrights, but we also need to ensure that the value creation chain is structured so that there is still value in creating a book. I hope that we will be able to get a better grasp on this in the next two or three years, and I think 2009 will be a very good year for publishing.

Robin SLOAN Now that we have begun to map the landscape across film and books, it is interesting to take a step back, and in order to do that we will hear from Christer Windelov-Lidzelius, who runs Kaos Pilot, a very special kind of school. A school usually presents a single subject as its focus and says it teaches students how to be creative. Kaos Pilot has creativity as its focus, and it then subdivides that into disciplines like creative project design, creative process design, creative business design and creative leadership design. I really like that holistic approach of project, process, leadership and business. The Bain & Co report that was prepared for the forum specifically highlighted the need for multi-talented individuals, so I think this is a great opportunity to take a step back. We are not operating at the level of a single discipline, but of the people who populate all these disciplines, the people who will make the films of the future, perhaps future James Camerons, or the people who will work at Editis and publish books, and will actually take these risks. Therefore, I want to hear more about Kaos Pilot in general, because it is such an interesting model, particularly for this audience. More specifically, you are working with the next generation of creative professionals, and the question is whether they are risk takers. How can a student’s education predispose them to take creative risks?

Christer WINDELOV-LIDZELIUS CEO, Kaos Pilot (Denmark)

Whether or not students take risks is very much in the eye of the beholder. However, I would label the students we have as very conscious risk takers, meaning that they understand that you are at risk if you do not take risks. They, therefore, try to assess the type of projects they engage in to create something new, but at the same time they know how to fail. One of the crucial questions is how you reward the ability to fail gracefully. A research project was initiated by George Land in 1968 to assess creativity in young people, and it was a test designed by NASA for the selection of creative engineers and scientists. He tested 1,600

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org five-year-olds, and five years later tested them again, and then again when they were 15. The results were quite remarkable, in the sense that at the age of five, 98% of them displayed genius level creativity. When they were 10, that figure had dropped to 30%, and by 15 that number was down to 12%. Then he tested 280,000 adults, and they displayed 2% of genius level creativity. What does this story tell you? He concluded that non-creative behavior is learned, and is something that we very much believe in at KaosPilots. Schools are supposed to produce creative, out-of-the-box people, people who are innovative and are disposed to take risks – that is what is desired and asked for by organizations in all sectors today. But we have a school system that works toward something completely different. Therefore, if we want to change that, we need to learn how to reward people who take risks, and as such reward people who are creative, because, as we heard earlier, creativity is about crossing borders. It is not something that can be contained. Kaos Pilot started in 1991, and we have always emphasized not just the need to be trans-disciplinary but also to take big risks, because if you cannot do it during the three years you spend at Kaos Pilot, you will not have it when you leave. Kaos Pilot was launched in the 1980s, and it gives a good picture of how it came to be in a Scandinavian society. There was a movement in the 1980s called the Front Runners which worked with troubled kids in Arhus. It was a municipality initiative to offer kids a space to engage in various activities, and it was then approached by another group called Next, which said that since Gorbachev was now talking about glasnost and perestroika, maybe they should give it to him. The Front Runners asked what the project was about, and they said they did not know. They asked whether they had permission to go to Russia, and they said no. They asked whether they had any money to pull the project off, and they said no. Then the Front Runner said, ‘we are all in.’ That type of sentiment, of approach to projects, is something we have carried along with us ever since. The project culminated in May 1989, when 2,000 young Scandinavians crossed Poland into the heart of the Soviet Union, and there were big cultural festivals in St Petersburg and Moscow. Uffe Elbæk, the first principal of KaosPilot , was interviewed by Danish TV in Red Square after the big event took place. They put a microphone in front of him and asked him whenhe thought changes would come to the Soviet Union. He said that there would certainly be changes and that in 15-20 years everything would be different. We all know what happened a couple of months later. After the project was finished the originators asked themselves – it had been a crazy project and it was absolutely novel, no one had ever pulled off something like this, what kind of education should we have received in order to be prepared to take on such a challenge? And that was the birth of the KaosPilots. If you can move 2,000 people across these distances into Russia without the faintest idea about what is going to hit you, you certainly need to start to listen in places where no-one else is listening because the big waves are coming from somewhere else. That is also something that we are trying to train our students in and again it leads back to the question of risk. To be truly innovative and make something of your life, you have to start paying attention, not just what your mind is focusing on, but also where your heart is. I could say a lot more about this, but I think I will stop there.

Robin SLOAN I love the fact that the name is so direct. It ought to be called the School for Creative Individuals or something like that, but it is called Kaos Pilot, and that is what we now need in this world of tumult. We simply need people who can guide us and be pilots. Christer mentioned failure and teaching students to be comfortable with failure and builda different culture around risk and failure, and I

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org have the feeling that we will be hearing a little more about that from Georges Nahon, who heads the research and development (R&D) effort for Orange in the US. Therefore, even though he is French, he is currently my neighbour in San Francisco. This allows us to come full circle because, as I said at the beginning, when people talk about risk and innovation, they usually talk about technology, but instead of talking about the state of the art in telecommunications technology, we are going to hear about the culture of research and development and in some ways the culture of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. We will look at how a giant high tech organisation can organise itself to take the risks that result in innovation.

Georges NAHON Chairman, France Telecom R&D San Francisco – Orange (France)

Networks are, of course, very important for my company Orange, but they are also important because they are one of the main vectors of knowledge and innovation. Networks have been completely transformed from their original purpose, if we take the example of the Internet, whether it is fixed or mobile. In the Silicon Valley and similar places around the world where you get a high concentration of innovators and innovation, networks and networking are very present, but they are less explicit. There is a general feeling and tacit knowledge, as John Hagel and his colleague, John Seely Brown have explained in the US, that this is a bit like the schools of art in Venice or Holland in the past, where there was a pool of confidence and excellence that attracted other people. Silicon Valley is where smart people go and they stay, and that is what we have found. People who are already successful are involved in further innovation and that produces a very close-knit community. One of the special things about Silicon Valley for a company like France Telecom is its diversity. Silicon Valley has been continuously exposed to flows of skills, expertise and entrepreneurial spirit. This is not always easy to rationalise and you cannot actually identify where it will come from. We see it in Silicon Valley and in the bay area around San Francisco, particularly between the University of California at Berkeley University and Stanford University, but it can be pretty much anywhere. It can be at café terrace or on the plane that is taking you to San Francisco. What is important about innovation is something that has struck me over recent years and it is the idea of a continuous ongoing exchange, which is not always manifested in an explicit form. Today’s competitor might be tomorrow’s ally. Larry was talking about intellectual property rights (IPRs), but these are perceived somewhat differently. I am not saying that there is no sensitivity here, but it is possibly better to work together than to file a patent. For companies like France Telecom that work hard on innovation, particularly speculative innovation, things will probably bear fruit but you do not know when and how it will happen. However, you know that you have to be in it and what you see emerging is a form of infiltration of your innovative capability by other cultures. That then leads to epiphany moments when you have to transfer things back to the decision-makers in France. This is an interesting form of innovation in Silicon Valley and people should learn from it in terms of how innovation is accepted once it has been identified and co-created with stakeholders of all kinds and then adopted. By definition, these innovations are a breakthrough and they are very different from the established model. However, the important thing for me is the altruistic nature of innovation that permeates through this region, which is driven by great optimism. I think that this is beginning to spread around the rest

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org of the world, but we certainly have the idea that we are going to change things to bring about a better world. Silicon Valley and all the operators involved are therefore engaged in building a utopia, in a way, which is a very stimulating and attractive project to be involved in. This attracts talent, and one of the key issues is how to attract and keep talented people. The optimism that surrounds innovation is highly stimulating. In conclusion, as we look at trends over the next four or five years in terms of innovation in Silicon Valley which will affect the world via the networks of service and content – basically, the production of information – we are moving towards a new breakthrough. A lot of people may not see this coming because we are moving into the real-time world and the real-time Web, with things such as Twitter and Facebook. The notion of ‘nowness’ has become very important and that is the real driver. It is what stimulates people working with and on the Internet and it is how you discover new, interesting information that can enhance your knowledge, which is really the role of networks. It means that we are boosting emulation in an upwards trend and it much more efficiently fosters a discovery of cultural information goods, as an implicit reputation is created, as it were. You trust certain people that you like and whose opinions you agree with, such as those on Twitter. You want to know what they think about an article, film or exhibition and you use the networks to assimilate what is going on in these worlds that you are interested in. That is a very important and optimistic message for the kinds of issues that we are looking at today.

Robin SLOAN I am always grateful when someone else does the cheerleading for San Francisco and I am also grateful to Jean-Bernard Lévy because, on a small biographical note, I would not be sitting on this stage presenting the panel if he and others at Vivendi had not decided to take a risk on a bold young entrepreneur called Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, who bought a small TV network from Vivendi, which became Current TV, the cable station where I worked for five years. Mr Lévy is the Chairman of Vivendi, one of the world’s largest communications and entertainment companies and, I will add, a company that seems to be constantly reinventing itself. Here, I am thinking of things such as Activision Blizzard and World of Warcraft. For people who do not know these – and this is a very important cultural point – World of Warcraft is the biggest multiplayer video game in the world, with more than 9 million paying subscribers. If you do not know World of Warcraft, you actually do not know culture today. It will therefore be interesting to hear about how a company as big and sprawling as Vivendi still manages to organise itself to take major risks. You can forget film and books here – this is a media that is just being invented right now.

Jean-Bernard LEVY Chairman of the Board, Vivendi (France)

In relation to Current TV, you said that you occasionally have to trust entrepreneurs coming from elsewhere, and not just from business. And having visited the TV station in San Francisco a few months ago, I am delighted to see that this new TV format is reaching a broad audience and is both innovative and interesting. You talked about video games and that is perhaps a good springboard for looking at our approach to popular culture today because quite clearly in just a few years video games have become a major industry, and they now serve a broader audience. Video games are not just for teenagers, but are also important for children between the time they leave primary school and get their first girlfriend. The video games industry is bigger than a lot of other industries today

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org and it reaches a huge global audience. It attracts, I believe, the best from the world of creation and it is a growing industry. Video games have therefore certainly revolutionised our way of looking at things. You may have considered other cultural media to be more dominant – and I do not want to talk about ‘information’, but ‘cultural media’ – in terms of their scope, but the figures that I can quote quite clearly show that the outreach of video games is global and at least equivalent to film. It probably has a better footprint in the Asian market, for instance, than is the case for the biggest Western box office hits. If we step back a bit and look at risk, it is self evident to say that all business projects are risky. And running something as big as Vivendi means managing risk from dawn until dusk. Without going into the details, what we have to take on board is the risk that is inherent in creation, because we are dealing with people who want to tell a story, using whatever medium it might be. The idea is to inspire emotions in the audience. There are risks in publishing and technological risks when it comes to picking the best vectors for dissemination to get the goods to the public. There is the physical distribution, of course, but even in book publishing today there are digital channels and talking of ‘nowness’ that gets us to a bigger audience. That, however, is our job. My point here is that you should never overlook the fact – and I think that this is probably one of the key issues in our business – that in terms of managing risk, even in a large corporation you are above all dealing with people who will adapt their behaviour to your vision of risk, depending on how you view mankind. This is something that runs throughout creation and there is the interaction between the creator and the audience. I think that an element of humanity is ever present and this permeates the whole corporation. We should not forget that we react as human beings, even if this is represented by de-located, virtual people. We perhaps no longer chat on the terrace of the café or in the schoolyard and we use emails, even when we are in offices next door, but I do not think that that dehumanises society. It is just that a society based on human needs has to bear in mind that, at the end of the day, we have to continue to focus on including the human dimension in everything we do. In a company such as Vivendi that means having a high level of decentralisation and always being willing and ready to listen to all our stakeholders – our staff and the public – and we must not forget our role as mediators between all these people. Therefore, we are always aware of risk, innovation, creation and technology, but we should never overlook the human dimension which is ever present in what I hope will be our success.

Robin SLOAN That is a good transition into a question that I would like to pose and thinking about people is an excellent way of reframing this. We think about culture, innovation and risk almost as abstract quantities and as things that can be put on graphs and charts and included in presentations. However, there are of course people who need to take these risks and there are a couple of different ways of approaching this. I think that I might be the youngest person on the stage today – and I am definitely the least distinguished – and behalf of the under-30 crowd – and I know that we have either students or some very young Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) here – I will pose this question. If you were giving advice to a young person today, where would you send them? What are the most interesting places and what do they have to do to make a difference in your world?

Régis WARGNIER In my business, if young people want to do great things, they have to be authentic. They need to be unafraid to express themselves and express their own talent and who they are, using their own

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org energy and inspiration. However, this is possibly a romanticised view. I would like to thank one of the other panelists for mentioning the word ‘failure’ because I think that with risk-taking, by definition you can fail and it is interesting to bear that in mind. The most important thing for a young person who wants to make films today is to be different and original. There are so many things that are standardised and homogenised today that you absolutely have to be different. What I like about French cinema is that it is a cinema of art filmmakers - of auteur filmmakers. When I watch that kind of film, I feel someone’s heart and soul and see them expressing what they want to do. That is what we like about films. When I go to films it is because it is a film about what someone wants and is dreaming about.

Christer WINDELOV-LIDZELIUS When we tried to help young people to get on with their lives and their creations we tried to help them identify where they could make a difference and find somewhere where they were allowed to be different. There are two sides to the same coin where you need to go somewhere where you are allowed to be yourself and be original. Using a film expression, we need people who like to play the main part in the film about themselves. We need more leaders rather than followers. Young people should also move into fields where they can make a substantial difference to others.

Georges NAHON I would always encourage the younger generation to spend time defining and identifying their passions. They need to travel the world to become exposed to other influences, spend time elsewhere, meet people face to face in addition to the virtual networks, define a good sense of purpose and have a design. It is very important to think about a purpose in life and the present generation is influenced by so many sources of content and information and trends that they might not spend enough time defining where they want to go. Passion and again –apologies for repeating this – a little bit of altruism.

Alain KOUCK For a publishing house, the most important thing is to be as close as possible to creation, as such, and the creative act because that is the easiest area in which to innovate. The financial investment in a single book is relatively low and the financial barriers to creating books are therefore relatively low and that is a good opportunity for a young person to explore their own skills and innovation. That is really one of the best things because our business is an offer-driven business.

Jean-Bernard LEVY I would like to emphasise something similar to that and that is the idea of the responsibilities of companies in a globalised world, notably in terms of social responsibility and sustainable development. That has to be an important entry point for young people who are perhaps concerned about issues such as sustainability. We have to continually think about the impact of what we do and not just the commercial and financial impacts, but the societal impact. This is an issue where Vivendi tries to be at the forefront and for seven or eight years now we have had a very active sustainable development policy. Sustainable development is very important to young people and it is something that they can be proud of.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Robin SLOAN I will try to draw out a few threads from what we heard from the panel, again on the notion of drawing a map of the landscape of risk. Earlier today, the question was posed as to whether there would be a way to judge the cultural intensity of a project. That sounds quite abstract and it is definitely an economist’s way of approaching an issue, but a thread that I heard here was that we actually might be able to do this and we could possibly judge it by looking at its riskiness. One way of judging a work of art, at least in terms of its potential, might be how big a risk it takes. Another thing that I heard is that in fact every piece of content is a risk and we should be clear that every film that we produce and every book we decide to publish is a small risk. Therefore, when you talk about a content business, you are really talking about a risk business and one that has learned how to take risks sustainably over and over again. There might actually be something that we can learn from that and apply to other industries. Finally, we heard that this is fundamentally human, whether we are talking about the human network of Silicon Valley and the fact that there is a culture there that is very different from other places that encourages risk, whether we are talking about employees of Vivendi or students in Kaos Pilot who are living in a different kind of culture and dealing with each other in a different way. In fact, it is probably a mistake to abstract these things too much from the human foundation – are we training and employing and dealing with people who are risk-takers and how can we make more people act like that? I would like to thank all our panelists again and let us see if we can take some more risks as this forum unfolds.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Creating and innovating for a new world

Round Table 3: Beyond GDP: How can we integrate culture?

John THACKARA Moderator Director, Doors of Perception (United Kingdom)

Without the permission of the organisers, I have a new panelist to join us. This Amarilis [points to plant standing on an extra chair] represents nature and the biosphere. I invited the Amarilis to fill a gap in the invitation list. I was struck that because we are in the house of God, His interests are well represented by the history and sheer atmosphere of this place. The word of man is also clearly heard, thanks to our eminent speakers. But one voice is silent here - the voice of the biosphere, of nature - upon which we all depend, and without which we would not be here. The Amarilis will be a silent witness, given the time pressures that we have - but she sits here as a reminder. This panel will discuss gross domestic product (GDP) and its possible alternatives. As a starting provocation, I offer the following: the great wealth that we heard being talked about this morning - wealth that underpins the lofty discussion we are having about strategic alternatives for the media - is, from my point of view, a mythical wealth. In the language of business: we are spending capital, not income. As a society, culture, and species, we are spending natural capital at an incredible and accelerating rate. By most normal economic and even traditional indicators, this is not a sustainable way to run a business, never mind a civilisation. We are spending this capital invisibly because – and the Enlightenment gets a lot of the blame for this, but I think that it goes back to the Old Testament - we have chosen to believe that nature is there for us to use, to spend. We have persuaded ourselves that the resources of Nature are boundless. We therefore do not count these resources as we spend them. And because we do not count them, we do not look after them. We have therefore arrive at a crisis of biodiversity, and climate, and all the other chocs that we face today. Someone recently described our economy a Doomsday Machine. When productivity rises, the economy is doing well. But when productivity goes up, it means that the rate at which we are consuming finite resources, and despoiling the biosphere, is also increasing. We are all motivated in our different ways to make the Machine perform better, despite the fact that the better it does, the closer we get to the ecological Armageddon. We consume our own environment, our one-and-onky life support machine, for economic reasons. Which I suggest is not a sensible way to proceed. Therefore, if we need to start counting things that we have taken for granted, or held to be in our dominion for hundreds of years, how would that new counting system work? That is one of three questions for our panel this afternoon.

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The second question is: what do we count, that we have not counted before? We have heard about the Sarkozy Commission, and an 800 pages report from Messrs Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi. Their proposals are interesting - although based on what I would say is a limited, humanistic focus. We are in France, so that is probably inevitable. However, is there a consensus among the panel that we can expand the scope of what any new measures might be? and if it is not just GDP, what else could we count? I thought that Mr de Boissieu gave us a classic example of the economist's approach this morning. He described the Sarkozy commission proposals as a very useful enlargement of GDP. He seemed happy to add these wellbeing and natural and social aspects to GDP. I am sure that has not escpaped his attention that France would no doubt come even higher in the league tables as a result! Is it not possible that GDP itself is the problem, and that we will have to get rid of it and replace it totally? My third question to the panel concerns the how of introducing new economic measures. In what form might we introduce new metrics this into a culture which, as we have heard throughout today, is already saturated with a growing amount of spectacle, content and creativity? How do we make this life-critical information meaningful in such a world? Do we need some kind of Bloomberg interface for the biosphere? or a Dow Jones of biodiversity? I do not know if we can cover all that ground easily, but we will try. I would like to start with Pier Carlo Padoan from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We met his colleague, Mr Giovannini, when preparing for today’s panel, and there have been a lot of very interesting things happening in terms of how this global organisation counts and measures what matters.

Pier-Carlo PADOAN Deputy Secretary-General, OECD (Italia)

Firstly, I would like to thank the organisers for inviting me to this conference. Secondly, as an economist, I feel very guilty, especially after hearing John’s words. Thirdly, I will talk about measurement and innovation, which is a topic that has been at the centre of discussions so far, because I think that that is the way we need to approach the issue. I have five points to make. Firstly, the most widely quoted sentence since the global crisis broke out has been the following: ‘The crisis is too good an opportunity to waste’. This means that if there is a global crisis of this kind, you have a big, or perhaps shrinking, window of opportunity to change the way that you do things, and nothing more than that applies to the issue of what we should measure. The issue of going beyond GDP has been on the table for at least two decades and it is now suddenly on the front page. It is on the front page in a number of ways - through the Sarkozy Commission to the European Commission report, which bears the same title, to being quoted in the Group of 20 (G20) leaders’ statement in Pittsburgh. We suddenly realised that the old way of thinking about the economy and society does not lead us to appropriate policy responses. My first point, therefore, is why – not what - do we need to measure new things? The answer that I get, especially working in an organisation that is about policy advice, is because we want to know what the new policies should be, we should inform policymakers and help them implement them. I think, therefore, that this is the appropriate question. The second issue is that if you are really in the job of measuring new things, as the OECD is as one of the main supporters and drivers of the global project on measuring progress, you are caught in a circle, which may be virtuous or vicious according to how you deal with it. It is a virtuous circle if you

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org start from the premise that I have just made – why do we need to measure new things? It is because we are not satisfied with what we measure now and what we measure now leads to policy reactions that are not satisfactory. However, if you are looking for new measures, you end up looking for values. There was a very interesting conference in the global forum for measuring progress in Korea just a few weeks ago where we talked about the next forum which will be held in India in 2011. The final panel did not look at what we should measure but at what the values are that should be taken into consideration so that economic policy and policy at large can be useful to a society that decides to look at new values. An example of this is the now growing industry centered on happiness and how to measure and improve happiness and identify what happiness is - and I understand that this was discussed earlier today. My second point, therefore, is that this can lead to a virtuous circle generating new policy processes. Thirdly, if we are going beyond GDP, as an economist I would say that we should not throw it out. The real issue is not throwing out GDP, but – and I am possibly quoting my friend, Christian de Boissieu here – that GDP hides a lot of things. There is no better example to show why it is an ambiguous, although single measure, than exactly the relationship between GDP and innovation. One of the questions that the OECD and others looked at after the crisis began was what would happen to innovation. Economists sometimes become historians and go back to past experience and they find out that in deep recessions innovation is hurt in a number of channels, and you can measure this in a traditional way. For instance, you can see how much less business spends in research and development, how much less venture capital is available, how many young, promising small businesses are thrown out of the market or are simply not allowed into the market and how much human capital is destroyed. You come to the conclusion that recessions are very bad for innovation. However, if you look at other measures, which are not very different than that, but ones that do not point at aggregate numbers and look at specific case studies – and we have had a number of interesting case studies today – you discover something, which to many people is already well known, that many of the success stories that we know about today were actually initiated during recessions because creativity can be very strong then. That is my third point. My fourth point is what do we do about policy. I work in a policy-oriented organisation and we are working on this and developing what we call an innovation strategy, where we are asking how we need to change policies in order to exploit the best of new forms of innovation. We are looking at issues that were discussed earlier, such as open innovation, demand-driven innovation, creativity and culture and we are trying to establish a link between innovation policies and the notion of culture, which has a lot of practical implications. I will just mention one of these, which is probably very well known. How can we have a financial market that is sensitive to so-called intangible assets or cultural assets when deciding where to put its money and fund industries? This is a very serious problem and I am sure that many people have come across it. The fifth point is what do we get out of this? The title of this session is ‘Going Beyond GDP’ and my plea is that poor old GDP may need a lot of culture to survive, for the reasons that has been mentioned. If you ask most economists how they see the world in the next five to 10 years after the recession, they will answer relying on traditional measures and that these measures will say that the situation will be worse than before. There will be lower output and higher debt. We will therefore have more unemployment and will be worse off. This kind of reasoning is what the traditional way of measuring tells you. However, if we can find ways to introduce new things, we might discover not only that we are possibly better off, but especially that we can design policies for being better off.

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The obvious example of this is green growth, remodeling consumption, production, delivery and technology towards a new way of considering what we think would be an appropriate society. Again, therefore, measurement is useful because it changes life.

John THACKARA Thank you. Pierre Louette is the head of Agence France Presse and I know that he has looked at the subject of how a global news organisation can change the way we look at the world and at other indicators and stories that have possibly been missed until now. It will be interesting to hear his view on this subject.

Pierre LOUETTE Chairman, AFP (France)

It is, of course, very difficult to talk about the world as it is and as it is changing, and I think that links to the previous speaker’s presentation. The OECD needs to find new indicators and ways of measuring and integrating new indicators of wellbeing and happiness beyond GDP. In our work as an agency – and this is true of many media represented here today – what we have to take into account is a new way of reporting these changes and it is not necessarily the editors who want to change most. Editors and journalists are often used to telling stories in a certain way, and having to suddenly change their working methods is often difficult and they are sometimes reticent about it. However, we have been working on that over the past few years and I would like to talk about a few of those things that struck us. One challenge that we are facing is an information overload – we are suffering from too much information rather than too little – and this information overload requires us to make choices. Journalists have to sift information and decide what is and what is not news and what they will take into account and what they will cast aside. Apart from possibly the youngest, journalists were not really exposed to this idea of beyond GDP in their training, even though it has been floated for about 20 years now. We have journalists who are excellent at describing macroeconomic phenomena and talking about econometrics and statistics, but they find it more difficult when it comes to the qualitative aspect of things. Régis Wargnier mentioned the fact that images are losing their meaning because there are so many of them. What we are facing is the omnipresence of news and what we need to do is find and provide meaning in the midst of this information overload. The only real answer to this challenge is real journalism, where you sort through news, providing and guiding meaning. One of our main challenges is to be an organisation that provides a way of interpreting and viewing the world. A lot of the recent inventions and new technologies come from outside the world of journalism and it is not journalists who have been inventing all these innovations, but the cinema, digital technologies, video games and so on that have been providing innovation and these are fields that have invented new ways of telling stories. What journalists need now is new storytelling skills. There has recently been a lot of talk about digital storytelling and we have to be able to tell stories through new technologies as a way of understanding these stories and the world around us. The visual aspect of things and the idea of being able to show people the information you have is very important. We work with the OECD on an interesting project, which although a joint research project, is not a very formalised one. The OECD is working on new indicators and ways of providing data and our work there is to provide new visual aspects in the way data is presented, such as Flash

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org animations, hyperlinks and so, and look at how we can help people navigate through information. What we really need in this news overload is a way of helping people navigate and sort news. We need to find a way of dealing with these subjects which have become more complicated. But the technologies are available and we need to look at qualitative issues. This is all very difficult to take into account, but it has to be done if we want to be able to be storytellers.

John THACKARA Umair Haque, what do you think about these new measures of GDP?

Umair HAQUE Havas Medialab, London (United Kingdom)

I have been thinking about what to say and how I can say it in five minutes, so let me try to put things as simply as I can. The GDP debate is interesting because it is an income-based measure and we often confuse it with being a measure of wealth. You can boost your income by mortgaging your house and selling it, but your wealth might then go down. The fundamental problem that we have in the GDP debate is that we have problems measuring our income because we are not measuring our wealth correctly or even in any accurate way whatsoever. One of the things that my lab has done therefore over the last year has been to ask what would happen if we took a broader look at our common wealth, which in a way encompasses many of the dimensions of wellbeing that many of the speakers have talked about today. We defined this as being many different kinds of capital. Some of them are already conceptualised and easy to measure, such as financial capital, intellectual capital and human capital to a degree. Others are not conceptualised and are much more difficult to measure. These are, in a way, at the cutting edge of things, such as organisational capital and social capital. My favourite is something that we recently conceptualised which is called ethical capital – how a country or company can make ethical decisions and whether it has the capital, skills and tools for that. When we looked at all of these things, we found, in a very rough way, that our common wealth is stagnating and we are trading one kind of wealth against another. We are generating income by drawing down our wealth and if we go back to what John said at the very beginning of this panel about the way we are growing being ecocidal, it is in fact a little suicidal and extremely self-destructive because without adding to our wealth tomorrow’s income cannot grow. Let me therefore sketch out what I think that means for companies. I use a metaphor to explain this, which is very mundane and pedestrian, but perhaps it conveys the today. Yesterday, we built our companies to produce the economic equivalent of soda. Soda is something that is mass produced. It is dirty and very bad for everybody. Tomorrow, we have to tool our companies, countries and regions to produce the economic equivalent of wine. Wine is the opposite of soda. In the previous panel, somebody talked about the idea of films being produced by auteurship, and wine has the same characteristics. As most of our companies are not tooled to produce this, when this great shift from measuring income to measuring wealth kicks off, as it already has with the Stiglitz/Sen Report, new winners and losers will emerge. I can go through what characteristics these winners and losers will have, but what this great shift suggests to me is that the cost basis of generating an income will rise drastically over the next decades and most companies and countries are not tooled to meet it. As a result, I think that we will undergo a period of stagnation until we are able to meet that challenge.

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Paul ANDREU Architect (France)

I know nothing about GDP; I produce buildings, because I am an architect. I do not gauge people’s pleasure or happiness – I am totally incapable of doing so. Yet, it is always at the back of my mind, in the same way as you think about your children being happy. You do not just want them to grow – you want them to be able to grow. When I am producing my buildings, I never forget that people have to be able to grow in their feelings, and that is what I want them to be able to do. I do not send messages or try to inspire any ideas; I want people to develop their own ideas and if I succeed in that I think that I will have been a successful architect in the same way that other people are successful artists or creators. I am basically trying to be creative in every way, which is why I have an interest in many areas other than just my profession. I feel freer and not trapped in a box. However, let us forget about architecture for the moment. Beyond architecture, monuments and just ordinary buildings, there is the question of the urban environment. 50% of mankind lives in cities and we have never been as rich as we are now and we can have wonderful cities. That is true – we have never been so rich. However, is this wealth well shared? This is perhaps an issue for debate. Some of our cities probably are beautiful because others are a scar on the face of the planet. However, even in this wonderfully beautiful city of Avignon, there are neighbourhoods that do not look quite so pretty and are something of a problem, and we have to address these issues. Here again I am not saying how people are going to be made happy, but we need try to see how we can make it possible for them to maybe find more happiness and how this culture that we love so much, and that is of real fundamental value to us can be made accessible to everyone, because there are some who cannot access it. I think that we have good news here. If we look at some of the cities around France in what used to be called the provinces – although we should not refer to that any more – they are moving forward. Some excellent things are being done by Lyon, Bordeaux and Le Havre, for example, with some really interesting developments, and Greater Paris is beginning to get involved. There is good news there. All the groups involved – and as I was not part of this, I can say what I like about it – have delivered many new, good and interesting ideas. Every development can be criticised, of course, but it is all there now. It is very difficult to deliver this message and communicate these kinds of ideas. However, there are good ideas as well and there was a Marc Auchet article in Le Monde where he was being very nice to architects saying that you need to get involved in the little, mundane things. In the same newspaper, there was also an article by Jean Nouvel. He was not saying that we want out and out creation, but we need to be able to continue what is currently being developed in Greater Paris, where there are so many projects that I cannot quote them all. This is great news. It means that we are back in a cycle that is moving in the right direction. However, the question is, what should be done? It is up to you here, who have the answer. You are good at communicating and you have the means to communicate. We need to see how we can keep this momentum going in the future so that people can express themselves properly rather than just giving the odd sound bite here and there. That is the big issue at the moment.

John THACKARA I went to a meeting in England of a group called Transition Towns. This is a remarkable social movement in which nearly 2,000 groups of citizens are saying that they are not going to wait for the

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Government to solve the problems of climate change, peak oil and peak phosphate and so on. They are taking action themselves. The groups range from people aged five to 85. Transition Towns recently discussed what kind of communications and websites they should have for this global movement. They decided that they wanted to have the least number possible of electronic obstacles to meeting face to face. They only want communication tools that help them meet each other in the real world. As we talk about 'edge effects' and all the big challenges to traditional media today, this is for me where the biggest change is coming from. People at the grassroots who say that confronting the crisis requires less, not more media. I offer that to you as a kind of challenge. However, in terms of measuring what matters and how fast we have to move, it would be good to get some quick views from the panelists.

Pier-Carlo PADOAN I said earlier that as an economist I feel guilty, and while I continue to feel guilty, I am full of hope because at least in the policy agenda area now there are big horizons and strategies. With green growth, a number of countries have decided to go beyond the crisis by directing all their resources, both public and possibly private, to reshaping the way they live. The clearest example of that is Korea, where they have decided to make green growth the way the Government will lead the country out of the global recession, which means not just putting money into different technologies and industries and energies, but also, particularly, changing people’s behaviour. Again, my point is that we need to measure new things because we must help people change their behaviour and guide their resources. We have to be at the service of society so that resources are not wasted. Measurement is an instrument to a new way of considering society, and we should not forget that.

Pierre LOUETTE To be brief, because there are a lot of slogans flying around and stacking up here, not long ago the mantra was content is king, and a lot of companies continue to think that. However, on the Internet they now say that context is king, and I think that context is very relevant to today’s issue of measuring happiness rather than wealth. That is to say that we hope that these small personal happinesses will stack up in aggregate and this will be a much more relevant gauge than GDP. This is possible with today’s technologies. It is more difficult because we have broader interfaces and everyone is involved, but it goes well with these techniques of contextualisation, which is very much what we are talking about today.

Umair HAQUE As a relatively young economist, rather than feeling guilty, I am quite astonished that the economics that we have built over the last half century are so out of touch with reality, and I will try to summarise what I think the future will be about. GDP is a measure of national income, and all these baby steps that we are taking – the Stiglitz/Sen Report and similar things that are happening in the UK and US – will be measures of national outcomes. Therefore, yesterday, if you could contribute towards the national income, you were successful. That was the basis that you were measured against and the yardstick of success. Tomorrow, the yardstick of success will be national outcomes and if your country, region or company does not contribute to better outcomes, you will not meet that new yardstick of success. When we look at most companies in terms of contributing to outcomes, the results are surprising. Most companies have extremely negative outcomes; they do

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org not have positive outcomes. The notion of outcomes, not income is therefore what I would like to leave you with.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Considering culture from an economic or symbolic viewpoint: how can it promote the development of territories?

Nicolas SEYDOUX We will start with Michel Draguet, the Director of the Magritte Museum. He will be the first speaker to talk about attractiveness of spaces before and he will represent Brussels, a well known city. Its architectural heritage is of outstanding quality but people sometimes forget about it. The opening of the Magritte Museum gave Brussels a new attractiveness. Above and beyond the museum’s work and the Surrealist movement, it is an excellent tool for bringing Brussels to the forefront and encouraging people to visit the city. Last year we talked about opening new museums. We also talked about the buildings themselves rather than the collections. I was able to visit the Magritte Museum. Regardless of your opinion of the work carried out around a pre-existing building or work, I think you have done a lot for Belgium and for Surrealism.

Michel DRAGUET Director of Magritte Museum (Belgium)

Thank you for this kind introduction. My intervention was supposed to be a response to a survey that was sent out to the participants. I must say that I did not recognise the description given of Brussels in there because the effect of the architectural heritage is particularly significant in a city like Brussels. When you break down the urban fabric of the Fifties and Sixties, it changes a city around. Brussels is an example of a city that goes through major challenges. Last night, we lost the last link of what was a very precarious government in the first place. It is true that the city of Brussels is like a patchwork of fragmented politics, from the municipal level all the way to federal government in various layers. From our experiences in the Magritte Museum and your revealing presentation, it is a small item as we are talking about 200 pieces out of 20,000 for the Belgian Museum of Fines Arts. It seems that the Belgian Museum of Fine Arts is an endless museum of little interest in the 20,000 pieces. There is some interest but little attraction. I think what is relevant here is that we are looking at a high profile collection with international attraction power. You have to put it to music and I believe that is where a number of strategies have been implemented, not just in Brussels but in many other cities, where they have been trying to develop that sort of setup. It is a bit odd to respond to the survey before you have seen it but it is its own element and that is the concept of the identity. The reason why the Magritte Museum did so well is because it responds to an identity challenge. In Brussels, as in many places in the world, there are many discussions about multicultural societies and the issues of a federal or European identity. That is not so obvious. Many people claim to be European but what do we mean by European identity? This concept of identity may be significant but you looked at the same collection and put it elsewhere, like in Abu

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Dhabi, you would not get the same effect. It would not get the same meaning because the content has to refer to a contextual identity. The other thing in this survey is the economic effect. We are referring to major investments. We had a sponsor or investor – GDF Suez - and there was some investment in terms of skills. They were not huge sums of money. The collection was there in the Magritte Museum but we are talking about €10 million altogether, which on a national scale is not huge. If you look at other investments in the events industry, we find different waters of magnitude. In Nancy, for example, we had 500 000 visitors in a few months. In the museum, we had 250 000 visitors after five months. That is a large number considering the size of the city and it has effects on the hospitality industry. They do not invest in these attraction tools. It is a windfall for them so we had to find the money elsewhere. That money produced a cultural tomb, which benefits people who do not take part in the operation at all. This was not the case for the new wing that was built in the Institute of Chicago. The entire community was aware of what was at stake and what benefits it could reap out of this and decided to contribute. On the one hand, in Brussels you have a sponsorship policy or skills sponsorship. For instance, Suez came in to support the project and put together a team with the Royal Museums. However, the real beneficiaries will be those who are distant from both the initiative and its making. It shows that there has to be better consultation between the players involved. Also the same survey shows that with knowledge and heritage transmission, we often see collections that are handed down from poles of excellence. This is an interesting concept because very find it reoccurring all over Europe. We have huge collections that are the tip of the iceberg. There is huge potential which needs to be redistributed as poles of excellence and competence. This is my response to a survey I read with great interest. I think this is something economists should delve in and show to all the players, not just to those who give but also to those who receive. Very often they are not the same. They should be shown the point of investing in culture. Thank you.

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Introduction of the Ineum Consulting Study for the Forum d’Avignon: “Culture – A symbolic or economic factor for urban development planning?”

Vincent FOSTY Partner, Ineum Consulting (France)

There is global competition between our knowledge centric economies in order to attract capital, intelligence, creative minds and dynamic professionals. Culture is generally accepted as a key element of our knowledge centric economies. The question is: How much of a success factor is culture for the development of urban areas? Is it symbolic or economic? We will discuss this question with the panel in a moment but I would like to take this moment to share the highlights of the research we conducted with the Forum d’Avignon on this very subject. I would like to start with one or two definitions. Firstly, culture as a word has several meanings. It is often used in combination with others such as heritage, values and industries. In our research, we took what we call a 360° view of culture. I quote the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity of UNESCO: ‘Culture is the set of distinctive, spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and that encompasses in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value system traditions and beliefs.’ This is the vast scope of the research we conducted. The second element of definition relates to the attractiveness of urban areas and the features that make up the appeal of a given area. These are typically grouped in four categories: 1. The Development of Knowledge 2. The Quality of Our Living Environment 3. Business Development 4. Cultural Activity A city or an urban area would typically be ranked against the quality of its human capital, the quality of its healthcare, the prices of office spaces but also its diversity and the cultural service offerings it has. What is not commonly accepted though, or at least as we will see later, not structurally demonstrated, is the relationship and the nature of the relationship between the level of cultural activity on one hand and the economic performance of a city on the other. In summary, if culture makes an area more attractive, does it help truly improve the sustainable and economic performance of an area and create wealth for its inhabitants? The objective of our research was to identify and categorize the links between economic development and cultural appeal by providing a series of examples and most importantly, the opening of discussions. To date, to our knowledge, there is no tool available internationally that is dedicated to measuring the impact of culture on an urban area’s appeal. We would like to see our research as the first of its kind. In terms of methodology, we selected a panel of 32 cities in 12 countries. With difficulty, we tried to reach and depict a fairly balanced perspective as we were going through this exercise of selecting cities to illustrate our point. These 32 cities are evenly balanced between 16 cities with a world culture heritage as awarded by UNESCO and 16 cities without one. We have a breakdown of cities into three thirds, based on their actual size of population.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

In the report that you have received, we have also complemented the three thirds quantitatively with five more detailed case studies, with cities such as Abu Dhabi, Bilbao or Brussels. For some of these, we did not actually have the quantitative data to support the analysis but we felt the actual analysis of those case studies was really providing insight to the analysis. For the geographical scope of the research, in terms of the criteria or the indicators, we looked at the panel of cities along two dimensions. First, is the intrinsic economic performance with metrics such as GDP, migration influx or unemployment rate. On the other hand is the level of culture and academic activity with metrics such as the number of cultural sites, as well as the size of the student population in these areas. I have to tell you at this point that we are being very humble vis-à-vis this first attempt. Again there was no tool available. We felt we had to do this once. We will obviously welcome the discussions here or outside this forum as to how we can better enrich this panel but also enrich the selection of criteria and indicators, as we just discussed around the GDP-based debate , to further fuel the discussions around the attractiveness of urban areas. There is a likely relationship between the level of cultural and academic activity and the economic performance of a city. The first element that our research showed is that unfortunately the question of the cause and effect remains unanswered. Are you economically performing because you have cultural intensity or do you develop cultural activity because your economic performance allows you to? The analysis shows the very nature of the map you are looking at and what is also the subject of this forum, cultural strategies for a new world. It shows the groupings of similar development strategies into families. We have called this the culture map. If you tuned the model and played with the indicators and the relative weights of each of these indicators, you may get slightly different pictures. For the sake of today’s discussion, we felt we had reached a fairly balanced perspective. Let me quickly walk you through those six families. The first one on the chart is what we call the shareholders. They draw their economic performance mostly from tourism but are also making significant efforts to leverage their cultural heritage and investments. Venice, for example, is a typical shareholder city. They welcomed more than 14 million visitors last year with public spending of less than €100 per capita a year. The historical family is a large group of cities that have significant cultural heritage but they are also strengthening their attractiveness by developing international cultural and academic facilities. Paris is definitely one of the flagship cities in that group. They have invested heavily in cultural activities but are yet to capture the economic value from it. Montreal is definitely one of the convinced cities. Two years ago, they engaged in a ten-year programme with the aim of developing the first cultural cluster on a global scale. They are newcomers. They have launched cultural projects, which result in very high expenditure per capital than average. Bilbao is often quoted as an example of a deliberate planning example in cultural development. These towns and urban areas have access to very different levers and drivers than culture. Singapore is an example. Firstly, it is a major financial centre. To close the list, these have a smaller heritage. However, they manage to create specific cultural development projects. For example, the city of Essen will become the European Capital of Culture next year. I am sure we could discuss at length whether those affinity groupings and families should be positioned on one or the other quadrant. When we look at those strategies from a more qualitative

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org perspective, we found a lot of significant learnings. The research shows that there are about three types of winning strategies, which are obviously not mutually exclusive. The first one is around developing a unique identity, often in the context of economic change and conversion. Bilbao or Liverpool, for instance, are renovating and promoting their heritage, sometimes in combination with the development of innovative cultural facilities. The second is centered around the development of a brand. Montreal has enabled the creation of a true colloquial approach that I mentioned earlier, which now allows it to compete as a cultural metropolis with other world cities. Abu Dhabi is building a city brand awareness from scratch, partnering with renowned cultural brands such as the Sorbonne or the Louvre. In my hometown of Brussels, the Metropolitan Route 2018 initiative is considering Brussels as a brand, which needs to be developed and promoted. The third strategy is centred around the enhancement of social cohesiveness and the quality of life. In Nancy, the 20/20 project is really using heritage and history to instill a sense of local pride and increasing the offering of cultural events, therefore enhancing the quality of life in the city area. In one of his management books, Michael Porter once wrote, ‘Strategy is about making tough decisions and tough choices.’ I believe this is very true, even in the context of cultural strategies. Those are very difficult and tough decisions as they have considerable and sustainable impacts on our societies. Before the panel discussion, I need to make a few important comments. As I said, this is the first edition. My presentation is only a very small abstract of the content you have received. We hope this can become a reference for the decision makers but again we will need to be able to discuss with public and private bodies in order to enrich this panel and to enrich the indicators we have been using to support the analysis. I would like to thank the Forum d’Avignon and the Ministry of Culture for giving us this great opportunity to work on this report. Thank you very much.

Nicolas SEYDOUX Thank you for this presentation. I hope that just like the Head of the Magritte Museum, you found this research led up to new avenues of thinking. Mr Izraelewicz, who is the Managing Editor of La Tribune, is going to host a round table. It will be smaller than initially planned but it will bring together politicians and decision makers from various parts of the world. As we did in previous parts, I will leave it to the moderator to introduce members of the panel. Mr Izraelewicz, it is all yours.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Considering culture from an economic or symbolic viewpoint: how can it promote the development of territories?

Round Table 1: The conditions of cultural attractiveness

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Moderator Managing editor, La Tribune (France)

The first round table is in response to this study on conditions for attractiveness. Can cultural factors be economic drivers and attract business? That will be the question. We have the three remaining panelists. Mitchell Landrieu is from the United States. For 16 years, he was a representative. He is now Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. He founded the World Cultural Forum in New Orleans. It is a bit like Avignon in the United States. New Orleans is a city where cultural events are many and varied and we will hear about those. I would also like to call on Bernard Landry, former Prime Minister of Quebec. I know that you were in a number of ministries. From 2001 to 2003, you were Prime Minister. Please take a seat. Today you are an academic and you teach in a number of countries, including China and Africa. You are an economist and a politician. We will be hearing from you about attractiveness. René Carron is Chairman of Crédit Agricole S.A. He is a banker and is the man in charge of the Fondation de France. He will be talking about his viewpoint. He was in agriculture, was a banker, a minister and an elected representative. I would like to first turn to Bernard Landry so that he can tell us his reaction to this study. The idea of investing in culture and leveraging cultural heritage and cultural activities can be a strength and provde a city with attraction .

Bernard LANDRY Former Prime Minister of Quebec, lawyer, professor, economist (Quebec)

You talked about Michel Rocard and Alain Juppé and I can tell you that they are friends of mine. I even invited them to my home at one point. Politically, they differ but in terms of the conclusion of the report, we can but agree with them. That is the point I was going to make before you talked about them. I was in national government during 20 years. I had a ten year break from politics, which is always good because when you come back, you reap the rewards and harvest the fruits that you sowed

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org many years before. For 200 years, the nation I was leading has fought tooth and nail not to lose its language and culture. Unlike my friends and cousins from Louisiana, we won. We fought to save our culture and our culture is saving us. That’s true for Montreal and also for Quebec. You know that Quebec is both a cultural and technological city. There is a direct connection between the fact that cultural resilience has made us the most European of North Americans. Our French friends say, ‘You are America without the Americans and you are Europe without the Europeans.’ There is some truth in that. That has had a direct impact on our economic development. I am not a theorist. I am going to talk very pragmatically. Bombardier is a company from Quebec that is the leading rail equipment manufacturer in the world. Given where we come from, they started with snowmobiles but because of cultural linguistic links, they worked with the people from Paris to build the Quebec metro. Now they are building their way from Beijing to Lasus. Obviously, there is a cultural connection for that. There are three major civil aviation cities in the world: Seattle, Toulouse and Montreal. There are more jobs in that area in Montreal than in Toulouse, simply because we drew on the two aviation giants as a result of the language links and the fact that a lot of our technicians and engineers trained in the United States and France. Those are a couple of examples but there are so many. Celine Dion is another example, Le cirque du soleil is another one. They earn more than a large part of our SMUs all together. Quebec is one of the top 20 countries in terms of GDP per capita. On the subject of attractiveness, there are things that governments need to consider. I can think of one that we decided on. We exported minerals, paper and wood 50 years ago. Now we export high tech because in the Sixties, there was a revolution that boosted our level of education from one of the lowest to the highest. This enabled us to scale the ladder towards high tech technology, pharmacology products, bioengineering and we are very much involved in video games too. Montreal is one of the video games capitals in the world and in certain sectors, the capital of the world. This is simply because the national Quebec government decided 15 years ago to give huge tax breaks of $25,000 for every $50,000 paid in wages to these employees. It was said that this was Communism. That was rather strange because Communism was not doing that well and it looked like we were promoting it. This is just in video games. Of the 7,000 jobs in Montreal, $60,000 is the average wage, which means that with taxes which are up to the level of those in Europe, the state was able to get its money back. It is about ideals and humanism but it is also about very down to earth considerations and the two can be combined. This is what Quebec has tried to do and with all modesty, has been done quite successfully.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Just a quick question – when you were prime minister, when the culture minister came to see you and explained to you that we had to have this tax credit and in 15 years, we will get a return on that investment, were you already thinking in those terms?

Bernard LANDRY In all modesty, I was thinking of him. Actually I thought of it before in a paper called “Le virage technologique”. I just want to add a small thing. I never said no to the culture minister’s budget requests.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Mitchell Landrieu, in your state following the Hurricane Katrina disaster that hit New Orleans, was culture one of the aspects for rebuilding the region?

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana (USA)

First, let me begin by thanking you for inviting me here for a number of reasons. I was telling Laure just a minute ago that walking up the steps yesterday was one of the most amazing moments of my life. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and the cultural attractiveness of Avignon. It is a great pleasure to be here today for that reason. Many years ago, when the French and the British were still laying claim to the New World through Canada, someone won and someone lost. The French were expelled from Canada in one of the great expulsions. Many of those individuals found their way all the way across the continent to the Gulf of Mexico and are now in a place called Lafayette, which is referred to as Cajun Country. Our sister city in the world is, in fact, Quebec. For those of you who have had the pleasure of visiting both Quebec and New Orleans or Lafayette, you will find people who are actually from the same family and who are descended and who visit each other every year. It is startling to listen to the story of Quebec and the development of culture and economics because it is almost identical to what is happening in Louisiana today. If I may, I would like to address three points. Firstly, the answer to the study that was done and referenced earlier is somewhat obvious to us in Louisiana. The more culturally rich a space or place is, whether it is New Orleans, Quebec, Lafayette or Avignon, all of the empirical data for those of us in the business of attracting tourists indicates that in down economic times and up economic times, people will travel to a place that is authentic, that is not trying to become like another place but is trying to become more like itself. That helped drive many of our decisions in Louisiana about how we branded and marketed ourselves from a tourist perspective. Secondly, it is also obvious to us from many studies that have been done that if we are trying to attract what we would call a Fortune 500 company that was in the business of oil and gas exploration or biomedical technology research and development, those individuals will choose to locate in a place where there is a very strong knowledge based economy and a place that is culturally rich and has great schools. The presence of art, music, great architecture, wonderful people, great food and a sense of joie de vivre is much more attractive to them than a place that does not have it. The third piece is what Louisiana has really spent its time on and which you have alluded to, which gets into the detailed business of whether culture creates a significant enough return on investment. When the cultural minister comes to see me or the legislator asks me if we can prove that we are as worthy as an investment of public dollars or whether we have the right to claim a tax credit because the return on investment and the actual jobs that we create actually outpace that which would have been created if they had invested it in another part of government, I would say: As a legislator and an appropriator or as the Lieutenant Governor whose job is to execute, we are dealing with a set amount of money that comes in and goes out. Everybody competes for that money. In Louisiana, they come to the legislature or in the United States, the Congress and we have to make priorities. Are we going to spend money on the police and fire? Are we going to spend money on transportation? Are we going to spend money on education? Should we spend money on a tax credit to build jobs in the film industry, for example, that then becomes part of the cultural framework that returns real jobs? I do not mean to quarrel with you. I think your study was very well done but there is a way to count the hard, economic impact of culture by identifying the number of jobs that exist in art, music,

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org education, architecture, historic preservation, film, TV and digital media. We did something that was somewhat unique only because we did not know what else to do and because we were looking to create political power. We needed people and therefore, we had to identify the jobs that were attached, extrapolate it and came up with the economic impact. In Louisiana, we were able to identify through a study that we did that there are approximately 200,000 jobs that are attached to jobs that fall under the broad umbrella of culture. We were able to identify the amount of tax revenue generated, the number of jobs and the return on investment. We could actually present ourselves to the legislature, not as a beggar saying, ‘Please give me something because we edify people’s lives,’ but in a position of strength. We could actually compete with hard information about why the investment of tax dollars was better because we created more, cleaner, higher paying jobs that actually created economic impact. This was not only in the first round but also in the second round and not only as a great place for people to come and visit and bring other kinds of jobs but because of the jobs in and of themselves. I should also say to you that one of the challenges that I had as Lieutenant Governor was explaining to individuals in the cultural industries that they had great political strength and power because there were many people who were involved. When there were discussions about transportation, education or public safety, they should be there because the employees in the industry are very concerned about how they would get back and forth to work, whether they will be secure when they are travelling there and whether they can afford to work in the industries. They can only do so if the schools their children go to are affordable and workable. The idea was for the industry to identify itself and identify the things that were important to them, prove to the policy makers that they were more worthy or as worthy as anyone else and had a right to present themselves to the people of the country and compete on the same level that everyone else competes. We have met with some success with that idea in Louisiana. That is why we use the phrase, ‘Culture and Economics’ because from our view, they cannot be separated. If you separate them, you put yourself in a position of weakness and you do not adequately describe what it is that we do in the fields that we work in. We put ourselves in a position of weakness rather than strength. We are attempting to change that entire paradigm so that we can present ourselves in a way that we think we deserve great investment. Our return on investment is just as good as others. We have done that in Louisiana and have begun to explore that. Many things that I have learned here today will assist us in correcting mistakes that we may have made or seeing things that we may not have been able to see up to this point.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ I would like to put a question to you in relation to what Bernard Landry said.

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU He is asking me about the impact culture had in the renaissance of New Orleans post-Katrina. I will say this. The only thing that kept the people of New Orleans alive, moving forward with enough strength to go on was its sense of place and culture. In fact, it was the spirit and the soul that culture created that allowed the people to come back. The storm devastated an area seven times the size of Manhattan. It damaged 500,000 homes and destroyed 200. People began to understand that it was not the house that mattered or the building that they worked in. It really was the relationship to family, place and history and the international

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org community’s response. It was overwhelming, especially from the people of France, which we are so thankful for. We spoke about the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which both sent hundreds of millions of dollars to us to recover and we thank you for your presence. Jean-David Lavite came down many times. It was the idea that New Orleans represented a cultural framework that was important to the rest of the world that helped give the people of New Orleans the strength to stand back up. Now we are in the business of the hard work of doing it but it is revolving around the richness of our culture, our food, our music, our historic preservation, our architecture and our film industry. We may have teased the idea from Quebec but we also have a film tax credit in Louisiana. The very small state of Louisiana is the number three film production state in the United States of America. To show you how tax policy affects the creation of jobs, before we did the film tax credit, we did about $10 million and we had a couple of hundred jobs. Last year, we made 80 major motion pictures, about $800 million and created 7,000 jobs in the film industry. This brings us to the issue of financing and real money. Taking risks are important but creating jobs is more important. The tax benefits of that have created a clean industry in Louisiana that we believe is internationally competitive at this point.

Bernard LANDRY Jacques Chirac warned you many years ago of the disaster. He had said that New Orleans was too low lying and he was right.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ René Carron, can we have your reaction to this study and perhaps your thoughts on the relationship between cultural intensity of communities, economic efficacy and companies?

René CARRON Chairman, Crédit Agricole S.A. (France)

Friends, we have been talking about profitability. I think in most cases, as a bank, we certainly cannot replace the role played by governments and local authorities. If you look at a public investment, when public funds are being used, we can ensure that an investment being carried out becomes something vital and something important to people’s lives. We want to ensure that investments, for example, carried out by non-profits or public authorities are done in a way, which is effective. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the former French Culture Minister knows that we are very involved in this. We are very involved in these types of investments in France and abroad. The reality is that Crédit Agricole as an organisation and bank wants to be a civic player. It wants to be an organisation that participates in civic life, for cultural investments. This is also a reference to our history and our culture. This is very important for many communities. It is a way of weaving together the social fabric. People who have different political views and different views on lots of things can work together on cultural projects. In doing so, we wish to ensure that culture and everything associated with culture becomes a part of our identity. I would take that even further and in doing so, risk surprising you or perhaps disappointing you. I can tell you about all the sponsorship and funding that we do. We have a project in Russia with the Mariinsky Theater, with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. We

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org have partnered with a lot of museums in France. I could go through the whole list but that would not be so interesting. I think what is important is to turn to the world of the future, tomorrow’s world, a world which I hope will be different from the world of the past. There is a paradigm change underway and we have to think about what the role of culture will be in society in the future. I think we have to think about what the profile of tomorrow’s leaders would be. If you look at the current economic crisis, I have seen all sorts of experts or people that were seen as being experts discredited in the current economic crisis. I think the best example for tomorrow in terms of a corporate leader is an orchestra conductor. I think tomorrow’s corporate leaders need to be like orchestra conductors. For tomorrow’s world, how can we bring together a unique, single set of rules for the markets without crushing individual specificities? We need to take into account the cultural specificities of each nation when thinking about international regulatory architecture. I think that another determining factor will be our ability to feed the world’s population tomorrow. In doing so, we have to respect cultural identities. That applies to all major challenges facing tomorrow’s society, including water, energy and environment. Finally, how can we make a market mindset compatible with unique communities that need to be protected? You have to take local identity into account when, for example, drawing up effective agricultural policy, which is something that we need. In the current economic crisis, we cannot be hypocritical any more. We have to step up and tell the hard truths. Getting back to culture, it cannot be an innocent bystander. It has to be involved in facing all of these challenges. The economic crisis is amplified because I think society has changed. People of the seventies are no longer those of 2009. They need something else even if the political, social and economical structures have not changed since. I’m convinced that culture has a role to play in all of that. It should also be said that this crisis is a kind of dictatorship of experts over common sense and common good. I think we have to avoid received wisdom and received truths. We have to overcome all of that. We have to face the challenges ahead of us. I think the two major pitfalls are arrogance and overconfidence in one’s specialist knowledge. We have to overcome those challenges in the future.

Bernard LANDRY To look at what is going on in France, we have the Stiglitz Commission. If France succeeds in developing a new measure of prosperity beyond GDP, I think that France will be seen as a very successful country. France has more tourists than inhabitants. You’ve got beautiful landscapes and gastronomy, but tourists are attracted by your cultural heritage. Quebec hopes to follow you in that. You eluded or referred to the current economic crisis. I think this crisis is due to a lack of culture. When Communism fell, there were uneducated people, especially in Chicago, that set up a new system based on capitalism and held up a new ideology of free market capitalism. It led to an incredible materialism. I think culture is an anecdote to that kind of ideology. That is why I have a dream, and I will say it that way – I have a dream. The Brundtland Report talked about human development but did not talk about ecology. It just talked about human development, including cultural development. I would like to see people as motivated as environmental activists. Environmental activists have done a lot for us. They have made environmental protection a contentious issue for a lot of governments in the world. I would like to see similarly motivated activists for culture.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Of course, I have had to deal with the economy longer than you because I am older than you. One of my disappointments in life is that the more growth increases in purely material terms, human happiness has not followed that increase in economic growth. Indeed, it has gone in the other direction. What do we really want as humans? We want to make people happy. We all want to be happy and fulfilled. The crisis is creating misery for billions of people and we have to draw the lessons from this crisis. We need to concentrate on human happiness and culture. That is something that the crisis can help us achieve in reaching that understanding and reaching a new happiness.

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU I would like to make two points. First, immediately after Katrina and Rita hit New Orleans, when the people of Louisiana were destitute, someone did a study called the ‘Happiness Quotient’ of all of the states in America. Although the state of Louisiana did very poorly on all of the other economic indicators, we were the top at the worst time in our history. This was because people in Louisiana, like many people in France, have a joy of life, even in the most difficult of economic times. That may be instructive to the discussion that the gentleman who was talking about philosophy earlier mentioned and you just alluded to. I would like to point out that we are speaking of culture on this stage, in this small discussion, in two separate and distinct ways. One is, what is the relationship between culture and economics? Does it create a better place for money to be made: either directly through culture or not, the culture of what kind of government we have, whether we respect people of different cultures? We are speaking of it in two ways. I would like to make a point at the risk of possibly ruffling some feathers. I am sure that your bank has made tremendous contributions and donations to many charitable causes or cultural causes. In the event that we were raising money for the opera or to build a museum, if someone came to you and asked you to donate, I am sure that every time they asked you, you did. I would just like to ask you a question to put it in a different context. If I came to you and said that I would like to build a $15 million or a $20 million or a $30 million museum, or if we were in Dubai a $100 million museum, would you loan me the money if you were not certain that I could pay it back?

René CARRON I would say no to the way you put it because I can only lend money that I have taken in savings. Otherwise I would be responsible. The question is will you be able to build a museum and have the banker pay for it? No, that does not seem appropriate. However, if with other stakeholders, you come along and say that you are going to try to build a museum that attracts people and provides a value added risk that we share together. There I would say yes because I do not see why you would do it and I would have to take the risk. Our risk is that of the depositors. You have to understand that but I will go further. If your project is attractive, then perhaps through our foundation, we could give you a direct grant. Now the Crédit Agricole foundation is not one that has international outreach but it has proved very useful nationwide in rural areas in France. That is where its focus has been because more than all others, these are places that needed to build their cultural and social lives but did not have the resources. That is a frank answer to your question in any case.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Bernard LANDRY Let us try to sort out what might be a misunderstanding here. He lends money that he has received from his depositors. In his country, bankers lent money they did not have and that was probably the problem.

René CARRON They probably even lent it to people who could not repay it. That is something that we paid a high price for. They lent and we had to pay.

Bernard LANDRY In Québec, half of the banking market is done by a cooperative.

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU I want to just drive this point home to those of us who live in culture. It was said earlier this morning that nothing is free. Sometimes my friends in the cultural community act as though it is. Until we start acting like it is not and show up with real money and real return on investment, we will never be able to raise the capital in the system that we work in to build the cultural industries that we all say are important. You can present yourself to any government in the world and demand $100 million to build a museum or an opera theatre or the kinds of things to make a better place but if you cannot show return on investment, if you cannot show sustainability, if you cannot come in this day and age with an economic model that feeds the people that work in that industry, it will not get built. I simply would argue very strongly, at least in Louisiana, that unless we are able to bring a business model that works and that respects cultural richness but at the same time creates economic value, our chances of success are much less. That is even when we have willing partners. He would never be able to make a loan unless you brought a piece of paper that showed how many visitors will come, how much money we make and how much time it will take to pay us back. Some banks will take more of a risk than others but if there is not a bare minimum met of at least the opportunity that the risk will be rewarded, then there is no way that we can compete. We in the cultural industries have to begin thinking more in business terms if we are going to find the capital, at least in those countries that do not provide significant government funding, much like you do here. In the United States, it is much more from the private sector. That was my only point. I thank you for helping me.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Can I turn to the room and ask if there is anyone who would like to make a comment or ask a question?

René CARRON I think you are jumping to a rather hasty conclusion there. I am not quite as quick as you. I just wanted to say that we have been through some turmoil here. In 2008, my group started up a foundation for microcredit around the world. When we started, they said, ‘Okay, originally you were a farmer so we understand you.’ No normal banker would set up a microcredit fund in this financial turmoil. The thing is that Crédit Agricole came from microcredit because we felt that you could not

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org fund farming with usual rates. We set up this community whereby at the end of your career, you will have a little bit of money so you lend that to the youngsters starting out. We lend $100 to a Bangladeshi family. What does that mean? It means we are giving them the ability to go from helpless and hapless onlookers of their own destiny to people in control of their destiny. That is the first step towards dignity. We look at that reality. See how this ties in with culture and local identity. There is a linkage here, an interaction that it is clear you cannot have one without the other. Through that type of funding, we can promote and enhance respect for history and culture. It means that they can live in today’s world.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Maybe our last two speakers would like to draw a conclusion. If a young politician comes along and says, ‘I am now in charge of region. I have to give it a cultural boost,’ what would your recommendation be?

Bernard LANDRY I would say be brave and clear sighted. Do the sort of analysis that Juppé and Rocard have done at local and regional levels. I would add just a little friendly joke from my Cajun cousin. My forbearers were Acadians too. They were deported. 20,000 were deported and 10,000 died. It would be called a crime against humanity today. They walked from Louisiana to Québec and they were farmers. Those walkers now have a million relatives in Quebec. If the French had reproduced themselves so well, there would be as many French as there are Chinese.

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU We have taken up the mantle of that challenge in Louisiana. In an effort to fully integrate culture and economics, we have tried and risked many things politically. Some have succeeded and some have not. Our mission was to try to create jobs out of culture and to keep places culturally rich so that other businesses would come in. We had to use definitive tools to make that happen so we created the tax credit program for the film industry and that has worked. We also created governmental entities called cultural districts that had to be adopted as geographical space by the local governments as well as the state governments. We gave the right for local taxing districts and the state to waive sales taxes on the sale of original pieces of art so that it attracted artists there. Through our school system, we also had to mandate that they put art and music back in every classroom in Louisiana. We began to realize that if you did not teach it, you could not learn it. If you did not learn it, it would not survive until the next generation. We are embarking on other legislative matters to try to legislatively impose a new way of thinking that is very consistent with what he said. The micro-lending in Africa is a very good example that can be transported. The idea is to help people help themselves. Notice that they are not giving the money. They are lending the money. It has to be paid back, which means that it is a sustainable model over a long period of time. My only point to my friends in the cultural industry where I grew up is that sometimes we ask for a handout rather than a hand up. We are going to do much better in the future when we begin to create economically sustainable models that can create a return on investment, which will allow us to be the masters of our own destiny and to be givers rather than takers.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

The only way that we can do that is to assert ourselves in large numbers. We cannot do that unless we identify ourselves. I believe the Economic Minister this morning, unless I heard him wrong, said there were 500,000 jobs in France that were attached to cultural economics. That is a very powerful group of individuals that if organized and introduced to each other and were helped to understand that they had a huge voice, could generate a yes when they go to government rather than ‘I will wait and see you later.’ It is a very powerful movement. I believe that we are at the beginning. I believe that you are seeing a paradigm shift, especially in the world that is looking more to culture in both ways – in the large C and the small c. I think we have a very bright future if we can harness and brand it right and then use it in a very productive way.

René CARRON I think you have realised that I am not very strong on culture or very competent in that field myself. Basically, the only question that applies to all of us is what we do individually and collectively, is it likely to restrict or extend possibilities for our grandchildren. I have nine and they are a great delight. Obviously, when you look at that subject, even if you are not a cultural expert, it is easy to realise that everything that relates to culture is a key element in social ties in a society that is disintegrating. Without these social ties, the future will not be what we want. Our top concern is to be in charge of those developments. I am convinced that everything relating to culture is key for shared hope and dialogue and binding society together.

Souleymane CISSE, Film director (Mali) I would first like to thank Avignon for giving me this opportunity to hear such speakers as the people we have on our panel now. About 20 years ago, there was a lot of pressure on culture on the African continent. I am pointing no blame but IMF said that all cinemas had to be sold off or privatised. It is clear to everyone that our government did not have the resources to deal with the problem. Today, all African capitals, apart from South Africa or the Northern Strip, have virtually no cinemas. I raise this issue, not as an African or a Malian but as a human being. Is it the recession that is forcing us to rethink all these issues? We saw what happened in Africa 20 years ago. The result is that our children can no longer go to the movies. That is how I spent my whole childhood. That is where I got my education. For 20 years, I have been going to meetings and every time I get the same result because we have the same issues and problems. I would have thought that by taking part in discussions here, something might emerge, not from you but from us. From the relationships between our different groups and continents, things could change. I am delighted to be here because I am hearing wonderful things. It is outstanding but it is almost like a dream for me when I hear the CEO of Crédit Agricole talk about these things. It is wonderful but why did this not happen earlier? Why was this not done? Lieutenant, 20 years ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was doing these things and insisting that Africa sell off its movie theatres. I am not blaming any of you but thank you for the opportunity.

Mitchell J. LANDRIEU I cannot answer the question specifically for what happened in Africa. I can only say that in Louisiana after Katrina and Rita, we were at our worst economic time in the history of our state. A very curious

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org thing happened. All of the people, many without homes, jobs or businesses, insisted on and flocked to cultural events that brought everybody back together. Now this was the case with music festivals, such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival that attracts 500,000 people every year and is a worldwide event. It was almost as if the people rose up and said that it was not an option not to have that festival. That festival gave them a sense of place. It gave them something to hold onto. It could have been a game where the New Orleans Saints, which is our professional football team, played in a stadium that had been totally decimated by the storm. We rebuilt the stadium first so that we could all go back. With Mardi Gras, people were still in other cities such as Atlanta and Chicago. They said they wanted to come home and they flocked to the cultural event that brought them together so that they could feel each other again. That came from the people and then the elected officials responded. That is just an example of what happened in our catastrophe. I cannot speak about what happened there but that was just what caused the elected officials to follow, rather than to lead on that issue. It was very counterintuitive. The smarter thing or the quicker thing or the most obvious thing is to rebuild the house, rebuild the school, rebuild the job or rebuild the road. The people said, ‘Fix the cultural event first so that we can feel our place.’ That is what drove the decisions we made in Louisiana at that time.

From the floor Regarding the forum itself, when some of us decided that there should be a forum, the idea was not that it be the usual kind of routine event that you find elsewhere. It was so that we could perhaps start something that would put a wrong right. That wrong was in planning and projects and speeches, culture is also just allowed to flourish at the end. These projects are never considered as a prerequisite. Something that I often say and I want to repeat here is that when we talk about R&D, we say that is investment, whereas culture is an expense. You see what the consequences are. As Nicolas Seydoux said in an article, the problem is that one day maybe we will not need an Avignon Forum. Thankfully, we are not there yet because we can see that around the world, when there is international solidarity, you never find anything on culture, even at the back of the paper. Even at a national level, it is hard to make it a priority. What you are seeing today is not just about leisure and entertainment for young Africans. It is obviously about development and equality. This is the whole point of the UNESCO Convention. The Director was here this morning. The idea is to put right the inequalities there between north and south. The very spirit of the Avignon Forum is to say that cultural issues are not just about things that look nice and sound nice but a priority.

Souleymane CISSE I think we should be very clear about this. Firstly, I am not at all a bitter person. I am very optimistic. I am very optimistic about life. I really believe in the future. Change is necessary and I think that the African continent will develop. I am not accusing anyone. If I am here at Avignon, it is because I think a new forum for dialogue and a new forum for exchange is interesting. That is why I am here. Please excuse me if I spoke out strongly. That is just who I am. What I am interested in here is the substance of issues and I think the Lieutenant Governor laid this out effectively. As the CEO of the bank explained very nicely too, you also have microcredit programmes but I think microcredit is killing the poor because they are paying more than they would if they were borrowing from a regular

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org bank. With microcredit loans, interest rates are over 20% whereas a standard bank loan would be 10% or 12%. That is the kind of thing that we must have a debate about. The enemy is not Africa or America. We are far beyond that. The problem is human, as the CEO of the bank said. Either you commit to humans or you say you do not care about the others and you just care about yourself.

René CARRON I think we could have a lengthy debate about microcredit. It is true that there have been failures with microcredit and there have been successes too. I think the failure of microcredit has been in the area of agriculture. This is because when you lend money to a family that does not have enough to eat, they eat what they produce, then they have to produce more to pay back their loan. That little something extra that they have to produce means they have to be able to store products. They have to be able to transport products. That is where microcredit fails in agriculture. These are programmes that were carried out by public institutions and they stopped doing this microcredit in agriculture because they could not organise it sufficiently. That is completely different from crafts industries where you do not have the same problems with the storage, transportation of equipment. If you want to design effective agriculture policy, I am the Chairman of a foundation that has decided to create a university of cotton. We know that cotton production in Africa is totally distorted. The economics of the business are distorted by a handful of producers in the United States so we have to reorganise this industry. Of course, microcredit is not a magic bullet but it is a good idea because it equips a company with training and so on. Microcredit is only successful if it takes women into account because it is women who often hold the purse strings in an African family. We have to have both education and training together. There have been things that have been ineffective in microcredit but there have been successes as well.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Thank you. We have another round table here but I would like to thank all of our panelists. It was a very interesting panel. I propose that we move straight into the next round table discussion, which is a natural sequel to the previous one.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Friday November 20th

Session Considering culture from an economic or symbolic viewpoint: how can it promote the development of territories?

Round Table 2: Culture and architecture in a post-Kyoto 21st Century metropolis

Erik IZRAELEWICZ The second round table is on architecture and culture as part of urban planning in the 21st century. For this round table, I would like to request that our speakers come up to the podium. Michael Koh is from Singapore. He is the CEO of the National Heritage Board. Michael Koh is also an architect. You could call him a ‘super minister’ of culture and heritage. He is here to talk to us about the experiences in Singapore. We also have the architect Thorsen who is replacing the architect Finn Geipel who could not make it. He is the founder of an architectural agency and has written a number of seminal works of architecture, the Library of Alexandria, the Library in Mecca and the new opera house in Oslo too, which is architecturally very interesting. It is a very interesting project to look at how architecture fits into a local context. Then we have Denis Valode. He is also an architect, a very well known architect, who designed Valode & Pistre, which is a significant architecture firm. Then we have Ezra Suleiman. He is the Professor of Political Science at Princeton. He has also taught at Sciences Po in Paris and a number of other universities. He is present in the Netherlands and Italy. He wrote a book called French Schizophrenia. Perhaps he could say a few words about that. We also have Jean-Jacques Annaud. There are two big issues that are of interest to the French today. One is the National Bond issue. The other is the urban renovation of greater Paris. Greater Paris a very interesting topic and the idea of greater Paris was mentioned in one of the previous round tables. Is it purely an infrastructure project? Is it a transport project or should it also be a cultural project? Should it be a project in which culture and architecture are a part of this construction of greater Paris? Of course, we will not just be talking about Paris. It is nice to get a wide range of views. On that note, I would like to turn to Michael Koh. As an extension of the debate that we just heard in the previous round table, the first time I went to Singapore, it was an industrial and an industrious state. Then it turned into a financial hub. Now it appears that your goal is to turn it into a cultural hub too and a worldwide cultural capital.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Michael KOH CEO, National Art Gallery and National Heritage Board of Singapore (Singapore)

Hello everyone, Ministers, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the invitation to attend the Forum d’Avignon. It has certainly been a learning experience. The last few sessions have been of particular relevance. I think the natural conclusion that you have heard from INEUM Consulting is that we are highly pragmatic. It is undeniable and very accurate. Let me just take you back a little bit to understand where we come from. Singapore is a young nation. It only gained independence in 1965. Next year, we are 45 years old. We have been trading throughout our history. Seven hundred years ago, we were a centre of the Maritime Silk Route. In 1819, under British rule, we were also a centre of trade between the east and west. Today, we continue to be a hub of trade and finance. Our heritage is multicultural and multi-religious. Our society consists of Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian, European, all living together. We are also part of a culturally diverse Southeast Asia and have many Southeast Asian communities living with us. Religious tolerance and meritocracy are a way of life and English is a medium of education. As a result of this, a dynamic culture of fusion and hybridism, bridging east and west is emerging. Singapore is a centre of Southeast Asia. As Eric has said, the arts and culture scene is vibrant, active and contributing towards Singapore’s position as a vibrant, global city. Culture is regarded as a building block of national identity and presents a shared platform for societal bonding. This is very important because the building of cultural links between our various societies and culture groups is a crucial issue of making Singaporeans rooted to the country. Buildings for cultural use and programming contribute to the sense of place, distinction and identity. We can play a part when we reach out to the world and connect to the region, not only in cultural diplomacy and intercultural discourse but also by understanding and becoming a facilitator of east-west cultural scholarship and research. If you do not mind, I would like to show a few slides to demonstrate where we come from. The slide shows Singapore in 1965. As a child, this is what I grew up with. I am third generation Singaporean. You can see what it was like. It was a small town. It was an entrepot. It was untidy and dirty. The river was smelly. It smelled of rotten eggs. This was another scene of Singapore. Can I just show you what it is like now? This is Singapore now. I think it is just 44 years after those slides were taken. We helped ourselves through pragmatic policies, through sound economic policies and good governance. We did not ask for much help. We took some loans and repaid the loans. We had committed people. Now the framework is in place. To answer Eric’s question, we have the luxury and yes, it is a luxury, to think about pursuing quality of life issues. When you first think about Singapore, it was first the economic needs of the people and the economic survival of the nation that took first priority. Then came the need for culture, heritage and appreciating that, building a national identity and moving forward to increase the quality of life issues. Today what do we have? We have the Flyer. It is larger than the London Eye. We have the world’s first Night Race. These are the lights of the Formula One night race. We have 24 hour party zones. We allow bar top dancing and we waived the rules to allow topless dancing by a French group called Crazy Horse. It only survived for one year. I guess we are not too much into topless French dancing. With the quality of life, this is the vision of Singapore and it is being built right now. The water body is a reservoir. The high rises are under construction. The green space behind is the future park,

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org which is also being constructed to be open in 2012. Around the bay, there are cultural facilities. The Esplanade by the bay is one of them. The new Art Science Museum is underneath the tall buildings. In true pragmatic manner, the government is not spending a cent building that museum. We sold the site for an integrated result, i.e. a casino/convention centre. Sheldon Adelson of the Sands, Las Vegas is now building the Art Science Museum for us. That is a project by Moshe Safdie. Further inside, you will see a new site to be reserved for our future contemporary art museum. We are 110 square kilometres in size and planning is a very delicate balance between economic needs. We are pragmatic. We have central planning policies and strategic policies but the realisation is that we have to do more. I say this because we take rankings by companies like INEUM, Forbes, WEF, and Monocle very seriously. As we know, global talent can relocate anywhere in the world. Money can relocate anywhere that policy is suitable to grow it. What we need is talent and talent needs something deeper than just a good, safe place to live in. Talent needs a deeper understanding of culture and needs a society that also appreciates its own culture and a city that is alive with culture and heritage. This is why, going into the future, we are planning for more cultural facilities. The National Art Gallery is a commitment to the future. It is currently estimated at about €250 million. It is being planned and designed by a French architectural firm called Studio Milou. When complete, it will be about the size of the Musée d’Orsay. The idea is to be able to be a hub, to bring culture to the people and to encourage a quality of life that will bring Singapore into the next generation and next league of cities.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ May I ask you a question? If I have understood, cultural investment or the cultural approach is a second stage event. First in Singapore, you built more or less as it came without really taking cultural policy into account. Now in the second phase, now that you have met basic economic needs, you can move into a new phase in which you can invest in culture. Where does architecture fit into all of that? That is my question because there are emerging countries that are going down the same path that Singapore adopted 10 to 20 years ago.

Michael KOH We always had some culture policy. It is just that now going forward, I think we are investing much more into culture. In the design of cities, we are also very interested in beautifying the city and creating a city of design excellence. International competitions are held to get the best designs. The National Art Gallery is one such project, whereby an international competition was conducted with an international jury blind judging and a French architect chosen to pursue the project. We have many buildings by great architects, such as Kenzo Tange, I. M. Pei and Moshe Safdie but are these truly great? This is something that we have to ask ourselves. We now believe that it must come from ourselves. It must be authentic. We can find the great architects to create great visions and beautiful buildings. They will elevate the design skills and set the stage for new design standards but we are now realising that we have to come from within. It must be authentic. A new generation of architects is now building and winning world architecture awards for what they are building. For example, we are creating a new standard for high rise housing with gardens in the sky and the greening of high rise housing. We are creating new shopping centre standards too. For example, many local firms are building green shopping centres in the Arab world. Again, these are award

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org winning but they come from the values that have been developed through Singapore as Singaporeans living in the Tropics. We are also pursuing a new Asian tropical house style, which is now widely copied throughout Southeast Asia. It is tropical but it is modern and it is a new interpretation of that style. Architectural excellence is a very important part of positioning the city. In a city where we have lots of new and have turned down a lot of old, we have about 5,700 old buildings conserved that are the size of one and a half new towns for Singapore. They lend identity and we are not ashamed to build a high rise next to it to show the contrast between new and old because that is what Singapore is about.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Thank you. Denis Valode, to what extent can it be said that architecture today plays an important role in urban planning?

Denis VALODE Architect, Valode & Pistre (France)

I think the goal for all of us is to ensure that culture plays an integral role in urban life. I think that architecture has an important role to play in doing so. All morning, I heard all sorts of interesting things that sparked a lot of questions. I have been asking myself a lot of questions. This morning, we talked a lot about audio-visual media. We talked about the Internet. We talked about video games. We talked about DVDs and so on. Then there was a very interesting presentation made, which I think highlighted the high degree of individuality in our society. My question is: What city can we build? What city can we make? If young people spend their whole day sitting in front of a screen, if they end up living in a virtual world, what do we architects do since we build in the real world? I think that those who live virtual lives still have real needs in the real world. They still need the material, physical world. I think that is an opportunity for us to grab. For example, I think that we should make the most of this opportunity to bring people into museums even if Internet users can view museum collections online in a first time. It is a way of hooking them and getting them into museums physically. I think that as architects, we have to think about what it means to live together and have actual physical contact with physical human beings. I am always amazed to see that there is an aquarium in Paris at the Trocadéro that children love. Children love this aquarium because there are big tanks with all sorts of amazing fish. You can see amazing videos of aquatic life on television and the Internet but the reason why children love this is because there are very shallow fish where children can actually touch the fish. They are docile fish that children can touch easily so it is the actual touch and the sensation of touch, which I think is at the very heart of our work.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Perhaps touch screens will tomorrow allow us to have these sensations at home?

Denis VALODE While they can use touch screens that touch fish on the Internet, that is a completely different effect. I think that is where the debate currently stands for us. That is what we have to work off. Architects

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org in our day and age are facing a huge challenge. We all know that buildings will have to change. Building techniques will have to change to take into account sustainability and new environmental technology. Building construction will be radically different than it was in the past. The pre-existing housing stock is much larger in terms of size and number than new buildings. That means that architects have a more important role to play than ever. If you look at different surveys and reports that have been carried out, architecture is constantly portrayed in terms of either historic heritage and buildings or a radical, new, headline or spectacular architecture. Both of those things are interesting and relevant for tourism but we cannot allow cities to become ossified or to turn into open air museums. As we have been saying all day, life continually changes and transforms itself. Regarding architectural heritage and new, spectacular architecture, I do not think we can just do things that are splashy and new. We also have to face new and different challenges from the past. I think that we will have to cast aside current paradigms of functionalism, modernism and post-modernism. We have to leave all that behind us. We have to move towards new ways of building things that are sustainable, buildings that people like. I think that we have to completely change our mindsets. We must have a more interdisciplinary approach. I think the key here really is an interdisciplinary approach and not having an architect impose his view on the world. Architecture will remain an art form and we maintain this idea of creating an art work. Architecture will continue to create symbols. What is a symbol? A symbol is something that can be recognised by a group of human beings. We have to understand that group. We have to understand our fellow humans in order to help recreate the pleasure of living together. I think that in that sense architecture has to undergo a radical transformation.

Eric IZRAELEWICZ This is something that we talked about at lunchtime with Nicolas Seydoux. It is amazing to me that there are more and more screens. People can watch movies whenever they want. You can watch movies on your cell phone or at home on your computer, etc. Despite all of that, cinema attendance figures in France continue to rise. More and more people continue to go to the movies and art exhibits. That may be true elsewhere in the world as well.

Denis Valode The truth is that ultimately we only spend 10% of our day working. There is a lot more time to do other things. Perhaps 10% is a low estimate.

Eric IZRAELEWICZ I will ask Kjetil Thorsen to give his input on this question of architecture in urban projects and integration into cultural contexts and culture in general.

Kjetil Tredal THORSEN Architect, Snøhetta (Norway)

Thank you very much. It is tremendously interesting from an architect’s point to be involved in situations like the new Opera House in Oslo or the Library in Alexandria. It shows that you can develop architectures into urban contextual situations, which really enhance the experiment of urban development.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

I would very much like to differentiate between two issues here. One is the architectural process, which actually generates the design. The architectural process itself is part of the knowledge based industry. That is where research and development is happening. It is involving itself into education and into the academic world. In fact, you have to make a slight distinction between the digital world of creating architecture as an innovative industry and the actual building industry, which then is building the building. In effect, the architectural production towards a building can happen anywhere and therefore is per se not necessarily contextual as a process. We can sit in Oslo and design a building in Saudi Arabia but the architectural product is an analogue product, which means that in its deepest interpretation is always contextual. Architecture does not exist without a context. It can only exist in a particular setting. Again, this is an intolerable increase in complexity as time goes by. Let me focus a little bit on the product because I think the product as such is interesting. Architecture has this capability of standing still. It is actually generating movement by the people perceiving it, which means it is the opposite of the cinema where you sit still and let the movie move. You perceive the film within architecture. That leads me to one of the most interesting things I heard today, which is the development of the individual in society as part of developing architectures. In our office, we call it the singular and the plural, which means the individual is the basis for a larger, collective, creative piece of work. That also leads me back to a comment related to in the process of creating these things, not only interdisciplinary work, we do what we call transpositioning in the process. Transpositioning means that I can be an artist. The artist can be an engineer. The engineer can be a landscape architect or a sociologist but when it comes to building and actually constructing the thing, then you move back to your original position. We call it transpositioning yourself, to break down the fact that specialists only sit around the same table and talk their own specialist language but rather the game of exchanging positions is more interesting. How do you actually generate content driven architecture in a contextual situation? You do it by the similar means that we saw earlier today, where you actually take over the medium. This is what happened with the Internet in 2004. As you move into the interactivity of the users of the Internet, the same thing must happen with architecture. This means public ownership. It means that you move into a situation where the people actually using the building feel they own this building. You cannot derive at good architecture without having an intimacy between the object and the public. That means more than just opening very generous spaces. They have to be not only open but they have to be social. Like in art, they must have a performing aspect to them, which indicates that the sensibility training of the viewers actually moving through the thresholds of an urban situation, understands after the first experience that they are in fact moving from one situation to another. In my view, this type of architecture that we are looking at today is an integrated, interactive, publicly owned, bottom-up architecture. It has to be environmentally conscious but it also has to be extremely generous. It has to allow for the development of a continuation of the individual as well as for society in general. This will lead to new aesthetics but more importantly, by following the environmental aspects that are happening right now, we also have to find new words for the architecture that we are developing. That means, for instance, that in the new aesthetics, form will follow environment. Thank you.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Could you perhaps give an illustration of what you said? You built the Oslo Opera House, the Mecca Library as well as the library in Alexandria. How does this illustrate your point there?

Kjetil Tredal THORSEN Maybe I will start with the Alexandria Library because in itself it is a myth. It is only in the brain of history. Collecting a situation in a country, which has so many illiterate people, is normally viewed as a very critical issue to build a library for a large sum of money. That is exactly why you have to do it because the percentage is so high. What happens then? All of a sudden, you generate a public available library to a public of about 3.5 million in Alexandria who did not have a library before. What happens? You increase their interest in literature. At the same time, the director of the Library in Alexandria introduced one of two Internet archives worldwide, adding one supercomputer after the other. We fought for one and a half years to let the plaza in front of this building be open to the public and not safeguarded by cameras but simply by people walking around and looking after people on the plaza. You open up the architecture. It is the only way of making it democratic. The Opera House in Oslo is based on a different concept where you can actually walk on top of the roof from 36 metres down to the water level. More than 2.5 million people have visited the roof. The opera is full for the second year. These 2.5 million people are not necessarily the traditional opera visitors but they will be in the next generation. Right now, they are skating on the roof, which is much more fun and much more relevant for them but they are definitely at this place. Next time, they will cross the threshold and buy a ticket and listen to an opera, which they never imagined they would ever hear. I think in effect architecture in its physical presence is extremely important for urban development but maybe even more important to me is architecture as part of the knowledge industry. What we are doing right now in Mecca is extreme because it is a library for the Holy Mosque. It is a very difficult thing and we had this discussion on the train. It is wonderful. What happens when you do not follow up the temperatures of a society with the architecture that you are physically generating? What happens then? You fail. Architecture is the best temperature for the development of society because you never get better architecture than the way society operates. Architects cannot do wonders and architecture is not wonderful. It is in many ways pragmatic. It is the stage for what is going to happen at a later time.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Thank you very much. Ezra Suleiman, regarding urban projects, there is the question of integration of universities and academic facilities into cities. That is an element of cities’ attractiveness. I want to ask you about that. Feel free to pick up on any of the points that have already been raised.

Ezra SULEIMAN Philosopher, Professor, Princeton (Iraq - USA)

Thank you. If I understand correctly, you want me to come back to what the Lieutenant Governor said. He put forward a viewpoint that I would not say is unfair but it might seem a bit scandalous to a French audience. I say this because quite clearly culture can never be a profit making activity because there is not the demand there for private business to come in and either build or run museums. The

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org costs involved are prohibitive vis-à-vis the demand. This is why everywhere it is a non-profit business. Money has to be found. I agree when he says that you have to provide a business case. You have to show the revenues. You have to show how you intend to repay the bank loan. That is fair enough but loan refunds will come through donations. I will give you an example. We have been talking about regions or how attractive a region can be. If you look at US universities, they play a key role. The report we heard earlier this afternoon showed that cities and towns with the highest student populations are the most likely to be able to have attractive cultural, tourist activities and attract investment. Let me give you some examples from the US. Virtually all universities have huge auditoria for theatre and orchestral performances. They have the resources to stage these things. There are large museums in all universities. I think without fear of contradiction, I can say that none of those museums ever bought a painting. Where do all the wonderful museums and paintings come from? It is amazing. When you visit these places you see absolute jewels. It comes from donations and even the upkeep of the museum is funded out of the donation. The person who gave their legacy has provided enough for the upkeep. Around universities, you do not just have these cultural poles, which make the environments very attractive. For example, my university was once a very rich wasteland. Over the years, lots of businesses have moved in, including quite a number of French ones. They have put their HQs there. Another example from the Midwest is completely different. There is the University of Michigan. Detroit businessmen prefer not to live in Detroit. They would like to live where there are cultural facilities with plays, poets and lectures. They prefer a one hour commute and live in a nice place. Thirdly, listening to the report was revealing. In today’s US universities, there is a trend to attract culture. They have pulling power with poets and artists. A lot of them are within the university itself. Around that, there is a lot of cultural activity as places become very attractive. Let me come back to the question of funding. I think that a lot has changed. Maybe I am being a bit pessimistic here but especially with respect to France. A lot of money has floated in over the years with the setup of all sorts of institutions that have to be maintained. It has given rise to a lot of artists or creators that are dependent on those institutions. My fear is that going forward, that money is going to dry up. Therefore, changes are going to come in terms of the funding of culture. I do not know what the solution would be but you can already see the problem on the way. It is not enough to say that you just need projects and show the business plan behind them. I think that is a rather simplistic view. Obviously you need that. That is necessary and that is what people do. For example, in the United States, any mayor would do that because culture brings in tourism but I think the problem lies elsewhere. On a slightly different note, let me say that our notion of areas, regions, territories and culture is changing. I was not here this morning. Maybe you touched on that. When you look at the younger generation and the surveys, etc., you will see that their notion of what constitutes a region or a territory is very different from ours. That is to say they do not want to go to the opera or the library. They want the opera or library to come to them. The notion of territory has changed. It has turned into a culture of expression rather than consumption in the traditional sense. For example, today when there is an opera performance at the Met in New York, you can go to cinemas around the country and watch the same show, such as Placido Domingo. It is not a DVD. It is not a recording. It is real time. You are seeing the same thing so that is a huge change and there are many on the way. Maybe the idea of a territory being attractive or a region being attractive because of culture is something that is perhaps already obsolete.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Erik IZRAELEWICZ That is very interesting. Jean-Jacques Annaud, you travel a lot with films. I know you go to see a lot of cities and parts of the world. What is your reaction to this role of architecture in urban projects.

Jean-Jacques ANNAUD Film director (France)

Firstly, let me say that I like architects. I am disappointed that I have not met more because there is a big similarity between their profession and mine. There is a lot of upfront investment. It is often in public. We build things that last for three or four years. We put together a team to complete the project and then we all go our separate ways. There are things that we share there. Architectural creation obviously starts with an abstract idea, then becomes tangible after many meetings with bankers. Again, that is also similar. I am always very excited to meet my architect friends. We had a very exciting discussion on the train yesterday. I have just come back from the Gulf. The Lieutenant Governor was asking the bank manager whether he would lend $50 million without any guarantee of return on investment. I know a place where I can get $150 for culture, knowing there would be no return. States of the Gulf do not know how to make a country with absolutely nothing attractive whereas people build stuff without a context. They do not know for whom and they do not who will visit it. When my neighbour here talks about interactivity with the public, there is none there. I am talking about Doha in Qatar. It is one third of the size of Corsica with 400 years of gas reserves below the ground. Their problem is they do not know what to do with it all so they build a museum. They pay to produce a museum of $200 million but they have nothing to put in it. When you talk about Louisiana, it is true that there is this huge cultural past. You can immerse yourselves in Quebec. It is fabulous. It vibrates with culture. When you build something there, it is in a context. In Qatar, there is not context. It was wasteland before and you make it up as you go along. You build something. You try to find works of art to fill it. Then you try to get people to come and see them. There was a sort of bombshell because of the media and it is why Doha is interesting. It so happened that ten or fifteen years back, BBC closed its Middle East service. Qatar took its journalists and that became Al Jazeera. It is quite amazing. You have a city built around a powerful media, which is the only one telling the truth to the Muslim world. That is 1.5 billion people. To keep the journalists in Doha, they built some very nice buildings for them. They got in the best restaurant owners and caterers. Movie theatres are being built. You can build a cinema. Many of the buildings are being built for nobody but once there are people there, maybe they will go and see the films. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has negotiated the deal with the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. The question is what do they do with their culture. There is this hope, which is not completely vain, that maybe media and culture will actually generate some form of national identity, which is non-existent. As in Singapore, Qatar is a young country of 20 years. They want to be different from Saudi Arabia. They hate each other. In the Emirates, you are almost in fairyland. They do not care about profitability. It is about building a cultural identity and this is what we were talking about just now with the library. I remind you that 20 years ago, there was not a single library in the Arab world apart from Cairo. How do you generate

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org culture and cultural identity? How do you keep people? The problem with Al Jazeera, which is a huge media group, is how to keep their journalists who would rather work for Tunisian TV or Moroccan TV but they earn peanuts but at least there is life. There is a city and there is culture if you are in Rabat or Tunis. Doha is basically an architectural show room. You build a tower. You go to Doha and you will see that there is a former lagoon with 150 miraculous buildings that are absolutely beautiful. When you ask people what is the purpose, they say, ‘We do not know but it looks good.’ It is beautiful but has no context so this is the issue. That is in my mind when I go there and I say, ‘I am an architect. They have asked me to build a skyscraper.’ What is the context? Who is it for? What would I do? I would probably do some sort of showcase that looks good. Now I am not trying to draw any conclusions but I just wanted to say that I slightly disagree with this routine rationale of profitability. This is a completely different paradigm. My point is that when you have money, as was the case in the Netherlands in the 18th century, in France in the Renaissance, usually money goes into art, communication and knowledge because it looks good. It is chic. It is cool and it creates some kind of cultural identity. I certainly wish the Emirates good luck in that respect.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Thank you very much. Does anyone wish to react to the panelists’ statements?

M. Mohammed Aziz BEN ACHOUR, former Minister of Culture (Tunisia) Thank you very much. Firstly, I would like to emphasise that I think that the statements have all been very high level. I would like to thank the Avignon Forum. I would like to react to Mr Annaud’s statement. I think that this gives rise to interesting thoughts on what is going on in the Arab world and what is going on in the Gulf. That is very interesting to think about. It is true that in Doha you have that aspect of people wanting to create something out of nothing. I do not think it is surrealist. There is something very deliberate about it. It is not random. It is powered by iron will. Qatar is a very wealthy country but it is also a country that is spending a lot of money on culture. I visited the museum that was referred to in Doha and it is not empty. The museum is indeed filled with collections. Of course, those collections were also bought in an act of cultural sponsorship and funding. As the Executive Director of the Association of Arab Countries for Education and Science, I think it should be noted that Arab countries spent a lot of money on education and culture, not just in Arab countries but in Europe too. We also fund a lot of programmes in Europe. For example, there are many Saudi princes and other monarchs from other countries who fund a lot of great projects, such as the Louvre itself. I think it is very interesting because these people could have just sat back and lived off all of the oil revenue but they decided to do something else with that money. I have the utmost respect for Jean-Jacques Annaud, given his creative legacy and his pioneering work in cinema and culture as a whole. With all due respect to Mr Annaud, you cannot say that there was no library outside of Cairo because for centuries, the Arab world was at the leading edge of scholarship learning and culture. Clearly, things have changed but you cannot say that the only library in the Arab world was in Cairo. There were libraries everywhere and there are libraries everywhere, from the desert to the Arabian Peninsula to Mauritania.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

With regards to modernity, the National Library of Tunisia is a model in that regard. I was Minister of Culture in Tunisia and the National Library of Tunisia is something that, as my French and European friends know, is up to the highest and most modern standards. Exemplary work has been carried out on books and libraries across the Arab world but I do not wish to dwell on that and I would like to thank you again for your statement.

Jean-Jacques ANNAUD As you may know, my next movie is devoted to the Arab world and to the culture of the Arab world. It is something that I dedicate with great friendship. When I referred to a lack of libraries, I was referring strictly to the Arab world, as in the Arabian Peninsula. Of course, I am familiar with many of the great libraries elsewhere, for example, in the Mediterranean, Damascus and Iraq. I was referring strictly to the Arabian Peninsula and not the rest of the Arab world. I am deeply aware of the fact that oil revenue has been spent on the arts, culture and cinema. That is something I acknowledge and find very significant. What I find interesting in all this is the specific architectural context. In Tunis, Tripoli and Tangier, you have an architectural unity that you do not have in countries in the Gulf, where cities spring up out of nowhere like mushrooms. These are countries that currently strike me as artificial, strictly from an architectural standpoint.

From the floor Good afternoon. After having worked in France and having participated in the construction of a contemporary arts centre in France, I currently work in Brazil. Brazil is an emerging country. It is no longer an emerging country. It is an emerged country. Brazil has a clear view of urban policy and urban planning. For example, you have a former mayor of Sao Paulo, which is a megalopolis. This former mayor of Sao Paulo carries out programmes directly in the favelas or urban ghettos. In Brazil, the question is how do you build a middle class? Brazil is trying to use culture to foster the emergence of a middle class. Instead of using headline or spectacular architecture, they work on communities. Of course, Brazil has a lot of great architecture but Brazil’s answer is to focus on places where you have a strong link between theatre by Brazilian or foreign troops and nurseries or day care centres. There is a link between the two and they found that link in the favelas or urban ghettos. They focused on these two elements of community in places where they did not have them. They brought theatre and even brought art exhibits into neighbourhoods that did not have any of them. There is work done on culture from the very beginning with culture as a tool for the favelas.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Perhaps as a way of sparking a reaction and concluding, I would like to ask all of you the following question. Could each of you give us an example of what you see as a successful architectural project, in that it interacts with its urban context?

Ezra SULEIMAN To hark back to what was said earlier regarding the context, the problem is that if you look at all of these buildings and architectural and cultural constructions, the architecture is enough in itself. Look at Bilbao. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was almost dropped into the middle of a city that was fairly grim and drab.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

While the collections at the Guggenheim in Bilbao are great, it is nothing compared to the Louvre or the Prado but the architecture itself is incredible. It has already become historic and the architecture itself without the context has done immense things for the city of Bilbao. If you look at Abu Dhabi or Doha, perhaps that is what they are aiming at. Maybe they hope to get a similar type of reaction with this spectacular architecture.

Denis VALODE It is very difficult to point out a single building that is well integrated into its context but if I had to name one building that I did, it would be the Bercy Village project in Paris. I think that is an interesting project because there was a heritage component to that project. When you design buildings and when you work with pre-existing architecture, you are often forced to do something that you would not have done otherwise. When we built the Bercy Village, all the specialists told us that it would not work as a shopping mall. It is essentially an open air shopping mall in Paris. We were working with an ensemble of railway buildings and railway infrastructure and we built a shopping mall and it is one of the most successful shopping malls in Paris. It is very much the opposite of what you would expect from a shopping mall. I think this proves a certain number of things. Firstly, you can take advantage of a unique context. You can have modern buildings that are within a set of pre-existing, older buildings. Ultimately, it is easier to build on something that has a history and is pre-existing. It is something that brings people together. Context, transformation and circumstance are all important. All three of those things are important for the city of tomorrow, rather than choosing one single, spectacular building, such as an amazing skyscraper, as a source for the city of tomorrow.

Michael KOH Firstly, I think I fully agree with the point that Jean-Jacques was bringing inmaking. I do not think you can fly in architecture to a city and create it out of a desert and say, ‘This is a city.’ To me, Doha is full of glass boxes. It is a Western, temperate style architecture put in a desert situation. There is no response to the climate. There is no response to the environment. You cannot just buy French culture and put the Louvre or the Centre Pompidou in this region and say, ‘Here, this is it. You have French culture. I have got you the best with 300,000 people. Please see the price tag. I think it was US$20 million or more just for the name.’ You cannot do it without education or without supporting the ecosystem. It is just not sustainable so I support Jean-Jacques’ views about what is happening in the Gulf States. I just wonder how it will turn out. This is where it makes me think. This morning, the Harvard law professor was talking about ‘copyleft instead of copyright’. The world wants popular culture. To most people, that is the level of understanding. As facilitators, we need to popularise culture for the masses and for the people. This leads me to why I think the Federation Square building in Melbourne is one of my favourite buildings in the world. It is built above the rail tracks so it hid all the ugly rail tracks from the city. It united two parts of the city that were divided by the rail tracks. It created a public square for the city. Now, for all events, the people of Melbourne go to this public square and celebrate. I believe there are three small museums in that complex. They are not big museums but there are three small, very Australian based museums, which are really appealing to the people. The condition of the project, the urban edges, and the contextual response responded to the city and the railway

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org station. The programming is wonderfully appealing to the people of Melbourne and to tourists. It has become the icon of Melbourne. The materials used were all from local sources, from the cutting to the flooring. There is the relationship of the people to the building. It is that warm familiarity as you walk into the building that reflects the new Melbourne and the new Australia to the people. That is my favourite building.

Kjetil Tredal THORSEN The context of urbanism is a very complex question because it does not mean the same thing in different parts of the world. To mention two, let us say you would make a division between a very open ended, very less than Nordic city like Helsinki with the Kiasma buildings sitting in a very open situation. Everyone knows that the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is the length of the shadow. In effect, you are moving towards a specificity, which is much more than just generating the best or the second best or the third best. You are responding to completely different situations like the expansion of the new historical museum in Portugal, which is in a completely dense urban hills situation on four meter wide streets. It is not possible to say if one is better than the other. It is about the context it is located in and how you have responded to that particular situation. There are many good examples. Amongst the best architecture in the world at the moment are the pyramids in Cairo. They are getting so close to the urban environments; sorry, that is a joke.

Jean-Jacques ANNAUD From my vast experience, my favourite city this year is again in the Arab world or should I say in the Maghreb. I was fascinated with the restoration of Ghadames in Libya. It is a city in the Sahara. I will switch to French. I should be speaking French here. I loved Ghadames. It is right in the heart of Libya in the middle of the desert. It has been totally refurbished wonderfully. It has earth architecture with palaces that have been restored very tastefully on the inside. The houses are cool because they are made of earth. They have got the palm trees where they use the old irrigation system. There is a new city next door, which is being built up around excellent hotels that are desert style. I thought the city was wonderful to be in with all its little, narrow streets. It is wonderfully beautiful. When we talk about context, this is a town that is being made with the earth it is built on. It is perfectly integrated into its landscape and it is a source of happiness. It is a town that is a bit dead at the moment. For particular reasons, Libya does not want to open up to the outside world too much. It is interesting that this decision has been taken by the people there who are saying that they want to go back to their identity roots. I felt that there is a great power in this city because it is being built by the people. In their traditions, it brings people together. It is very modern because everyone has the Internet but that is not the point. This city is a successful return to the past, along with the advantages of the future.

Erik IZRAELEWICZ Thank you all very much. It is a shame nobody mentioned Avignon as their favourite city. Nicolas, I hand over to you to conclude.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Nicolas SEYDOUX I have no intention whatsoever of trying to summarise today’s discussions and certainly not the statements by the politicians, the philosophers and the economists. However, in this afternoon’s discussions, good things were said about INEUM study. What has been said afterwards shows a very wide range of views and the usefulness of taking this further so that we define more parameters for attractiveness. This is probably something we should ask OECD or UNESCO to do so that this notion of attractiveness can grow. Let me tell the panel members, in answer to the gentleman here, that France is proud and pleased to be able to think back to Charles V and Francis I. When the Loire Chateaux were put up and later when Versailles was built, I am not sure that people felt that this was a traditional dwelling. I think it is good that people who have money call in the best architects available in the world and want the most beautiful collections possible. When people in Avignon saw these walls built, what did they think when they saw this incredible castle being put up? They said, ‘We do not want this here. This is not our traditional type of dwelling.’ Perhaps in the West, we should be humble enough when we see that there are other countries which have the wherewithal and the cash and decide to do more and better than us to show that we are going to have to do more and better. We may or may not have made mistakes but if we are lucky enough to travel to the Gulf to see the treasures of Islamic art or Christian art, then maybe we will have cultural exchange. The main point of this forum is more exchange and more is probably better.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Saturday November 21st

Session

Towards tax policies to promote the arts and culture

Christine LAGARDE Minister of Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment (France) (video)

There are growing prices and values for works that by their very nature are unique. There is only one Mona Lisa and only one Palais des Papes. The scarcity factor means it is a single, unique work of art and it is very difficult to set a price. It usually results from supply and demand on the market. The art market is evidently active and we are delighted that is the case. That’s why the economist David Ricardo said that it is impossible to value the art market.

Culture has also always played a special role in the global economy, sometimes with terrible effects. Think about the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the move of their works of art in Venice. It's sometimes for the better as proved by the Ernst & Young study.

When I look at modern tax system, I think the Ernst & Young report shows quite clearly that all countries have a tax incentive scheme, aimed at supporting and fostering artistic creation and encouraging the chance of works and the implementation of support policies.

When I look at our tax system, I see that we have turned to private sponsorship and corporate sponsorship. We have done well in terms of organising foundations. I am proud that we have brought in what we call our donation funds. It is very similar to an American or English endowment fund. The Louvre has been able to leverage this recently. It constitutes its own fund. There are other schemes like Sofica, which provides efficient support to the film industry. There is another area relating to art and culture, e.g. tax credits or tax deductions when support is given to historical monuments.

Art comes in many shapes and sizes. I talked about a number of tax schemes that support creation, transfer and upkeep of works of art. There are many other techniques that are involved. There are new technologies, digital technologies and the knowledge economy. All of these technologies can be applied to various forms of artistic expression and this is good.

When I think of art and the economy, I also think of the impact that the recession has had and will have on art and our relationship with it. The first example I would quote is the wide range of

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org schemes that are currently underway as part of the recovery plan. Very few, major French historical sites or monuments that are part of our heritage, whether it be paintings or sculpture that have not benefited from the recovery plan.

Over 250 sites in France currently benefit from the 2009-2010 recovery plan that we implemented in order to support growth and give a new boost to our economic activities. This is one initial impact of the recession we are going through and our economic policy in response to that in order to support artistic activity in our country.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

Introduction of the Ernst & Young study for the Forum d’Avignon: “The way to cultural diversity in Tax Policies”

Régis HOURIEZ Partner Attorney, Ernst & Young (France)

Thank you. Chairman, it is not an easy subject. Tax is often painful for all of us. It hurts our wallets. The conclusion one can draw from the study is that in the cultural sector, tax is good. All the tax schemes implemented around the world to support culture are good for culture, culture operators and tax payers. Why was there a tax study on culture? I think the Minister in her introduction rightly reminded us that culture is a combination of individual actions, artists, sponsors and a collective context with governments determined to implement policies. That is the situation. If we look at taxes around the world, there are always two parts to a tax policy. Firstly, there are compulsory levies, collecting taxes for the state. There are also tax incentives, tax breaks, exceptions and exemptions, the idea being to provide incentives so that states can channel operators’ activities. Throughout culture, we can see that tax lies at the crossroads of these different forms of cultural funding. Firstly, we have all the general taxes that fund the state coffers, including income tax and corporate tax. Some goes into culture, for example, the funding of the Culture and Communication Ministry. That is not what we have focused on. We have tried to see how states use tax schemes in a more specific way to help a culture. We are talking about specific tax schemes over and above the general tax system to channel and foster certain areas. The second important factor with tax is how it fosters and develops private initiatives in culture. By definition, this is the second basic funding source for culture. Private funding comes either from corporations or individuals. I think Minister Lagarde stressed the importance of sponsorship, which is historically a very important factor. Looking back, we found that the first sponsor was a friend of Emperor Augustus. His name was Micenas (“mécène”) and he financed Virgil or Properce. Obviously, we did not find Micenas’ tax returns in our studies so we do not know if he had any tax breaks but private initiative is a very long tradition in the funding of culture. Tax schemes can be key drivers. Along with the forum board we decided that it really was worth reviewing tax schemes to support culture around the world. We had two purposes. Firstly, we tried to identify best practices in today’s world, one of the innovative tax schemes or the differences between emerging economies and developed economies. We wanted to provide input for the forum but also to table proposals. We will see that at the end of the presentation, there is a possibility for tabling proposals for reforming the tax system as it relates to culture. Tax policies are used everywhere around the world to support culture. A wide range of measures have been identified in the course of this study. It is a wide range of 14 countries and three continents. Some countries are missing, of course, but we felt that the sample was very representative. We had to cut it off somewhere.

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org

You have all the tax incentives in each country. You have what we call cultural taxes, which are taxes that are directly levied by the state from a cultural event or taxes whose revenue is used to fund specific cultural activities. Incentives mean anything that is an exception from the norm with a specific purpose. The world champions are the French because they have about 50 separate tax incentives and a number of cultural taxes. They have a very wide range of 13. The use of cultural taxes rather than incentives is not something that you find everywhere around the world. There are only nine of 14 countries that use them. Often this is to a very limited extent – maybe one, two or three schemes. One leitmotive is, for example, a TV license, which is used in five countries. The main focus of governments is to leverage this funding via incentives, focusing on the private sector with cultural operators such as corporations, artists or the whole non-profit sector. In total, there are over 290 identified schemes or measures, which is huge. There is a lot of substance here, which is often very complex. I would say that the main advantage of this study can be seen in the summary on the handout. We also found that strangely, there is a second group of countries that are rather similar in terms of density of schemes. These are the emerging countries. In China, there are over 23 identified schemes. When we talk about tax, the economic and legislative background is very different because you have countries where there are highly sophisticated schemes emerging. Emerging economies are obviously slightly simpler. There is a third category with about 10 or 11 identified schemes. The important thing is to see that all countries use tax policies extensively, and the report gives you a fairly representative sample. The second lesson we have learned from this is that schemes can be national but very often local. When it comes to culture, local measures are very important because there can be cultural specificities in particular areas, such as Avignon. Tax policies show that you can have an effect not just at a national level, but local level with tax schemes that related specifically to the local stakeholders, e.g. for monuments. They may be more effective because they are more deeply rooted in the local economy and its stakeholders. We have an example from the United States but it is not the only country where local tax policies can be found. We also have Canada and Germany and there are more centralised states such as France because there are both national and local taxes. The American example is quite revealing. If you look at New York state, there are more tax schemes to support culture than a federal one. We had the Lieutenant General from Louisiana yesterday and they have probably used some tax schemes. Obviously, we did not review all US states but the breakdown is fairly similar. There is a factor of additional complexity in tax schemes, but I think it is a great strength of these policies that they can operate either at national or local levels. As I say, it adds to complexity as we saw recently in France with the reform of business taxes. The reform gave local town halls the responsibility of supporting local culture, and will complicate matters for the municipalities. We have to touch on some technical aspects. The study shows you the kinds of tax incentives used. Obviously, total tax exemption is the simplest. It is easy to implement but obviously the most expensive to the state too. You can see that about 40% of the identified schemes are exemptions. This can be explained partly by the fact that main beneficiaries of these measures are non-profit organisations. If you look at what we called cultural operators in our study, you will find three different kinds: private corporations, individual artists and people from the entertainment industry

Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org and the third major group is cultural, non-profit organisations. The main focus of tax policies in all countries’ studies is tax exemptions with respect to these. Then we have tax credits. We will talk about the details of that a bit more in the round table. Tax credits are interesting as a system because they represent a very focused form of incentive. Tax payers receive a tax credit, capped up to a point. Overall, they are taxed the same but the amount they actually pay is less. It fosters development and it is a useful tool because it is based on operators’ spending of an investment. Such investments often generate jobs and business so that states have a return on their investment, if that is the right term, it can be quite substantial. A third category would be tax deductions. Taxpayers can write off certain expenditures against their tax bill. For example, in sponsorship, this is what happens. Seven or eight countries do exactly the same sort of thing whereby individuals and legal entities can support culture often via very sophisticated schemes. These are very strong incentives because there are tax deductions that can in some countries represent up to 60% or even 90% of the cultural product funds. There are 322 techniques and 290 schemes, having slightly different effects in some cases. We also found more original techniques, for example, tax exemption zones, which can attract operators to set up regional or cultural hubs. his point needs to be qualified because many national policies are broad spectrum, covering all sectors. We have also cast our net wide to include plastic arts, TV, performing arts, historical heritage. We have fairly broad based systems, covering all cultural sectors but there is some favoritism, with one system wnning over another. This probably reflects lobbying, vested interests or cultural interests. Music and film have always been very proactive in supporting the emergence of tax schemes to help investment. There is one common thread that is interesting, which is tax policies to support historical heritage. There is a very wide range of forums in all countries and it is very practical because it means you can pay for the upkeep of major historical buildings by individuals when they own them. The expenditure is enormous so tax breaks are vital, but there are also tax policies which are not just private sector focused, but allow for the transfer of cultural goods to the state. There is a scheme that allows taxpayers to settle their tax debt by transfering works of art. This means that to pay debt duties, you may not need to sell heritage works. Of course it also boosts public elections to a large extent. Tax policy interacts with culture in a very wide range of ways. This is the dark side of tax policy. There is a huge number of taxes brought in by various countries. With taxes, you can take a levy from any human action, including cultural activities. If you want an incentive, it means that you can act right across the cultural value chain . We are talking about content, distribution, consumption and transmission of cultural goods. At each step, tax policies allow for either incentives or measures, which focus on either a general area or specific operators. You can have measures that cover the full range. It is basically a toolbox, a very well stocked toolbox. It is up to the lawmakers and the taxpayers to use it as effectively as possible. The advantage is that with taxes, you can reach all stakeholders, including corporations, individuals and non-profit organisations, including those who invest in culture. The study shows that tax policies can be very innovative. There are some things that are standard but others that are specific. Local cultural specificities are taken onboard. As we said yesterday, cultural consumption is growing and tax systems remain national while their growth is international.

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What do lawmakers need to address? How far can tax pressure be increased because you can go to overkill? We know there is the US system where deductions and write-offs for donations raise about $350 billion every year to support cultural activities. In his health reform plan, President Obama is intending to increase income tax, but reduce the tax schemes for donations. Studies have shown that even if there is a minor variation, if you slightly reduce the tax variations on donations, donations could fall drastically. Another result is with respect to measuring impact and efficiency in tax and economic terms. On a day to day basis at a national and local level, out of the 14 countries, we found that data is often confidential and held at government level or fragmentary. Today one of the big problems with tax incentives for culture is carbon taxes and recovery plans. That is the global economy. You have bailouts for troubled industries , such as the finance or auto industry. This is a big challenge for culture. As Minister Lagarde said, France still considers its culture a priority and the recovery plan includes some tax measures. I think this is one of the things that we can talk about in greater detail when we come to the round tables. Do not hesitate to raise these issues. How can we ensure that the tax policies are just as quick as possible to the changes due to the recession? To conclude before opening the floor to questions or comments, can we propose tax reforms today for cultural policy? I think the answer to that is yes for a number of reasons. For example, let us look at the European Union. There are 27 member states and a single currency in many of those countries. Nevertheless, the EU still has 27 different tax systems, especially with regards to culture. There is a lack of harmonisation, which I think hurts the dissemination of culture and distorts competition. For example, look at sales tax and cultural goods. Within the European Union, cultural goods have reduced sales rates, but sales tax rate reduction differs from country to country. Taxation on cultural goods as a whole is different from country to country too. I think in that particular field, the EU would do well to test further harmonisation as a way of reaching standardised or harmonised cultural policies. There are a number of examples of that such as payment of artists. If you look at royalties for an author, when a French company pays out loyalties on the rights to a work by a German artist, there is a withholding tax in France on those royalties. The German artist also pays a tax on the royalties that remain and have been sent in from France. The artist is submitted to a double taxation. It is almost a zero sum game within the European Union. Of course, this tax policy does create a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. I think that we would do well to streamline the whole system and do away with withholding tax on royalties and on other cultural payments in the European Union. I think our Culture Minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, has already raised the issue with our Economy Minister, Christine Lagarde on the importance of reaching European harmonisation on cultural taxes. A further area for reform is the digital economy and digital technologies. We have a round table on that subject but we often become aware that tax policy makers are very passive. They tend to cut and paste traditional incentive measures used in other sectors of the economy. They reuse pre-existing solutions for the digital economy but that does not work because the digital economy and digital technologies are different. I think there is a whole set of solutions that remains to be invented for that. A third area for reform that we need to think about further is the fact that cultural tax incentives are often linked to non-profit status. You often have to be non-profit to qualify for them but the definition of non-profit is different from country to country. If you look at culture and you want to optimise funding for the arts and culture, and if governments apply the non-profit requirements in a

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org very strict way, the process could be very damaging for culture. For example, if governments have strict measures on what non-profits can do to earn money and raise funds, that can inhibit their programmes. Having certain types of tax incentives only go to non-profits can act as a disincentive for some for-profit companies in investing and donating in the cultural sector. There are a lot of different measures that differ from country to country, focusing on certain types of taxes or certain types of cultural sectors. I think that measures that are effective in one area could be expanded to others. That is our study in a nutshell, which shows the wide range of tax policies used. I think that we have an extensive toolbox here. Clearly, tax policy can be used to foster culture. I think that tax policy will continue to evolve along with our evolving economy.

Nicolas SEYDOUX Thank you very much for the presentation. I think that was very clear. Those of you who are very interested in the topic, namely almost everyone in this room I think, can look at the complete study to get more information. Alessandra Galloni will be chairing our first round table this morning. She is Italian. She is the Southern Europe Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. Alessandra Galloni, I will give you the floor and allow you to introduce the members of your round table. We will try to set this up in a way that these important topics, should not lead to too much confrontation, so that we can keep the round table short and leave time for audience questions and comments.

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Round table 1: Tax policies in the cultural sectors: priority to the economy or to the Culture?

Alessandra GALLONI Moderator Bureau Chief, Southern Europe, The Wall Street Journal (Italia)

If you look at television, radio or archaeological sites, only South Korea and Italy have less cultural taxes but they do have a few, three I think. If you look at the United States, they do not levy cultural taxes. They only have tax incentives. For the purposes of our debate here, I would ask: What is the best strategy? Should we have a centrally directed strategy like in France or is it better to have a more free market system like in the United States. Above all, what is the right strategy in the current context at this time, given the recession and economic crisis? Look at budgetary constraints in countries such as the United States facing high debt levels. We have a number of interesting experts here today, whom I hope will have very different points of view. We have Jake Eberts, the producer. We also have an entrepreneur, Alexandre Allard. We also have a politician, Philippe Monfils. Before giving them the floor, I have a question for you, Régis. You have carried out a lot of studies on this topic. What do you think are the positive and negative aspects of these two systems? In a nutshell, it is the centralised government system versus the free market system.

Régis HOURIEZ I will try to keep this brief. In the centrally managed system or government system, if you look at cultural taxes or levies, these are often quite useful because they can fund targeted policy action in the cultural field, which would not exist otherwise. One famous example in France is the preventative archaeological tax, which raises €60 million a year. This is a levy on all construction sites over a certain size. Since we have imposed that tax levy, archaeological discoveries have increased dramatically in France. Often these cultural levies or taxes are very useful. Often they are motivated by budgetary reasons. If you have too many of them, I think there is a saturation point for them. If you look at budgetary constraints and tax constraints, it is difficult. There is not much leeway for imposing new cultural levies and the amounts are often quite low. If you look at the other system, the tax incentive system, we have been talking about tax credits. This is often used in both centralised systems and in decentralised countries and federal countries such as the United States and Canada. Tax incentives are also very good for driving cultural policy. They can encourage the production of art works as well as generating employment.

Alessandra GALLONI Mr Eberts, what has been your experience in all of this?

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Jake EBERTS Producer (Canada)

Firstly, I would like to thank Nicolas Seydoux for inviting me to the Forum and for the high quality of debates that we have had. As a producer, this is a very unique experience. Over the past 30 years, we have made about 50 movies in about 30 different countries. I think it is 32 countries exactly. Most of the time, in most of those countries, at least in two thirds of them, there were tax incentives, subsidies or some form of sponsorship. This plays a very important role in our work, even in countries such as Thailand where we made a movie with Jean-Jacques Annaud who is here with us today. This is also true in South Africa, India, Rwanda, Iceland and almost everywhere in the world. We were always able to get some sort of subsidy or tax incentive. For example, look at the United States. Over the past ten years in states such as New Mexico, Louisiana, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, you can get up to 30% of your spending refunded in cash. Of course, this plays a huge role in selecting a location for filming. Yesterday, Mitchell Landrieu mentioned incentives for the film industry in Louisiana. Before introducing their tax incentive system, Louisiana had an annual turnover of $10 million, whereas last year, largely because of these incentives, revenues in the film industry for Louisiana exceeded $800 million. If you look at New Mexico, it recently set up a studio for animated films. The reason why that worked and the reason why studios have gone there is because there is a 30-35% tax incentive. It is the same in New York. In Manhattan, you have 35% rate. The rate actually differs between cities in New York state so there is competition between cities. These measures play a decisive role in helping film producers to decide where to make movies.

Philippe MONFILS Jake, yesterday you mentioned a film for Camfed, which is not really a big budget movie. It is an arts movie where you filmed in South Africa and the post-production was in Quebec. You were able to qualify some Quebec tax incentives, which was really decisive. You went to Quebec for post-production because of these tax incentives.

Jake EBERTS This was a small movie, made for $300, 000. It was a film that was made for a charitable foundation called Camfed. It was filmed in Africa but the editing, post production and sound mixing was all done in Montreal. The production was able to get 20-22% of its costs refunded in Quebec. Given the fact that it was a small budget movie for $300,000 made for a foundation, this was very significant. Incidentally, this film has resulted in over $2.0 million in sponsor contributions to Camfed. Even for small projects, and there are lots of these small budget movies, tax incentives can play a very significant role.

Alessandra GALLONI M. Monfils, you seem to be in disagreement with something that Mr Eberts has said?

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Philippe MONFILS Senator, Minister of State (Belgium)

I do not agree with everything that has been said. Earlier, we were talking about the free market system versus the central government system. I do not necessarily agree with that way of viewing all this. When I was Culture Minister, I think that the subsidy system was not necessarily an open and impartial system with transparent criteria. I think that granting subsidies is often partial and can be unfair. In fact, it can be more unfair than decisions made by private companies on funding or donating to given projects. I also have a few words on tax systems. I am not a big fan of cultural taxes. That is because budgets are universal, at least in our country. You have also two possibilities, the TV license and the national lottery. You have a number of local issues to take into account. For example, in Belgium, you have the federal government and the regional government who are practically on even footing. Regional governments can do what they want with their cultural budget, their health budget and other budgets. That’s the case for the TV license. If you look at other sources of financing, for example, the lottery income, that is only spent by the regional governments. If you have a universal tax, which is then managed locally, this raises a number of problems. We thus have no cultural taxes, except a special additional tax which is applied to certain devices for the private copy. And it was difficult for the tax to be accepted by certain Ministers. Of course, I do not want to scoff at subsidies, but in the current system, they are what they are and not decreasing.

Alessandra GALLONI The economy being what it is, subsidies are unlikely to increase right now so you are saying you are not in favour of cultural taxes but it seems that there is no money left. How do we find money?

Philippe MONFILS If you look at the system in Belgium, you could say that Belgium has very high tax rates so we work on a number of issues. We have a number of tax incentives to attract investments. This has been successful, so we are working on tax deductions and tax credits in the movie industry. That is very significant as are tax credits. This is something we are looking at but which has not been done yet. We are also looking at tax incentives for individuals.

Alessandra GALLONI Perhaps the state is doing too much work on all of this, M. Allard?

Alexandre ALLARD Chairman, Groupe Allard (France)

The producer spoke earlier and we heard from a politician. Now I will speak as an entrepreneur. I think our main concern today if you look at things in a level-headed way is that there is a budget crunch. Governments do not have money and governments are in debt. Even though culture really should be a priority, we know that it will most likely not be a budgetary priority. What we need right now is something new – a new model. You cannot say that you are going to take money from here

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org or there to channel it into museums. I am from France and France is a country that considers culture to be very important. France is also a country in which culture is very much managed by the government. This is totally the opposite of the United States, where culture is largely funded by the private sector. We need a new model. We cannot have everything funded purely by the government. We also cannot have everything funded by sponsorship organisations or fundraising organisations or non-profits because as soon as they run into financing problems, everything will come crashing down. We have to invent a new model, which is what I call a ‘for-profit model’. I think this is something you touched on at the end of your remarks – culture for profit. We must ensure that culture makes money to ensure its own sustainability and ensure that cultural outfits have a business plan and that they develop contingency plans if subsidies or fundraising fall through. The problem is that this idea of a for-profit culture is a new idea that is alien to current mindsets. Right now, this idea of being for-profit is totally alien to the cultural sector. If you have a cultural project and it does not make money, it does not matter because you can always qualify for a new subsidy. There are lots of ideas for ensuring that culture does earn money. I think that is the model we should move to. Culture is something that is attractive. Culture needs to become something, which is at the heart of society. As we have seen in the current economic crisis, there is a return to roots and a return to real values. I think that culture is one of those values and culture is something in which you can get a good return on investment so I think a for-profit model is the right one.

Philippe MONFILS Yes, but I’m not sure to find a private investor to fund an opera company, as the Royal Opera of Wallonie in Brussels of which I am the president, or the National Theater of the French community in Belgium . These large, prestigious organisations will always depend on public funding. But, for other activities, we want to private funding to be possible. If we look at recent events in Belgium, income generated by the tax incentives of cultural activities makes up for lost tax income. If you can generate employment through cultural tax credits, it is a return on investment. It is a social return on investment because you are creating jobs. There are lots of things that can be done along these lines. For example, look at the reduce VAT for cultural organisations.

Alessandra GALLONI Mr Eberts, is it a good idea to fund films that do not really deserve it and should not be made?

Jake EBERTS No, absolutely not. You should not make movies because you can fund them. You should make movies because they are good movies and because people want to go and see them. Of course, you can choose the location where you make the movie because of tax incentives. For example, we have a project with Robert Redford which we can make in Maine, Connecticut, North Carolina or Georgia. We could choose among any of these states, or all of them. This is a movie about two men hiking along the Appalachian Trail, which crosses all those states. Connecticut offers a 32% subsidy. The film is financially feasible but without a good script and without great actors, there is no point in making the movie regardless of the financial incentives.

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Alessandra GALLONI Régis, are there countries in which tax incentives are the main focus of a tax system, even at the national system? I think there was a slide on national tax incentives versus local tax incentives.

Régis HOURIEZ I think there is a constant here in terms of tax incentives to foster cultural development. This is something that Mr Monfils mentioned. If you look at impact studies in some countries, including the United States, tax incentives are a very important measure for guiding the action of cultural operators. Yesterday I was talking to someone from the UK who said that the tax credit system for film in the UK was completely ill-founded. People were borrowing money just to qualify for a tax credit so it can be distorted. If you look at the United States, in order to be certain that you get a tax credit, you must have begun the production process. Sometimes it takes a year to actually get the tax credit or sometimes you get the tax credit after the movie is already done. You have to prove that the film works to qualify for the funding. There is some supervision that is carried out. You check to ensure that the given product – your movie - will actually create jobs, will cause people to move to a given place and that is what allows people to get those tax credits. Then again, you also have systems where you can qualify for tax credits when the film has been made elsewhere, for example, in a different country. I think there is the social aspect of all this. This is a good example of the investment of private funds but you can also use these funds to make movies that make a profit.

Jake EBERTS I am talking about Jeff Skoll’s company. He is the co-founder of eBay. Five or six years ago, Jeff decided to put millions of dollars into producing commercial films with a social purpose. He has produced 20-22 films, such as An Inconvenient Truth, Charlie Wilson’s War, Good Night and Good Luck and lots of other very successful films. He also has a foundation, which is not to be confused with his film production company. The Skoll Foundation also makes grants for smaller film projects.

Alexandre ALLARD I want to come back to an underlying point in the system. There is no public money available so you must make money out of what you are doing. This is a revolution. A few days ago in France, 104 was hitting the headlines where people were talking about going on hunger strike because they were not getting their subsidies. It is amazing. People say that they only have 15 million to spend whereas there is not going to be a return on that investment anyway. That being so, the question is: What measures are possible? What should governments be doing? Tax means money so what do governments do with money? For me, states should be seeing that there are entrepreneurs investing in culture, film, architecture and magazines. There is a strong cultural purpose to this output. You could put it on a scale. Reality shows would be very low and The Kite Runner would be top of the scale. Both are cultural events or products but the cultural benefit for society is not the same. This is where the state has to say where the line is drawn and who should get the tax break and who should not. A real estate developer building concrete blocks is not contributing to the beauty of the town, whereas the biggest canvas in the world is the street. If you want beautiful things, then you have to call in the best architects, but that is more expensive so maybe that

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org deserves a tax incentive. The question for states and governments is where to set the pointer on the scale and whether it should be tax breaks or tax credits. That is one thing but then the real role of governments is to train and prepare the consumers of museums, music and films and the people who read the magazines that we co-finance, and to build a core of people who can understand added value cultural products. It is fine to put money into museums but the problem occurs if it is only tourists that go. It is fine to organise things like Avignon and wonderful cultural events but the most important thing is that our children understand culture. How many 15 year olds know about Andy Warhol? That is not so much talking about tax incentives as education and training, rather than having tax incentives.

From the floor Starting with 104, you did not know that one of the first funds set up by a number of private groups went into that. Newspapers mentioned 100 million for the building of 104, but there is the problem of who gets what, whether it is the artists or the upkeep of the building. This is a scale that we can debate. You talked about Endemol as an interesting cultural production. But I do not think that he is very well informed.

Alessandra GALLONI I guess you want to answer that.

Alexandre ALLARD This just proves that the issues I am flagging are quite controversial. I know what I am talking about. We are talking about the 104. I knew this would trigger some reactions. I will probably get into trouble for it but for me, 104 is an excellent example of non-profit culture. We could do the same thing making a profit and it would not have to be subsidised. It is just a different mindset and different approach. Unfortunately, this is how we are going to have to think from now on because I do not see what other solutions exist. I do not think that we can continually expect to get subsidies. Sorry but I am not saying that good things were not done in the past but we have to adjust. It is the same with NGOs of whatever shape and colour, such as those fighting hunger or health problems. All of this has to be reinvented. They have to find ways of making themselves sustainable. That is all I meant and I did not want to upset anybody.

Alain SUSSFELD, Managing Director, UGC (France) I have to say I am amazed at the way this discussion is going. Firstly, when I hear you talking about local subsidies, the only point of this is to produce jobs and attract activity to boost consumption. This is not cultural. We are talking about the rationale of location of manufacturing. It is pure economics. It is about growing a region economically and this is what regions compete for. It is not a cultural competition. It is an economic competition. I am also amazed by the confusion between entertainment and culture. Quite apart from Mr Monfils who knows this issue, I do not know what your qualification or your legitimacy is but the basic principle of what we do is that you make a loss. For some reason one day, you come across something that is successful. Nobody knows why, even in the United States. It is about innovating and identifying new talent to be successful. It is not by going for short term profit that you are going to have long term success or cultural interest. I am sorry but I have to disagree with you.

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Alexandre ALLARD I do not know if the reference to short term profit was for me. I am in favour of long term profit and sustainability of cultural activities. That is what I am saying we need to do, not short term profit but the contrary.

Alessandra GALLONI If I understand, you disagree with the idea in general. You are against short term profit in general. In a nutshell, explain for Mr Eberts.

Alain SUSSFELD Regarding Mr Eberts, I just pointed out that his vision of subsidies in different places is like bounty hunting. It is an economic rationale driven by economic policies in those regions. All they are doing is trying to attract jobs and the related consumption. That is fair enough and that is an economic based approach. It is not about culture. Secondly, you said that we have to come up with a new paradigm. It is what everyone is saying now. We are always being told we need a new business model or paradigm, without explaining what it is but we will come back to that later. For what reason do you think that you should tell us that we should be looking for profit? When you have been in this business for up to 30 years, we are looking for profitability but that means going for innovation as well. There comes a time when you have to know how to innovate and research new talents and topics. You cannot repeat things in this business. We are talking about renewing yourself with new things all the time. This is why it continues to be attractive to the public.

Alessandra GALLONI We all agree with that but M. Eberts says that when he shoots a film, he is not thinking about jobs in a region. He wants to make the best possible film and make money from it.

Jake EBERTS Yes, obviously. For 35 years now, we have been making films, many with unknown actors, directors and scriptwriters, hiring hundreds of crew members for each film. For example, Dance with Wolves, Driving Miss Daisy, Chariots of Fire and The Name of the Rose. There are dozens of them. We always hire local crews, so I do not really understand your point. Referring to Louisiana, we heard a figure of several hundred jobs to start with several years ago, ending up at 7,000 jobs today. That is surely a success. I do not understand your point. I am sorry.

Régis HOURIEZ We could say something about budget policy here because you referred to local authorities. For the local authorities, with budget constraints as they are, there is no money even if the State intervention covers a minima the costs for health or cultural activities. The not for profit definition is different among tax systems in the world. For example, Germany is very good with incentives to protect cultural heritage sites but there is absolutely no income whatsoever involved in that. There are other countries that have a broader definition. This is probably why there is some confusion when it comes to local incentives. I am sure Mr Monfils will confirm.

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It is fairly simple budgeting. You must have income to cover expenditure. We have seen incentives that are part tax part subsidy. There are schemes, such as the lottery in Belgium. There is something similar in the UK. As Thorsten was saying, it is the tax for the stupid. A lot of that money goes into cultural activities. £500 million is drawn from the National Lottery in the UK and used for cultural purposes. In France, there is 1% for culture applied to major public works. They have to buy works of a living artist to be displayed in the building. Tax cannot achieve everything so we need to look at hybrid solutions.

Philippe MONFILS I am a free marketer but I will not accept this complete revision of the very founding principles of culture. Let us be clear that profit will only ever be marginal in three quarters of cultural activities. How could a theatre opera house make a profit when you achieve 35% of net entries? It does not mean to say that there is not economic activity involved because there are the props, costumes and all sorts of other things but the state responsibility lies at the higher level. In Belgium, we have said that we need to see to what extent the private sector and economy can get involved in that. If it is in their interest, it would be fairly marginal compared to what the state contribution would be, then I am in favour of it. The only area where I think the private sector could do better than the state is in film where you have incentives. In Belgium, I know that there have been a number of films that have been funded by private industry and it did not necessarily generate a lot of entries. We have tax incentives and tax benefits, whereby business can get involved. If a sector says it is too complicated, it can be changed. For example, we had a problem in the beginning with the Tax Shelter where intermediaries received more than the producers at the end of the line. We have since changed the tax scheme. In regard to profit and culture, I am not sure. I see a possibility of having economic business involvement in culture, which will drive a culture with tax incentives. That is fair enough and that is what we want. Otherwise, I am not willing to go along with the idea of profit oriented culture. There was a theatre in Belgium that said they did not need any subsidies. I will have a restaurant to sell food and it will be profitable. It said that for three years. In the fourth year, they came along cap in hand and said that they had a shortfall of 20 to 40 million euros. They needed help so we helped. I have no problems with a dynamic approach to culture and theatre as mentioned by M. Allard. That already exists and let us not point the finger as if it were old hat as opposed to a new cultural economy. I disagree with that. I know industry can help culture through the various incentives we offer. It is important that governments make an effort. It reduces tax revenue but culturally speaking, it is good so let us leave things as they are and not imagine that this is some sort of a golden calf that should be ditched in the dustbin of history.

Alessandra GALLONI M. Sussfeld, did you have a point to make?

Alain SUSSFELD No, I agree with Mr Monfils and for Mr Eberts, there is no misunderstanding. He is a huge producer. There is no discussion there. If there is one outstanding producer in this room, it is him. That is not my point. I just wanted to say that you explained that you went to the places where you would get the biggest breaks. My point and the whole point of these incentives was not cultural. They were there to drive jobs and boost the economy for that region without any other criteria of quality in

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org terms of who gets what. I am not blaming anybody. I am just explaining their real role. I draw a distinction between tax incentives, which can have economic impact and Mr Monfils has explained very well that the state can often do good things. Then there is the question of whether there should be forms of discrimination to ensure that these advantages focus on any particular area. This is where you move from an economic approach to a culture driven one.

Jonathan DAVIS, Adviser, UK Film Council (United Kingdom) Yesterday we heard about the distortion of tax breaks in the UK. I work for the National Film Centre and I worked on both sides – industry and government. I worked on incentive applications and I was telling Régis that I am now against tax incentives because of what M. Monfils said. At one point, this scheme was dropped in the UK because it was not really production that was getting the benefit but rather intermediaries. Here I am sitting next to the representative from Malta. Maybe she should take the floor because we have looked in Malta at the impact to tax incentives, not just in terms of growing the island’s economy but also in that for the first time Maltese people are exposed to international production. It takes time but eventually filmmakers from Malta and all sorts of stakeholders saw their ambitions raised. Thank you.

Alexandre ALLARD My main point was not that all culture should be profitable but one should try to find ways of funding a new cultural model and encourage more of what is profitable. That is the exception to the rule. We know that film is highly structured in that respect. Living theatre does not make any profit. There is a very broad range of cultural activities. I know about this. I know a lot of investors in the room and there is a feeling that you support more those that do not make money whereas there are some that can. As they exist, why not help them as well? That was my point.

Nicolas SEYDOUX Yesterday some people were complaining about the fact that there was not enough debate and audience participation. I think that we would never have imagined that it would be tax policy that would spark such a vigorous debate here in the audience.

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Round table 2: Which tax policy is better for culture in a global and immaterial economy?

Alessandra GALLONI Briefly, the subject consists of two topics. First, why is art so international and artists such international creatures, while tax policies are very national? Is there a nationalistic bias here? Second, digital; you cannot talk about culture without talking about digital. Digital is one of the areas that is most heavily taxed. It is still young, so perhaps it still needs to be put through its paces. I will ask Bruno Perrin to tell us about the Ernst & Young reports.

Bruno PERRIN Partner, Ernst & Young (France)

The report deals with tax incentives for culture in the digital age. Why are taxes and incentives different when they effect digital distribution? Can they keep up with developments; with the e- book, digital screening, and video on demand (VOD)? Why are some sectors paying and some receiving? Obviously, we have to talk about tax shopping, and any illusions and dangers there. We also need to talk about the new areas of development that it is going to generate. We have heard about Malta, for example, but Malta is an example followed by other countries. We need to look at new business models, to accommodate all the stakeholders, creators, producers, distributors, consumers and investors. Before we get involved in the technical discussion, I would like to underscore something of a paradox that arises when you bring digital economy and culture together. Digital is about access, not creation. The digital economy is highly standardised, and ‘free of charge’ is a hook or attraction rather than being for the good of mankind in general. Apart from that they do not have many things in common. The digital economy and cultural paradigms are cooperation, competition and co-petition; there is no borderline between amateurs and professionals. These paradoxes will give rise to several hybrid models like Freemium (free and premium) and models where value added comes from interaction of a social kind. In terms of taxes and levies, the highest contributors are the digital sectors; television, broadcasting, cinema and music. Those contributing least are national heritage, and live performing arts. Here, local culture is being helped. When broken down by country, the highest incentives for digital culture are mainly in the more recently developed countries, Canada, China, India, the USA. The countries with longer traditions, Japan, France, and the UK have fewer tax incentives, although in France something dynamic has been done in terms of video games. Focusing on VAT, we are not talking about the 14 countries in the study, but all 27 EU countries, so we looked at admission tickets. Museums, arts, fairs and theatres have reduced VAT. There is something of an advantage to what you cannot delocate. Then we looked at books. For books, and the wireless, non-rechargeable, there is no tax in the UK; it is one of the exceptions in the English tax system. Otherwise, taxes are essentially reduced VAT. We will see that digital books carry a normal rate tax. Looking at internet access, it is 100%. As Régis was saying earlier, the important thing is that in Europe the 100% rate is actually between 15% and 25%. Some countries are luckier, and charge 15% for Internet access,

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org whereas others are on 25%. Elsewhere in the world, the normal rate of VAT is between 4 % and 18 %. Cable and satellite television access is taxed at slightly less in Belgium, France, and Spain, and Austria, for example; it is a reduced rate. The delivery mode is very important. Electronically delivered goods have a 100% rate.

Alessandra GALLONI I will give the floor to Christopher Miles, who is a film director and producer from the UK. When we were talking about this last week, you said that it is harder for you to produce films in France than at home, and that there is a rather nationalistic mindset. This might be a good way to start the discussion, and then we will talk about digital.

Christopher MILES Film director and producer, Milesian Lion (United Kingdom)

We have an expression in England, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’, so as I am in a Roman city, I will be diplomatic and try to express myself in French, the old diplomatic language. However, as I have not been to I.D.H.E.C (the French film school) for quite some time, since the 60’s in fact, my French is a little rusty. But I do remember what a wonderful time it was to be in France, when films like ‘L’Année derniere a Marienbad’ and ‘Jules et Jim’ came out the same day! However I am here to talk about figures and budgets, and although I am not actually a producer; I have produced a few of my films, I am, above all, a director. Therefore, as this is a complicated subject, and at the best of times I am not at ease with figures, I shall switch to the English language, as I do not want to butcher your language nor my mathematics! Nigel Goldsack, is a producer friend of mine, who went to seven countries to analyse the price of doing a medium-budget film, and an expensive-budget film in those locations. The project was on behalf of the UK Film Council, so the seven countries chosen were the ones most amenable to this project. He sat down with line-producers in each country, who had all read the script and done their own budgets in the following countries - USA, the Czech Republic, Canada, Romania, Australia, Ireland and of course the UK. Obviously, he did not speak to the governor of Louisiana, who, would have seduced him into going there; as we heard yesterday how many films he encouraged to be made in Louisiana by means of an attractive incentive value tax. In terms of the incentive value tax on a medium-budget film, it is extraordinary the way Canada gave the biggest contribution. And on a budget of approximately GBP34 million, the Canadians came up with GBP4 million assistance. The UK came up with GBP2.5 million, the Australians with GBP2 million, and Ireland with GBP3.2 million. We have not spoken about Ireland, now that it is part of the EEC, and is a very exciting place in terms of tax incentives, as they do not tax any artist who resides there, which includes film makers. I said to Nigel, ‘Why did you not choose France?’ He replied, ‘It is quite expensive, making a film in France’. When he did the project, about a year ago, many of the French rebate taxes went back to the French producer, as they are very well protected in France by ‘Le Centre National du Cinema’ and Film France; who have excellent, well worked out methods, whereby the fiscal incentives go to the French producer and not to the foreigner!

Alessandra GALLONI Is your conclusion not to make movies in France?

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Christopher MILES No, it is not. We only want to point out that with the CNC’s aid to the French producer, and the onerous taxes which have to be paid on behalf of French crews, for foreigners making films in France it is more expensive than most other countries. However I would just like to cover one major point before we go on to the question of tax advantages. One vital issue is that without artists, writers, painters, and filmmakers of every description, we would not be here discussing this point in the forum, for without the artist and creator you have nothing to tax….. I am talking about all art forms, not just the cinema. Ernst & Young made a very good presentation here. They talked wittily about the whole subject of tax, culture and art, but what did I see? I saw on the screen a photograph of my old friend Maurice Baquet holding an umbrella above his cello. That image was taken from a photograph by Robert Doisneau, a great French photographer. Did Ernst & Young pay for this image? I was not sure.

Allesandra GALLONI Is anyone from Ernst & Young here? Did you pay for it?

From the floor We had a lot of pictures in our tax study and we found that we were paying too much for them, so we cut back a little; I am sorry. There was a picture of the Beijing Opera House by Paul Andreu - it was wonderful, but with the constraints we were working under, we had to abandon it.

Christopher MILES This is a very important question, because Robert Doisneau also stole an image for his great photograph Le Baiser, The Kiss, which is a shot of two people kissing in a Paris square. Everybody knows this photograph. BUT Doisneau never paid the people who kissed, and they are now suing him as they want money from this photograph, which he sold worldwide. This is an important issue. Queen, not Her Majesty I am afraid, but the group, used video promotional material from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for one of their great video promo films. Did they pay Fritz Lang? I know they did not. He is dead, and they certainly did not pay his heirs or the owners for the rights of the film. The question I am trying to emphasize is ‘Do we really give proper fiscal and legal rights in this modern technological age to the creator - the originator - the artist, as there are so many ways today to steal their ideas, sounds or images? We also heard a lot from our friend of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), Dan Glickman, who talked about the ‘rip-off’ of the Internet. But I have to give him a gentle reminder that filmmakers, actors and screen-writers have all been ripped off many times by the American major distributors themselves, and not just the Americans either! Why did Michael Caine have to sue one of the America’s biggest majors over profits due to him? Why did my sister, Sarah, after doing Ryan’s Daughter, have to go with a loaded cap pistol into the office of the President of MGM and mockingly threaten him by saying, ‘Where are the profits of Ryan’s Daughter? - the film in which I was the lead, and for which my husband wrote the screenplay?’ In conclusion, I would like to point out that my friends here, Jean-Jacques Annaud and Régis Wargnier, do not put the name ‘producer’ by their credit. They put the name réalisateur, the man who realises the film. Why? Because in France, the credit of ‘director’ protects this artist and his work. It is the only country in the world where a director has automatic rights to his films and is

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org given financial returns from the box office receipts; whether the film is in profit or not. This is unique in the world - why? Because of the Code Napoleon, which was drawn up years ago to protect the artist. So in this modern age I look to France to help protect the artist, as it used to do, and to influence and improve, what is now becoming, the slow degradation of the creator’s rights and their fiscal due, in all media and in all methods of distribution; internet, publishing and cinema. So therefore, I end this speech by simply saying, ‘Vive Napoleon, Vive La France!’

Alessandra GALLONI Mr Sussfeld, is all of that right? Is it fair and is it right?

Alain SUSSFELD Managing director, UGC (France)

I do not want to talk about the relative virtues of the French film system; that is not really the subject. Jean-Jacques Annaud was referred to as an example of a director defended by the French system; it is his talent and his worldwide acclaim that protects him, first and foremost. The subject we are here to discuss is the relationship between cultural industries. Conceptually speaking, culture refers to many things. Obviously, the internet greatly affects cultural industries; archaeology, museums or architecture much less so, because you cannot highjack value there. It is a very complex situation. Therefore, cultural industries mean music, film, TV, images, and performance. I think you have gathered that I represent the old economy, but I do not want to be too old-fashioned. Therefore, let me say that there are two things I believe in. I believe in copyright, which means a right to reward and a right to prohibit, and I believe in the success of various types of legislation that try to curb piracy, because cultural and tax policies in a world where everything is free is very difficult to explain. I have tried to describe the two main characteristics of the context in which I wish to discuss these issues. That being so, what is digitalisation? It is a transformation and an opportunity, with two different risk levels. First, I want to stress heritage transformation; I am delighted to see that the French national bond is taking the digitalisation transformation into account. I think it is vital that this be done quickly; Minister Frédéric Mitterrand has planned, and probably convinced the government that it needs to plan, to do something substantially about heritage. Digitalisation is vital for the internet’s dissemination; technology is a top priority. This is only possible through public subsidies. I will come back to taxes later, but public subsidies can have a leverage effect. Depending on the kind of heritage we are talking about digitalising, public support could be 40% or 50%, which could mean a leverage effect in the rest of the film or the visual industry. This is the main thrust of the policy I am talking about. It is about involving state and market intervention together. It is difficult to understand, but the point of state intervention is to make sure the market can go beyond the limits; free-market liberalism was opposed to this, because there are market areas where only the state can intervene. That is the whole point. That is what I would say about transformation inside states. When you are talking about internet, you are talking about a major opportunity in distribution. It is a vector for infinite dissemination at low cost. In exchange for that opportunity, there is a price; a risk of being copied or pirated, with alteration of the original work. From my perspective, things such as the French law Hadopi will protect us in the long-run. Free culture is something that will disappear. It cannot be free, as we

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org have explained to you since yesterday. Somebody has to pay. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and culture, music, or image industries have to pay; the development of the global internet system was funded by cultural industries. This is the first time that technological change has been paid for by full transfer of revenues from culture to a global technology. May I briefly mention tax, then I will give Antoine the floor. I will keep it simpler than the study. There are two categories, one paid by the tax payers, and one paid by the consumers. We are talking about the impoverishment of state resources; we see this happening. I support the change, whereby the consumer will be the first payer. Secondly, there has to be tax neutrality with respect to support; however, just because you have tax neutrality, it should not be impossible to carry out additional levies redistributing some money to help technological change driven by the internet, without cost to the state. I think eBooks and VOD are a wonderful illustration of this.

Allesandra GALLONI Two people have talked about piracy; I imagine it is important in your sector Antoine Gallimard? What can we do about it? For example, the illegal copies of Harry Potter in China; everyone had read the book before it was released.

Antoine GALLIMARD CEO, Editions Gallimard (France)

First, I would like to thank Nicolas Seydoux for inviting a publisher to this forum. The discussion has focused on music, the performing arts and film rather than on books; however, the book industry is France’s leading cultural industry. The fact that there is an empty chair here between me and Alain reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote that the empty chair sitting next to him was the reader. Perhaps we can see the empty chair on the stage as the chair of a reader or audience member.

Allesandra GALLONI Perhaps the empty chair could be the EU.

Antoine GALLIMARD The vital question today is whether the future of the book is under threat. Digitalisation will affect books just as much as it affected the film industry and music. The measures implemented since the second world war have been mentioned; I would like to briefly examine the book in this context. There was the 1981 law; also a definition of what a book is, allowing for reduced sales tax rates. Today, book publishers are worried because there has been a change in public policy. There is now a division between paper copies, printed books, and digital books. On this subject, there is the Olivennes report, the Patino report, the Gaymard report. This cannot be blamed entirely on our Ministers for Culture. They tried to insure that there would be a reduced sales tax rate on digital books, just as there is on print books. They did not succeed, and I think this is an inconsistency. It does not make sense. We have lower sales tax rates for books, just as there is for the print media, which have a 2.1% sales tax rate. We have a 5.5% rate of sales tax. Therefore it was very interesting last September to see how tax legislation changed. The idea of having a reduced sales tax for books in all physical formats is upheld; this applies to audio books, CDs, DVDs, and books on data sticks. However, the digital download of books was considered to be a service rather than a product; therefore there are no

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org reduced sales tax rates on digital downloads. It was thought that if there were reduced sale tax rates, it would create distorted economic competition in Europe. Thus, French public authorities find themselves colliding with European legislation in trying to apply differing sales tax rates. The obstacle here is differing sales tax rates in different EU member states; we would have to wait until 2015 to ensure that the sales tax applicable would be that of the location of the customer rather than where the service provider is domiciled. I think these tax measures are very important because they are based on a definition of content; that is what sets the tone. Are we are going to apply the rules of traditional economy such as previous tax incentives to the new digital economies? For example, along with the Ministry of Culture we have set up a labelling system for independent bookstores. There are very few support measures for independent book stores and we continue to hope to support them. All of these measures are very important. We have set up a system since the end of the second world war, and the system is perhaps being brought down by the new economy.

Alessandra GALLONI I think that the reduced sales tax measures, and the distinction you mentioned as being a precedent in Europe, is problematic elsewhere in the world as well. We have been talking about tax policy; if we look at the tax incentives the newspaper business, looking at my paper’s website, wsj.com, there is an incentive for journalists to write for the website, and an incentive for readers to buy content on wsj.com. If you go to wsj.com, you can access newspaper content for a lower cost. Is there a similar incentive system in your business? Not necessarily a tax incentive, but some other financial incentive?

Antoine GALLIMARD Yes, we have sales tax rates that are different for publishers, readers and authors, with particularly advantageous arrangements for authors, but that is to a much lesser extent. The system as a whole is based on the fact that it is the publisher that sets the sales price for a book. This prevents excessive competition. We have a system designed to protect bookstores and publishers, but perhaps both can be done, perhaps you can protect both online books and traditional book stores. I think the question is what is the position of online books with regard to paperbacks and other types of books, for example long format books? I think that the online books have a right to flourish along with hardcover and paperbacks, with a lower price of 30%.

Bruno PERRIN Tax measures for online books define online books as a service and not as a cultural good, a cultural product. It took 5 centuries for the unique sale price for books, 60 years for the self-funding system for French cinema to be up and running, and I think that currently the income generated by these new economic forms are not sufficient for a new system to be developed; we have to wait and find the right price.

Alain SUSSFELD There are different ways of looking at this. We talked about the fact that print books have a single price everywhere, in different stores. If you look at the printed copy of a book, can the publisher reduce the price of books, given increased competition from online books? To what extent can publishers influence the price of books?

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Then you have the dissemination of images and video on demand; when you look at recent laws published in the official journal by the Ministry of Culture, there are a certain number of innovations. There is a minimum remuneration for rights holders even though the price of the product has not yet been determined. This is also the case for video on demand. Therefore, if you look at the value chain of this industry as a whole, compensation is based on what distributors pay. The more they pay, the more priority they have in terms of distribution because this is a major incentive system to help the view of the industry, which is in its infancy.

Antoine GALLIMARD When looking at the existing system, what we are concerned about is having a new book format considered to be a service and not a product, and that it should not call into question the whole architecture of the system, as it has existed over the past 50 years.

Alain KOUCK, Vice-President and Managing Director, EDITIS (France) I am the second publisher in the room. Regarding sales tax, we have been talking about transferring measures from print books to online books, but I do not think that will ever happen. What is at stake is that there are new works that involve print, video and audio; that is a new market. I think it would be serious if paper publishers did not latch onto that new market. We have identified the new products and markets; we must ensure reduced VAT for those as well.

Allesandra GALLONI Mr Gallimard seems to agree, and that will conclude the second round table. Let us hear from a politician now.

Jack RALITE, Senator (France) There is no need to repeat everything that has just been said, but I think we cannot conclude a discussion on digitalisation with two publishers in the room without talking about Google. The digitalisation of the holdings of the French national library is a major issue in France. The negotiation for this goes completely contrary to previous negotiations in the area, calling into question political agreements and professional agreements. The question is, do we try to stop this process, or do we let it go forward? If you look at how creation and art works are dealt with in France, I think that given the system in France, we have to resist the current arrangement regarding digitalisation. If we do not, this will have significant consequences across the world. Google does not pay for its starting material. It has huge advertising revenues; it digitalizes everything without asking for authorisation, and is domiciled in Ireland in order not to pay the sales tax issue entirely.

Allesandra GALLONI We could have 10 roundtable discussions on Google, and I agree fully with you, but it is a little off topic, and I have to conclude this round table.

From the floor Also, we should not forget that the most important industry is the military one in US, followed by TV and films. A war is beginning. So who is Google? Google is not French, Google is American.

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Allesandra GALLONI We have to be very careful I think; I fully support what you are saying.

Jack RALITE I think enough work has been done. It is a shame to allow an international monopoly to set up shop. I cannot allow books, this universal repository of memory, to be consumed by this monopoly. There is a European deadline coming up; in 10 days decisions will be taken in Europe regarding intellectual property and copyright. I think that these planned decisions, these planned measures, are very worrying. I think that the diverse voices we have heard here today, from different countries, different arts and fields can serve as a starting point. Regarding Avignon, the person who started the theatre festival here, Jean Vilar, stated similar things that we have to be able to create things that the audience does not yet know it wants.

Sylvie FORBIN, Vivendi (France) I don’t have a question, but a proposal. All of the professions represented here are looking forward to the big meeting next week. Taxation, VAT in particular, is a European issue, as you all know. All of the sectors have legitimate reasons to request policy changes, but it is going to be a battle of the Titans; we are going to have to fight country by country to get unanimity, to change the tax system and reach tax neutrality and incentives. However, everyone knows that in the US, the indirect tax moratorium kicked in when e-commerce began to grow. There is a strong demand here for a European moratorium as one of the prerequisites for covering our economy, and innovating in online services to meet the huge level of demand. This would be better than fighting alone in our own corner. As there is a council meeting a week from now, perhaps we could lobby Brussels with this message from Avignon.

Antoine GALLIMARD I agree that it is very urgent; we have seen that it would be good to change everything. I think that it is an excellent idea, and it is up to all of the cultural stakeholders to get together to push this request through. Yes, I am counting on you to do so.

From the floor Let me conclude. Louis Schweitzer will summarise this later on; he is very good at that. I think there could be a consensus view of the forum. I briefly spoke to Jack Ralite and he probably knows I agree with the substance of what he says. There was an article in Les Echos yesterday about preventing internet monopolies, and not having a single search engine when it comes to knowledge. I am sorry to interrupt you, but we have to talk about the art market now.

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Round table 3: What kind of tax competitiveness forthe art market?

Alessandra GALLONI The question is the different kinds of tax systems in art. Art consumption and production are international, whereas all of our tax systems are national. Eric, could you respond very quickly, as it is in your report.

Eric FOUREL Partner, Ernst & Young (France)

We have recently heard much about the ambiguity surrounding tax incentives. Should they foster the economy, culture, or the attractiveness of a region? You could say they are ambiguous, if you are negative. If you are more optimistic you would say that they are varied. However, it is a choice of these various objectives. To a certain extent, these policies support cultural nationalism, so I think that these are valid questions.

Laurent DASSAULT Vice-chairman, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault (France)

Art has no nationality, but buyers and sellers of art do. In our country we have a very favourable tax system, thanks to the socialist government in France. We do not pay wealth tax on art. This is anachronistic, because as you know, rich people have property, jewels, cars, etc., and when you are very rich you buy art. However, because of this good fortune, the art market in France is very active. We also have one of the lowest taxes on value added, only 5%; it is higher in other countries and on stocks and shares. Again, there are higher taxes on capital gains. When you buy a picture in New York or London, either you are extremely wealthy and you have an apartment in those cities where you keep them, or you bring them back to your Paris apartment, where you will have to pay 5.5% on import. That is roughly the same throughout Europe. It is 10% in the United Sates. I think this is good, because the art market is one that deals with a small population of connoisseurs, gallery owners, and it is good to have traceability throughout the world; import taxes help that. Concerning taxes, some professionals want the income tax to be removed. Also, it is a problem for me – this is something that goes back to 1920 - there is a kind of monitoring, so that artists have some form of social protection. Today, approximately 90% of these rights go to the Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso families. As you know, these families no longer live in France, so maybe we should do something about that tax; even if it is cut to 12,500 euros per art piece, maybe we could do something to show that this tax should no longer exist. They do not have it in the United States, or in some countries in Europe. As I have a Chinese friend here, who is a great gallery owner, and who has brought Chinese works to France since 1990, I want to ask him why I cannot sell works that predate 1949 from my auction house in China; I have to have contemporary works.

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Xin Dong CHENG Galerist, exhibition commissioner and editor (China)

We are talking about creation without frontiers, but the market has frontiers. In China, which is a developing society, our market is new. After 60 years of communism all of the systems have broken down, and we are now trying to rebuild them. It ties in well with today’s policies, because in China we still have a Ministry of Propaganda. That is to say, the Minister for Culture reports to the Minister for Propaganda. In the 80s there were economic reforms, whereby China underwent a major, successful transformation, including in the art market. Therefore, this is very recent. Even I had to come to France to learn the trade in the 80s and 90s, to learn a lot from these contacts and networks established in France and to try to use them for the benefits of China. However, it is hard to be a gallery owner, who is relatively new in the game, and who is just a decade old. With respect to taxes, the government wanted to take control of the market, since it considered artistic and cultural creation as something dangerous for the stability of the country; Mao said that creation and culture is a political tool. In essence, that sums it up. However, we are currently talking about globalisation. China is now part of that, and is taking on responsibilities around the globe, including the cultural field. China’s leaders are reluctant at the moment. I know somebody wanted to open an auction house in China, obviously the French were a bit scared about what this means. However, this brings not only professional expertise, but also a message of market freedom, and perhaps the idea of freedom of expression. Therefore, opening up a market is a problem with respect to protection, and the Chinese government obviously did not give the authorisation to our friend here. It is a very new market and there are not too many Chinese professionals. Therefore, they need protection from the big competitors.

Alessandra GALLONI Therefore, it is not just about taxes, it is about protecting the economy?

Laurent DASSAULT There are no tax measures in China for the art market.

Xin Dong CHENG You can buy and sell what you like; no questions will be asked because there are not many cheques or credit cards. There is no death duty and there is no family rights tax. We have a 12%import tax plus a VAT or sales tax of 17%. Therefore, it is hard for us as professionals.

Allesandra GALLONI Julian, you have just finished a complete refurbishment of your museum. Could you say a bit about that and about the donation system?

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Julian ZUGAZAGOITIA Director, Museum del Barrio, New York (Spain)

I am speaking today on behalf of the American system, in so far as I run a mid-sized New York museum. This system is benefits greatly from tax incentives for donations. El Museo del Barrio is on Fifth Avenue, at the top of Museum Mile. It is dedicated to Latino and Latin American art and culture. We recently reopened following an 18-month renovation costing 40 million US Dollars. Like most museums and also private universities and hospitals, we are a non-profit organization, with 501c3 tax status. This allows us to receive donations from individuals and offer them receipts for their tax deductions. The not-for-profit sector, is today one of the largest employers in the United States today.

Allesandra GALLONI How many people do you employ?

Julian ZUGAZAGOITIA The museum employs almost 50 people normally, and generated some 500 construction jobs during a serious economic recession. This served as a kind of stimulus package created from both private and public funding. Harvard Business School did a study of our institution’s economic impact: our annual budget of 8 million US Dollars has an impact of about 53 million US Dollars on New York City. The Natural History Museum, which is much larger, generates 5 billion US Dollars in business activity in New York City. The impact that we can have economically can be largely attributed to the tax incentives that individuals, companies and foundations receive in exchange for their philanthropic donations. When I started this job I studied all of the tax codes carefully; I thought that when I talked to my donors, I needed to be able to explain how much of their donation they could deduct from their taxes.

Allesandra GALLONI And are they really interested in that?

Julian ZUGAZAGOITIA No. Naively, I learned the figures by heart in case the question came up. However, philanthropic contributions are so strongly anchored as an American tradition, that the question was never raised. Potential donors know the system. My experience is that donors are most enthusiastic about programs they can participate in. It is the sense that their philanthropy has significant impact that really motivates donors, sometimes beyond the range of fiscal incentives.

Eric FOUREL Julian’s comments about the United States are very important. History has shown that American donors are genuinely philanthropic, rather than looking for the tax breaks that fortunately go hand in hand with the philanthropy. However, if you look at tax policies around the world, the additional tax incentives introduced after 2003 boosted philanthropy in general, particularly for museums. This is why the forum should address this issue of whether we should have greater systems of this sort, to support institutions, in particular museums.

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Allesandra GALLONI Mr Vaysettes, you finance projects such as these, what do you think?

Philippe VAYSSETTES Chairman of the Board, Neuflize-OBC (France)

I finance them, and I manage customers’ assets. Coming back to the original question, in France there is fortunately a form of nationalism regarding art taxes. The problem of tax harmonisation, although generally positive, is that it affects the whole system. Whatever you might think of it, morally speaking, in countries with high taxes, a lot of taxes on capital and wealth tax, affects the rich. It is the rich who drive the art market. If we did not have these incentives and breaks, it would affect everything that is happening with the donation funds that Christine Lagarde was talking about, and that we can be proud of. Without them, we would have very high taxes, even in art. In countries that have less tax, such as Ireland and China, the differential between ordinary consumer goods and art means that you need less of a specificity. We have a kind of mini tax haven here in France that balances things, because the overall tax system is punitive. All the systems in France to fund and acquire art works are very important, because they put us on an equal footing with the rest of the world.

Eric FOUREL Obviously, we need to retain these tax incentives, so that major institutions can balance their budgets. The question is whether they should depend on doing something for a facility on your own territory; this is where things are going to change, following the Persche ruling at the end of last year. All of these incentives to donate are going to be reformed. It will be possible to make cross border donations. Souleymane Cissé mentioned that it is a shame that African cinema seems to have disappeared, because there were no public subsidies. If European residents were to get tax incentives to support something in Africa, we would have a sort of universal philanthropic system supporting culture, which would iron out this ambiguity between tax policies that seem to be mainly driven by the interests of their national context.

From the floor I am involved in some projects that are not for profit, but are patronage. We have not yet discussed this, but these initiatives are not helped at all. It is all privately-funded even if we support the North-South dialogue and bring artists in France. We are always being called upon by museums and artists who are running projects where they do not have the budgets and are therefore likely to see their exhibitions being cancelled. There is no form of support there, which is very discouraging. It is 100% arts patronage. This is more an American model than a French one and when we do this kind of thing in France it seems quite suspicious. This is a good question. This is something that France developed along with Italy in cooperation with Mr Mitterand and many others. Mr Mitterand ran the Lebanese cooperation for some time and this is one of the few countries that helps young artists. Arts patronage exists and we have wonderful legislation in France.

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From the floor I do not disagree - I know that France does things. However, with a private initiative, there is nothing to support it. I am a patron, but I am not given any tax breaks. This is my point. I am the person providing the patronage.

Eric FOUREL The eligibility criteria for patronage has nothing to do with being public or private. There are rules that may seem prescriptive, but there is no bias against private projects. From the floor Why, then, should I continue to give money to help art and artists and bring artists here from emerging countries and to fund exhibitions? What is there to motivate me to continue? What are the incentives?

Eric FOUREL If it is a non-profit activity and you continue with it, you should be eligible for some incentive or measure.

Philippe VAYSSETTES What I think is important is the passion behind a project. If there were more people like you in France – and I know that there are other people like you – I think that it would be easier for tax legislation to be changed in your favour. Firstly, you have to rally private funds through the patronage of the arts, which is the advantage of the American model, and you can then share your passion for the arts with others. If you have a specific goal, such as bringing in artists from emerging countries, you yourselves might then be able to form the critical mass that could lead to a change in the tax legislation and so allow patronage to be better recognised.

Alessandra GALLONI What is the situation in China?

Xin Dong CHENG In China, everything is new. Patronage is still at its early stages in China because everything was broken down during the Cultural Revolution. It is wonderful to be in France with all these incentives for art and artists; in China, you simply have to get head through your own means. Private patronage is just beginning, with the industrial tycoons who have made fortunes. There is, of course, the state and if you want to keep freedom of expression you cannot stay within the state system. State funding goes to official, state-approved artists and that makes it very difficult. However, we keep moving forward because it is worth it.

Alessandra GALLONI Can you give a specific example of a new project there?

Xin Dong CHENG About four or five years ago, following economic reforms, the company that ran a large military factory went bankrupt and gallery owners and artists have now taken over that industrial space and turned it into a cultural centre. This is a breakthrough project for us and it provides the rising

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Laurent DASSAULT Another interesting project relates to the financing of works and the role of the wealth tax, which is a method of funding that makes the tax system more flexible.

Philippe VAYSSETTES There are certain cases where the only way forward is to sell a piece of cultural or architectural heritage and there is therefore a tax incentive where you have to provide a guarantee and a security margin regarding the market fluctuation of the price of a given work of art. However, the artistic heritage of any given family can be used as a guarantee against borrowing and there are other tax incentives that allow families to regulate donations and shared ownership and so on.

Alessandra GALLONI These measures are very important. Why does this apply only to France?

Philippe VAYSSETTES I cannot see why it cannot be done in the US. You just have to find the right banker, and even if he did it less well than I do, he would nevertheless do it.

Julian ZUGAZAGOITIA As regards encouraging private donors, we were talking about alternative indicators yesterday and it has been proven through rigorous scientific studies that the more you donate, as a philanthropist, the longer you live and the happier you are. Therefore, please keep donating.

Philippe VAYSSETTES I think that what Julian said earlier about giving back is an interesting way of looking at a non-financial return on investment in the form of artistic commitment. The idea of giving back and having a non-material return on investment is very specific to English-speaking countries, but it is beginning to take root in France thanks to legislative changes. For example, I believe that the legislation on endowment funds in France is something of a revolution and a significant development, and when I look at my customers I increasingly see the sense of giving back. However, on the whole, we have not yet had that change of mindset in France. A wealthy American would give the same amount of money regardless of whether the return on investment was financial or non-financial in terms of satisfaction or artistic support and there is therefore a cultural difference here. In France, if not the rest of Europe, this idea of giving back is beginning to take root thanks to tax incentives that foster this kind of behaviour and the wealthy are being increasingly encouraged to donate.

Alessandra GALLONI It is also a marketing issue . In the US, donors like to see their names on buildings, although as a journalist I might be a bit skeptical about that.

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Eric FOUREL The tax measures that allow people to settle tax arrears through donating works of art are very important and the endowment legislation can support the art markets. However, the shortcoming in tax policy in France and other countries is the need to determine which incentives can be used to support contemporary art. There are specific measures in France for the corporate funding of contemporary art, but there are not really any measures for individuals and apart from in Mexico, strangely enough, there are no real incentives for settling tax arrears through donations from the artists themselves – where artists are allowed to pay their income tax by donating their works of art. This is something that could be extended to other countries and it would be a positive way of disseminating works of art, particularly the contemporary arts.

Julian ZUGAZAGOITIA In the US, museum directors are working together to try to rectify one discrepancy in the current tax policy regarding the donation of artworks. Today, a person can donate a painting to a museum and deduct the entire market value from their income tax. However, in the case that the artist is still living, the artist donating a work can only deduct the value of the materials, for example the value of the canvas and paint or pencils used for a painting. We are therefore fighting against this unfair distinction, to allow artists to make donations reflecting the market value of their work and we are working with the Obama administration. I think this would have excellent repercussions in terms of the number of artworks entering collections.

From the floor Apart from donating paintings, museums need renovation and refurbishment and that money has to come from somewhere. As Governments are not likely to provide it in the current context, it will have to come from donors. You’ve got tax incentives for corporate funding, but nothing for the individuals.

Philippe VAYSSETTES The French tax system allows for museum refurbishment just as much as the promotion of a given work of art. Of course, it has to be a French museum to benefit from these French measures. But if you set up a refurbishment program in Mali, you can benefit from a number of individual or corporate incentives.

Laurent DASSAULT We have been talking a lot about tax policy, but I can state that we never lost a sale because of tax policy. When selling a work of art, you have one work of art and one seller and the unity of the work of art is the main issue, as well as the happiness that lies behind it – you look at a sculpture or a painting. We have been talking a lot about numbers and tax policies, but if you really love something and buy a work of art, you buy with passion, not money. If you then donate this work, you will be even happier because you will have then given and shared with others.

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Saturday November 21st

Closing session The blossoming of cultures

The Forum d’Avignon drawn by Plantu

Nicolas SEYDOUX Articles in France’s leading daily newspaper of the last 50 years have not always been read as we are often distracted by the cartoons. Over the last few years, Le Monde has essentially become a cartoon album, largely thanks to the man you see on the stage. The cartoonist, Jean Plantu, or Plantu as he is known, has kindly agreed to be here with us in Avignon. As he attended all of the sessions yesterday and today, including some of the less exciting ones, he has come to this forum with some ideas. He has also thought about these issues previously. Later on, if time allows, we may be able to see this talented man summarise a workshop in a cartoon. The tightrope act of the cartoonist. We will leave him now to his pencils.

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PLANTU Cartoonist, Le Monde (France)

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How do I say this is freedom of thought when it is just a pencil or a marker, which I have in every colour? It does not take much space or time to draw something. It takes only a few seconds to draw our President, for example.

Cartoonists love our President as he is a living cartoon. It does not cost a lot in terms of ink as all you need to draw are his feet.

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He has sometimes complained to the newspaper when I have drawn flies in the cartoon.

That is okay as he is entitled to his opinion. Fortunately I have an editor-in-chief who allows me to express myself freely. This is not always the case in the European press. Friends in Algeria, China or Iran do not always that opportunity. I would like to show you some cartoons to demonstrate this. I would like to start by discussing freedom of thought. Here is a picture of my brain, for example. Let us imagine that my eyes are like this and that I have blackheads on my nose; this represents freedom of thought or creation. When we write or read something, something happens in our brain. The cells in our brains organise the neurons, making it possible to read or write. What we read, write or draw goes through our eyes, which allow us to seize upon the event, and we then put it in writing. From the brain to paper. There is also the way in which thought can be formatted. What we see on television shows us how to experience things. The repetition of what we see can format people, resulting in something that is politically correct. We end up writing or drawing something that is politically correct. In this forum, we are discussing the politically incorrect side. This is relevant to those working in the film or music industries as it means writing out of the heart and the gut, thus creating something freer. You can have a dove, for example. Instead of having formatted thought, we can think outside the politically correct box, which often stops us expressing ourselves freely.

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Here, is a cartoon showing a conclave with several cardinals talking. One cardinal says ‘I am not sure that I voted for the right Pope’. The other replies, ‘That is what my wife told me’.

Admittedly, this may not be the best cartoon to have on the front page of Le Monde, according to my editor-in-chief, just after the death of Jean-Paul II.

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In this impressive Pope’s Palace, where Jean Villard was playing Cyrano de Bergerac with Gerard Philippe, I have to say to you that I mixed economy and theater in my drawings. A boss says to his employee: "you are our accountant. You attend a course of dramatic arts. It is very well. Now, I believe that the moment has come to make a choice. "

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For the elections of Miss France, I created this cartoon of the French President made up as Madame de Fontenay, the chairperson of the Miss World Contest. She called me to tell me that she loved the cartoon and she invited me to come to the contest one day.

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Last week our President told us that he was present when the Berlin Wall came down. In this cartoon here, he is pictured with a little shovel. This reminds us of Snow White and Seven Dwarves with their little picks. Then we see a little Nicolas Sarkozy picking up pieces of the Berlin Wall. This, here, is a picture of Gorbachev, as Snow White. The cartoonist himself must be outside of the box.

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Here, we can see this cartoon which is about Magritte and the head of the Magritte Museum, being the artist who illustrates men wearing bow hats in the sky. This cartoon combines the terrible story of the girl who ended up with the pedophile Dutroux in Belgium, which is the land of Magritte.

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This is another cartoon that I drew and sent by Internet from my hotel room to my newspaper. This cartoon features right-wing Nazis and it illustrates how the Internet can be poorly used. One man asks another ‘What do you think of my computer?’ The second man replies that he doesn’t have much memory - meaning the computer.

The Internet can bring together signs, words and images. To take the metaphor of the meal, I am the one who shakes everything up like a cocktail.

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We must learn not to be dependent on websites that may cause harm, nor must we use it to hate. The Internet can be used for good. In Iran, for example, images of demonstrations were sent by cell phone to the rest of the world. This creates a kind of democracy where none exists. Here is a cartoon showing women in demonstrations in Iran and the women themselves look like cell phones.

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My next point relates to architects, against whom I sometimes need to take revenge. Here, for example, is the Mitterrand Library. Although I do not mind the interior, I dislike the outside of the library. When there was a big storm in 1999 which left the library intact, I said that it never rains but it pours. Instead of the trees falling down, I would have preferred the library to have fallen down.

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Cartoons are one way of venting frustrations. The issue of painting in this era of the budget deficit is an interesting one. This cartoon of a Renoir exhibition features a man saying ‘In this carefree era, this could be called the budget deficit’.

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This cartoon features Sarkozy. Christine Lagarde is next to him saying ‘There is too much Carla and not enough purchasing power’.

She is easy to draw because even when there are golden parachutes she is shown at the top of Bercy, the Finance Ministry. In addition, there is the issue of funding painting as seen with the Picasso Museum going to Saudi Arabia. One of my cartoons shows the museum naked, saying that they are so broke that they are down to bare bones.

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As well as terrible things happening in Mali, there are also terrible things going on in places such as Algeria.

There, fundamentalists have a grip on the film industry and it is getting more difficult to show movies and to tell stories.

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This is in line with my association, Cartooning for Peace, to which the Danish cartoonist, Carsten Graabaek, also belongs. Carsten Graabaek is not one of the cartoonists who drew a picture of the prophet. He chose the pixels.

Although a cartoonist may get on people’s nerves, they should not unnecessarily humiliate people.

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I drew this cartoon, following the Danish policy that forbid cartoons to be drawn of the prophet Mohammed. The strands of the prophet’s beard can be seen saying ‘I must not draw pictures of Mohammed’.

The prophet looks a little like Leonardo de Vinci and the picture is a little blurry, deliberately so in order to diminish the impact and to avoid deliberately provoking people.

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There are, however, some cartoons that we never anticipated as starting trouble.

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This cartoon, for example, was published on the front page of an Egyptian newspaper, and my editor- in-chief in Egypt received death threats because of it.

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In 1993 I drew this cartoon after 10,000 had died in Srebrenica. This features a man on a tank entitled ‘Militiaman avenging the death of his brother-in-law in 1917.’ The cartoon is in sepia to show that it relates to World War I.

This cartoon shows a man avenging his cousin who was raped in 1945, and then a baby thinking about avenging his father’s death in 2023. Often a cartoon can be resurrected, long after we think that it is no longer relevant.

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I drew a cartoon when Fellini died that showed him in heaven with a big buxom woman and Saint Peter saying to God ‘It has become messy ever since he’s been here’, which is also a play on words.

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In this picture, Fellini is facing death and says: “Ma, too slim!”

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I had drawn Léonard de Vinci during the debate around the caricatures of the Prophet. Léonard de Vinci is in discussion with a fundamentalist Muslim and says to him: " but no, it is not a blasphemy. I say to you that it is a self-portrait. Leave me in peace, Mouloud! "

Mouloud has to understand that we’re not looking for provocation.

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In 1991 I met Yasser Arafat. I showed him a picture and I asked him to draw something. He drew the Star of David. Although in his formatted mind he could not say that he recognised the state of Israel this was his way of showing that he recognised the State of Israel.

I met him again in 2004 several weeks before he died. He showed me the next banknote of the Middle East featuring the Jewish chandelier, with a cross on top and the Islamic crest above.

This cartoon indicated the future of the Middle East with this logo representing the three religions of the Middle East within the next 30 or 40 years. This may sound unrealistic but artists need to think about what the future will be like. There is another picture of Yasser Arafat that shows him with a dove. The colours of the flags in this cartoon show the colours of both the Israeli and Palestinian flags. I showed this cartoon in Haïfa, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in Ramallah and in Bethlehem. Cartoonists can build bridges despite religion, in ways that politicians cannot.

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In New Orleans, I met recently a formidable cartoonist, who had drawn a young person with a baggy jeans which let appear the ray of the buttocks.

His editor-in-chief asked him to change his drawing. This was not moral for the cartoonist. He was thus dismissed.

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What occurred in the United States could indeed occur soon in France. Although we talk about censorship in countries such as Tibet, it also exists in France.

After I drew a cartoon of Chinese train drivers driving the TGV, the newspaper La Vie du Rail asked for it to be withdrawn saying that it could prompt a general strike. Last week Le Monde, Le Parisien and Le Figaro were censored and nobody said anything. There was no publication because of the “Syndicat du Livre”. There seems to be complete indifference toward censorship of newspapers, while banning tobacco receives more outrage.

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Another cartoon that I drew shows Jesus Christ in Africa distributing condoms.

In one day, the director of Le Monde received 3,000 emails about this cartoon. We see that the Internet has become a powerful tool to threaten the creation.

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A picture by Armenian cartoonist Saroukhan of a flirting imam was published in Cairo in the 1950s.

It would be unthinkable to publish this cartoon today.

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There is a lot of repeated aggression against creativity and I have received a number of death threats. My entry on Wikipedia was altered to say that ‘Jean Plantu died on 30 March of a heart attack’, which Wikipedia was unable to control. I created the foundation Cartooning for Peace as a way of bringing artists closer together. Kofi Annan is our honorary president. Our aim is to build bridges and to help threatened cartoonists around the world. At a meeting in Nîmes there were Israeli artists next to Lebanese artists - this is great and enriching.

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A Palestinian cartoonist whose brother is in Hamas criticises both Hamas and Fatah, and he plays tribute to the victims of Palestine. He has been subject to many lawsuits, every Friday he receives threats from imams.

An Algerian cartoonist, Ali Dilem, had 28 trials last year. He has been threatened by several imams. He has President Bouteflika breathing down his neck. There are very brave people in the Middle East.

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This cartoon by an Israeli cartoonist shows two zebras saying ‘My father is black and my father is white’, and the other says ‘Mine is the other way around’. It is positive when Israelis extend their hands to Palestinians and vice versa - for this reason I created Cartooning for Peace. Peace in the Middle East is in my self-interest and it would benefit everyone, including the ghettos around Paris.

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I also wanted to show you a picture about ecumenism. The representatives of three big monotheist religions meet and one of them says: " can we see each other again on Tuesday? " The second answers "on Tuesday, I can’t, it’s Kippur".

The dialogue between religions will certainly help neutralise them.

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I leave you with this drawing of Mona Lisa, smiling, waiting for big business.

However, allow me before leaving you to draw a small mouse with a camera in one hand and a flower in the other saying: ‘Thank you all for your kindness’.

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Saturday November 21st

Closing session The blossoming of cultures

Artists’ outlooks

Louis SCHWEITZER Chairman of the Festival d’Avignon Chairman of Halde (Haute autorité française de lutte contre les discriminations) (France)

The topic of this roundtable is Artists’ Outlooks - how artists promote creation and dialogue between cultures. Souleymane Cissé is a film director. He has travelled the world, had problems with censorship and he has been imprisoned. Now he has many responsibilities. Gloria Friedmann is an engraver and photographer who has exhibited in San Paulo, Beijing, Moscow, Palerme, Paris and Vienna. Barthelémy Toguo is a sculptor who trained in the Ivory Coast, France and Germany. He lives on three continents - Africa, Europe and America. He is a creator who encourages creativity in others.

Gloria FRIEDMANN Artist (Germany)

I have a small company with one assistant. I am not interested in the culture industry; I create works of art to express myself. As an artist you have the need to express yourself and what you think is right or wrong in society. I see myself as a pedestrian, watching the world go by. I then try to express what I see - I am a bit like a thermometer for society. As far as I am concerned, it is not about goods, the market or even culture. The goods move from galleries to exhibitions, from country to country. The goods end up as isolated as I was when I produced them. These goods have to create their own story and they hope to establish contact with the observer. That is my own personal creation. I do not only create works that end up in galleries or museums. I also work outside producing inhabitable works and sculptures. I hope that this will encourage people to enjoy them and to have fun. Sometimes I do performance art; I use both wild animals and pets and I use people, putting them next to modern architecture. None of this work is commercial. As an artist I feel that I have a duty to society that enables me to work. Referring to the discussions on patronage and sponsorship, even artists like myself need support. In France there are longstanding relationships with points of contact made through exhibitions, and so on. The State is also helping us. Support is necessary for creation and not all artists have this backing. It seems more difficult than developing partnership with firms.

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The conversation needs to go further. Artists are undisciplined people who like to attack and to counter-attack, and this needs to be accepted. Artists spend a lot of time thinking. We work on very long timescales, whereas economists view time differently. I have had works in progress for 15 years. For that, you need to meet other people and you need support. We dream about the future but we are tomorrow’s antiques. After all, the life expectancy of an artist is eternity.

Louis SCHWEITZER Barthélémy Toguo, what’s your point of view?

Barthelémy TOGUO Artist (Cameroun)

My approach is different. I was born in Cameroun in 1967. I went to the fine arts school in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast when I was 20. I failed twice - or rather, because of colonisation, I realised that we had lost of a lot of traditional art. Even contemporary art does not stay in Africa. So I decided to run a project to keep contemporary African art in Africa - or some of it at least. People from around the world can come and visit this personal project into which I have put income generated from art. It is a sort of Medici villa. European artists come and develop projects that are in resonance with the local community. It is now being completed. As an African of the African Diaspora it is a way that I can give back and put some of my expertise and knowledge back into Africa. It is up to Africans today to build our continent. This project is paired with a farming project, a coffee plantation. It is a coffee plantation but it is also a tacit criticism of how coffee prices are set on the global market. I am trying to create a cultural and agricultural project in an area where the state has failed - the government has not realised that art and culture can drive development.

Louis SCHWEITZER Souleymane Cissé, what is your point of view on this subject? You travelled a lot before returning to Africa.

Souleymane CISSÉ Film director (Mali)

We presented a film at the Cannes Film Festival this year in the official film section. We subsequently had the problem of which cinema to show this film in, in Africa. I made some comments on this subject yesterday which I think were misunderstood. To provide some background, 10 or 15 years ago the most democratic African countries sold off their movie theatres. I found this contrary to democracy as movie theatres are where people learn and grow, and democracy is about supporting and helping people grow. Today, millions of people in Africa cannot watch movies because of this. I wanted to raise the question of what could be. European partners told me ‘We will not come and build in your country - it is up to you to do so’. I replied ‘You are right but what you are overlooking is that when you are interested, you will come’. I said this to a good friend, and he turned on his heels and left; he obviously felt guilty about it. Nobody seems to want to build film theatres in Africa and nobody likes to talk about this matter. We are not coming cap in hand. What we would like is to know how we can implement a new policy and form of cooperation with African countries in the field of culture. Mali, for example, has huge

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org cultural wealth and music is particularly important but it is very badly run. Film - forget about it. The universities sold off the movie theatres but you feel like you are talking to the illiterate. This is not a criticism or a global attack - it is just an observation. Problems with Africa affect Africa and the rest of the world. We are not the centre of the world but what impacts Africa impacts everybody. My question is, how can we work with friends to sort this out? There was a time when thanks to Francophonia, films were produced by the Francophone Agency allowing African films directed in French to be seen in Europe. That quota has now been abolished. Europeans were asked to do the same thing for Africa and this did not happen. I do not want to bore you with these problems but what I have learned in these two days has given me strength to believe that this can and will change.

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Saturday November 21st

Closing session

PROPOSALS AND LESSONS LEARNED

Louis SCHWEITZER

All of the debates over the two days have been well-structured because they were based on three different, well-designed studies. Firstly, there was a study by Bain & Cie on innovation and creation; secondly a study carried out by Ineum Consulting on the cultural attractiveness of territories; and thirdly a study on taxes by Ernst & Young. The debates were based on studies containing specific proposals and therefore were more than the friendly chats of last year. The forum is moving away from the theoretical toward the practical. There are a number of salient points to bear in mind when summarising the Forum. Firstly, an international view, as developed in the different studies, is important. Exchange and benchmarks are important as business leaders and artists always learn from others. Secondly, there is the link between growth and culture. This point was discussed last year and we went over it again yesterday. Culture has an important role to play in the economic recovery. This year we are in a different position as economic stimulus plans have been adopted and we are now looking at how to emerge from the economic crisis and how to structure future economic growth. Culture is a fundamental aspect of healthy growth. The more culture we have the more it whets your appetite and the more you want. Cultural growth is infinite growth as opposed to the car industry, for example; more than one or two cars does not make a person happier. Furthermore, cultural growth is environment friendly growth and it is sustainable; it does not endanger the well-being of future generations. On the contrary, it enriches the heritage of future generations. A number of studies, including the Stiglitz Report for France’s President, show that monetary growth has decreasing returns at the margins in terms of happiness and well-being. In contrast, cultural growth has increasing returns. It provides more and more as it continues, and it is part of a collective good. I define culture as an encounter between creation, either present or past, and the open-mindedness of an audience. Hence, we must work toward strengthening this creation and strengthening audience receptiveness to this creation. There were many interesting and relevant issues discussed during this forum however the moment that crystallised what we mean here was the concert that we saw this morning. Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal provided an excellent illustration of unity of a north-south dialogue and cross-cultural dialogue. As Nicolas Seydoux noted, this was the event that received the most applause in the entire forum. This demonstrates that culture is not just received through words and that audiences can be convinced by alternative means to words. We must broaden both the strength of creation and audience receptiveness.

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There were some interesting subjects covered in the forum, including tax policy. The good news is that a lot of countries have adopted tax breaks for culture, with France leading the way. This is not surprising but it is heartening. The third piece of news is that China provides tax breaks for emerging artists. China is an emerging power and they have the most tax measures to stimulate culture. That is an interesting challenge to meet. The former Quebec Prime Minister discussed a tax measure to foster creativity on the Internet, in which half of the salaries are subsidised. Montreal has done this. It has become the world’s leader and has recouped its investments. The income generated is higher than the tax breaks given, showing that this is not just charity and that subsidising culture makes good economic sense. Another major subject was regional development policies. Many cities were held up as examples in which cultural development strategies have been successful. The great thing about culture is that in cultural competition there are no winners and losers; there is simply a collective gain. I will not give too many examples, but I will give one small example of the city of Nancy in Eastern France. This is a university town which has a significant cultural heritage. A report tabled in the forum shows that the engineering and mining schools have formed a school federation with the fine art school. This is such a cutting edge idea that it took about 10 years for everybody to sign on. The idea behind this is that culture does not exist in a ghetto. It is viable and it is part of our lives. There is also the example of Berlin which has tried to recover and build itself through culture, although the jury is still out on this point. Return on investment is never guaranteed and returns do not necessarily go to those who invest the funds. Public authorities have an important role in supervising investments to ensure that this is well managed. The level of public financing is often decisive. It is important to discuss private and public partnerships - these cannot be walled off from one another. In France, for example, historical monuments and the theatre are jointly managed by private and public sectors. The public sector is clearly the key to success. As in any other sector, rigorous management is essential in culture. The Avignon Festival, for example, is an excellent example of robust management. Excellent management is necessary for success in culture. Innovation models were also discussed for a creation-based economy. These relate to the digital revolution and the revolution of the ecosystem of culture industries. Unlike the first two topics of the forum, this third topic left me with more questions than answers. There are a number of issues to bear in mind. Firstly, the issue of free access to culture. Some people say that a paying public is better than a public that does not pay. I’m not sure of that. However, free culture means that there will be better access to culture. Studies have shown that more content creators may undermine the quality of that content. 10,000 television channels, for example, does not necessarily mean that the quality will be better than if there were just 15 channels. It is probably better to have 10,000 channels than a single television channel. However there is a balance to strike between these two extremes. Free access is great but creators need to be compensated. There cannot be a multitude of creators without having professional artists. Amateur involvement is great in music and theatre, for example, but professional involvement is necessary to maintain quality. Professionals need to be able to make a living. The only way to support artistic creation is to pay artists. The forecasts for the Internet are not necessarily optimistic. For example, having more newspaper content available on the Internet does not necessarily translate to more sales. Many readers consult newspapers on line; newspapers need to find new sources of revenue as readership ages. New sources of revenue must be found, either through payment for online newspaper access or through

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Forum d’Avignon – Culture, economy, media – Acts 2009 – www.forum-avignon.org online advertising revenue. Media outlets need to be assessed and analysed by non-professionals. Plantu noted that there are often mistakes on the Internet – for example on Wikipedia - and it can be very difficult to correct errors. I often see mistakes on my own curriculum vitae on the Internet and it can be impossible to have them corrected. Music is also threatened by Internet and tomorrow books will be concerned like the other sectors. There are many positive ideas, even if these do not resolve all of the problems. One of the first initiatives has been proposed by France and I hope that this comes into effect. This is a large borrowing plan by France with 4 billion euros earmarked for digital policy. I hope that this earmarked budget will increase and I hope that it will serve as important funding for digitalising our literary heritage. We cannot allow a monopoly on digitalisation; there is no such thing as a benevolent monopoly. The second positive idea is for a European-led approach from Brussels for indirect taxation of the Internet and of electronic operations. Discussions about a moratorium, on zero taxation, is a bit unrealistic, but we do need to think about tax policy on an international level, and particularly on a European level. In conclusion, there are three words that are used in France when talking about globalisation. Firstly, globalisation implies an interconnected world, which does not necessarily mean the best of worlds. Secondly, globalisation can be seen as a kind of standardisation, which is not desirable. Thirdly, there is internationalisation, which I understand to mean an increase in wealth and resources, a world that opens a cultural dialogue between all cultures. Ultimately, each country is responsible for ensuring that its culture is heard and flourishes. One of the objectives of French foreign policy is to ensure that French culture and language have an international voice and presence. We need to ensure that there is no world cultural impoverishment due to internationalization, but rather that the opposite happen, and that across the world everybody has access to culture.

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Saturday November 21st

Closing session The blossoming of cultures

CONCLUSION

S.EM. Abdou DIOUF Secretary-General of the International Organisation of the Francophonie (Senegal)

It is a delight to be here in the closing ceremony of your forum in the presence of the good and the great from culture, industry and the media. I wish to thank the organizers, Minister Frédéric Mitterrand and Nicolas Seydoux for inviting me it indicates the support that Francophonia has. This year the French Ministry for Culture, which has been an outstanding international year, celebrated its 50th anniversary. It is no coincidence that Francophonia is itself preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary next March - further evidence of the growing power of culture over the last half century. Cultural issues will be involved in shaping tomorrow’s world that we see emerging before us because globalisation is unstoppable. Globalisation means that we must face daily crises, upheavals and challenges. Everyday globalisation tightens our interdependency. It has become irreversible. By intensifying and multiplying interactions between societies and their cultures, globalisation is closing the gaps among us. The issue raised by globalisation is not about how to have more trade but how to co-manage our future; how we can live together whilst being different. This is a complex issue that necessarily requires a complex answer. We will only be able to give a partial answer until the time that geo-cultural does not take over from the geo-economic. Answers do not come from market or national regulatory solutions. If we want to grow human warmth and affection below the icy peaks of speculation, as Teilhard de Chardin said, if we want to give globalisation its soul and the geo-cultural challenges to become fully fledged tenets of global governance; if we want to be more peaceful, democratic and cooperative - and we all want these things - then, as a prerequisite, we must recognise and conclude that the big battles being fought today are about conquering minds and not territory. The international media oligarchy largely control what we see on our screens. We must recognise that some are willing to waive the threat of the clash of civilisations or even hijack culture for warlike or hegemonistic purposes - this is power, just like military force or economic power. Taking a defensive approach allows us to resist this power but never to conquer it. If we want today’s geo-cultural challenges to become fully fledged global governance, we have to put an end to the idea that some are entitled to impose their ideas, behaviours, collective values, and vision of the world on others simply because they have a universal economic paradigm. We are all part of mankind but cultures remain in the plural.

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We have to get rid of the idea that by erasing cultural differences, we will have a common destiny. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, unifying means to better recognise diversities and not to ignore them. We must turn our backs on the idea that defending cultural diversity will be a necessary and sufficient prerequisite. The UNESCO Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, strongly supported by Francophonia, is symbolically and legally a major success. The defense of cultural diversity is, however, only useful if it is supported by a strategy that promotes genuine cultural diversity. That is, a will to recognise that all cultures are equal and to recognise and acknowledge others to live with our differences in an approach driven by interaction and reciprocity. There will be no fruitful dialogue and fair exchange or trade until we close the gaping abyss that is growing – for example, in terms of cultural flows - and to rectify asymmetry in the globalisation of cultural industries and the share-out of their economic gains. Inequalities of access to modern production and dissemination facilities exist, namely via the Internet. While the web may be a poison, it may also be the antidote, as the Minister rightly said. We have done our best to ensure this in the Francophonia movement. There are possibilities for artists from southern countries to circulate freely. In modern society free thought and creation have often been expelled and not allowed to stay. A propituous framework is necessary for real exchange. In a world where things are changing - without doing away with nation states – and where all individuals identify themselves with multiple references, we may be able to satisfy man’s desire for society, at both the local and international level. We would have to come up with new political paradigms to ensure the involvement of all stakeholders. We must also identify the relevant spaces. What we call ‘globalisation’ often involves regional groups or countries with historical ties, as seen in the economic unions that are springing up. As citizens find it hard to identify with GDP or economic-based grouping, a better buy-in is mikely where there are cultural connections within those unions. Our inter-dependence will not be a form of tension but a driver of mobilisation and the foundation of a new economy based on solidarity. We could imagine that major cultural areas would become the perfect expression of this new world. In all modesty Francophonia, which covers several continents with different cultures and religions, sees these trends everyday within itself and in its relations with other unions, such as Portuguese- speaking, Spanish, Arabic Latin American and English speaking unions. We must show that the opposition between the cultural and the economic is finished. We must now look to the private and public sector for cultural and economic operators and political stakeholders. We must ensure that in cultural policies there is room for market interests but that there is also room for risks, for differences and dissidents. It is up to you to wish it with all your hearts and it is up to us to plan for it with our minds. As Albert Camus said, all authentic creation is a gift to the future. Thank you.

I would just like to add a few more words to what Souleyman Cissé said earlier. I share his opinion and if I had more time I would like to continue his analysis and flesh out some of his ideas.

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Frédéric MITTERRAND Minister of culture and communication (France)

Firstly, I would like to thank the Secretary-General of Francophonia for honouring us with his presence and I would like to acknowledge the valuable work he does. Francophonia is more than a club of French speakers; it is a network of humanists spanning continents and different histories and a forum of identity. There is the identity of a shared language and diversity and a meeting point for diverging views. Francophonia is one of the international and mobile cultural landscapes which is a major player in the world today and in the world to come, as described by Arjun APPADURAI, professor at New York University. Culture is fundamental and it is not simply ornamental or supplemental. Culture corresponds to Stendhal’s definition of beauty, that culture provides a promise of happiness, and shape and colour to our lives. Culture can stimulate our striving, and also calm it. It is a defining thing in regional and community development as a factor to attract inhabitants and businesses, a way of attracting men and women to a place that they learn to love, setting in place a positive spiral of social and economic development. Digital technologies bring us back to pharmacon - a double-edged sword - a powerful poison which can also be an antidote when used in the right dose. We cannot live alone looking at screens and trains. More positively, however, digital technologies can provide an opportunity to travel and meet people. In our contemporary mode of life and travel, digital technologies are a form of Diaspora, hence I firmly believe in the importance of digitalising our cultural heritage. On that note, I would like to thank Christian de Boissieu for yesterday, when he advocated funding in the national borrowing plan in France. The visibility of culture in the digital world is essential. This could include a digital visit of the Palais des Papes, where we have met for this forum, or digitalising museum collections in the world. This is a way to spark interest as well as create a sense of rootedness and loyalty. In our dynamic and changing world where there are many dichotomies - a fascination for images and a desire for the real, and conflict between the ancient and the modern, between being rooted and not rooted - a new way of meaning and living rests on culture and communication, and on the economy. This Forum has emphasised the cultural attractiveness of our regions and of Avignon, where we have an incredible architectural framework, in addition to the landscape which has also been shaped by human culture. In addition, there is the theatre festival and the Off Festival - there are many things that attract us to this wonderful city. The economic crisis has made a number of things obvious. For example, the economic attractiveness of a region and place lie in the happiness that it promises and delivers. This is something that has been built up over the centuries by the value of all values - culture. The equations behind culture are very complicated and some of the consultancy studies that we have been shown today indicate that there are complex interactions between culture and economics. Relations are subtle and complex, rather than linear. This is something that investors everywhere try to understand.

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In order to stimulate the cultural economy, to ensure that it is sustainable and that we can carry it forward for centuries - the centuries that went into this Palace, for example - we should stimulate the kind of investment that we are requesting for digitalising cultural heritage. In addition, we must also bring down obstacles to creativity and dissemination. We have learnt from the studies shown here that there are more than 300 tax incentives implemented across the world in order to stimulate cultural activities. The Ernst & Young study showed that these incentives are effective and useful. France has been creative in this field, as Louis Schweitzer showed. Other great cultural nations such as China have also implemented a number of tax incentives, as Louis Schweitzer also recalled. Nevertheless we still need to design the right tax incentives for a digital culture. We cannot apply analogue solutions to the digital world; we cannot copy and paste. We should stimulate creativeness for its own sake but also for the sake of quality, and in particular the quality of young rising talent. For this reason, I have requested that the European Commission renew the four year tax credit for discs, in order to help stimulate the development of new artists. In addition, this will boost the purchasing power of fans. This is a good example of an effective and low cost initiative. Some of the reforms suggested by Ernst & Young include some things that I have been working on in close cooperation with my colleague, the Minister for the Economy, Christine Lagarde. Notably, there is the extension of the use of paying back taxes through donating art works. I would also like to see a reduced VAT or sales tax for works of arts online, as well as of books, something that Mr Gallimard mentioned. Reduced VAT would boost the purchasing power of music and literary fans, thus boosting the cultural offerings legally available on the Internet. This would reduce the rate of illegal downloading. Reduced cost is important. I think that this is the right solution, as opposed to free access. Free access is deceptive as it often means that somebody else bears the cost, for example tax payers. Free access to culture leads to acquisitiveness - the idea that more is better - rather than focusing on quality. Free access can be used as a tool to encourage the interest of young people culture - free access into museums or free subscription newspapers. But free access should not become the norm as this is also a pharmacon; it can be either a poison or an antidote. Beyond free access, the attractiveness of culture depends on the diversity of culture in a given region which sees a new way of connecting with the world as a whole. Once again I would like to pay tribute to the Avignon Forum, which is an excellent forum for promoting diversity in culture. This was laid out in the speech by Irina Bokova and the presentation of the convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions. These discussions have demonstrated the two-fold value of cultural goods as symbols and wealth. The third round table on innovation clearly demonstrated this. We must look beyond GDP and defining wealth is important in order to define what tomorrow’s world will look like. We must find the right way of measuring well-being. Culture has to be a form of well-being and it could even be called a form of ecology. The Stiglitz Report published in September should show us the way. This Report points to the failure of current indicators, which did not prevent the current economic crisis. These were found to be too focused on stock market values and financial wealth - things that develop asset bubbles. We need to develop indicators to measure health, well-being, education and access to housing. This can be done by building on tangible data.

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Culture is an essential part of well being. Culture is an essential aspect of education; it opens minds and allows people to understand and use symbols. It is a way of reaching out to people and of weaving the social fabric. This leads to economic value. 2.6% of the GDP of the European Union is culture, totalling more than EUR 650 billion. More than 5 billion people work in the cultural sector in Europe, representing more than 2.4% of total employment. These numbers are rising. The study on innovation presented by Bain & Cie shows that culture’s value chain is shifting. The Internet accounts for one fifth of world-wide profits from cultural industries. Between 2000 and 2009 media profits from the internet rose from 4% to 22% . The Internet will soon become the leading tool tp disseminate culture. The Internet is a new set of instruments, cultural practices and territories. If used with the right instruments and well-regulated, culture on the Internet will serve as an excellent way to reach out to one another. However, spending all day on the Internet and Googling all day cannot replace being in a time and place meeting people face to face and connecting. Rather, the Internet prompts us to come together. The debates here in this prestigious setting and the lofty ideas expressed here is proof of that. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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Board

Nicolas Seydoux, Chairman, Chairman of the Supervisory board, Gaumont Hervé Digne, Vice-Chairman, President,Postmédia Finance Axel Ganz, Vice-Chairman, Head of AG-COMM Emmanuel Hoog, Treasurer, CEO, INA

Jean-Jacques Annaud, Film director Patricia Barbizet, Vice-chairman of the Board of PPR, Chairman of Christie’s Laurent Benzoni, Chairman, Tera Consultants Guillaume Boudy, Secretary general, Ministère de la culture et de la communication Mats Carduner, Managing director, GOOGLE France et Europe du Sud Emmanuel Chain, Chairman, Elephant et Cie Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Former Minister Laurence Franceschini, Director general for media and creative industries (Ministère de la Culture et de la communication) Georges-François Hirsch, Director general for creation (Ministère de la Culture et de la communication) Alain Kouck, CEO, Editis Holding Vénonique Morali, Chairman of Terrafemina, Chairman of Fimalac Pascal Rogard, Managing director, SACD

Management

Laure Kaltenbach, Managing director [email protected] Alexandre Joux, Director [email protected] Grand Palais des Champs Elysées 75008 Paris – France +33 (0) 1 42 25 69 10

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