English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Welcome to the Norwegian collective Alt går bra 0:00 Credits Good evening dear friends, dear companions of confined deconfinement, that's pretty much the regime we live under now.
0:48 Dear friends, dear comrades, I don't need to insist on the fact that today we have a very special live session, one which, I hope, inaugurates a series that should prove fruitful. I'm not going to annoy you with my digressions and the way I steal a bit of the time for questions when I run over the hour and a half allotted to me — you're going to be spared all that, because the floor belongs to our guests tonight.
1:23 I am very, very happy that they agreed to take part in this live session tonight. These are our comrades from Norway, better known as the association Art Går Bra. Art Går Bra — though I'm mispronouncing it anyway. But it means "everything's fine," doesn't it? I was about to say it in Norwegian, but let's not exaggerate. So I won't delay in handing them the floor, but I'll just mention that Agnès and Branko, who are both the founders and who represent Art Går Bra here, along with their comrade Oscar, who is our British friend, and Dominique, who lives in Paris, who reside in Paris and who has also kindly agreed to take part in the meeting.
2:29 Agnès, for her part, is also president of the Association of Visual Artists of Norway. So I thought that, during this series I've been doing for a few weeks now, whose central theme is the relationship between aesthetics and politics, their presence — if I speak like journalists, I'd say — seemed essential, but I'll avoid that cliché; I think it's above all precious.
2:59 I won't say any more, because it's up to them to explain to you how this kind of dialectic between aesthetics and politics plays out in a context like that of Norway. I'll say it in their place, but it shouldn't be forgotten because it's rarely mentioned: Norway has the highest standard of living per capita in the world. I'm not talking about some small principality or isolated emirate. Per capita, even higher than Switzerland.
3:30 So, defending the banner of Marxism, of Hegelianism, of Clouscardism — I say that because when I was invited to their place in Bergen, I had the pleasure and the joy of seeing a Clouscard book cover on the window facing the street as I arrived at their place. You see, that's what you find at the bottom of the fjords thanks to them. So I'm going to hand them the floor, they'll introduce themselves, and in any case I leave them total sovereignty as to the agenda and the order of this presentation.
The encounter of Diogenes and Alexander in painting 4:03 And of course, you'll be entitled to ask whatever questions interest you about their talk during the last half hour as usual. So I hand the floor here to Branko Borero, who of the two of them is perhaps the more comfortable in French, though I find Agnès manages much better in French than I do in Norwegian. Over to you, Branko. Ok, hello everyone. Hello Dominique. Thank you very much for inviting us. I think we'll start by saying hello to everyone.
4:43 Yes hello. Hello everyone. Thank you Dominique. Thank you for the invitation, Dominique. Thank you all. We want to start with an introduction. And in this introduction, we're going to share quotations in two kinds of formats, the image format and the text format.
5:25 These quotations perhaps don't have a very obvious connection between them, and they perhaps don't have a very obvious connection with the presentation as a whole either. However, we hope that these quotations will help us reflect on our work in this presentation.
6:00 We're going to start with an image that we're going to share on the screen. So this image is an image that we suspect — I think you can already see it on the screen, Dominique or Oscar. Yes, we can see it very well. Yes, OK. We suspect that this image no longer has importance in the history of what has been credited.
6:39 So, in fact, I can say that this image is an image that appears to us — an image that deserves more reflection. In this image we see a meeting, the meeting between Alexander of Macedon, called Alexander the Great, and a philosopher, the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, known as Diogenes the Cynic.
7:22 In this image, I hope we can see the cursor. Very good. But in this image there are several elements, but we want you to focus on four elements. Two figures, Alexander and Diogenes — Alexander in red, Diogenes on the ground in black. The dogs next to Alexander, and Diogenes' dwelling place.
8:09 We'll talk about all that later. We also want to note that, unlike other figures such as Julius Caesar and even Augustus, Alexander and this particular subject of his meeting with Diogenes — Alexander has been a very widespread subject among artists, very popular. So, unlike other historical figures, Alexander received a great deal of attention from artists.
8:48 This painting is only one example. We also have illustrations of this meeting between Alexander and Diogenes the Cynic in the well-known bas-relief by Pierre Puget, which we also want to share. In this bas-relief by Pierre Puget, which is in the Louvre, we can also appreciate the four elements. We see Alexander on his horse, we see Diogenes also on the ground, in almost the same position in both, and we see the dogs.
9:42 Alexander and Diogenes' dwelling place. Antonio [sic]. We also have the same theme with the English painter Edwin Landseer. It's a very courteous painting that became very popular in print form.
10:13 And these paintings are a parody in which we see the same characters painted directly as animals. So here again we have the same four elements, but Landseer adds a fifth element. So we see that Alexander is the black dog. We recognized him.
10:43 Who is the white dog. We see that Diogenes is the black dog. We don't see one dog but the dogs. We only see one dog. And we also see Diogenes' dwelling place, which in this case suits a dog more than a philosopher. Landseer adds a fifth element, which we can see at the bottom left of the screen: the lantern.
11:19 The lantern and his dwelling place are attributes of Diogenes of Sinope. And perhaps, among the three illustrations of these meetings, it is precisely these paintings by Landseer that bring us closest to the idea we want to grasp here in this introduction.
Animality as the model of cynicism 11:51 So the idea we want to grasp is precisely the idea of animality, of animals, animality, as we clearly see in these paintings. We want to note that there are several anecdotes surrounding the meetings of Diogenes and Alexander. For example, a very well-known anecdote is when Alexander asks Diogenes if he needs anything.
12:29 And Diogenes answers him, "Yes, stand a little out of my sunlight." Alexander, it is said, was greatly struck by this answer, and by the contempt that Diogenes had expressed in saying to him, "Yes, stand a little out of my sunlight."
13:00 So Alexander wants to flatter the philosopher and says, "If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes." Far from winning Diogenes over, he gets the following reply from him. Diogenes says to him, "If I were not Diogenes, I too would wish to be Diogenes."
13:37 All these exchanges are interesting and even amusing, on the level of wit. But we should direct our attention to Diogenes' own self-identification. So what interests us is how Diogenes presents himself.
14:12 And as whom he identifies himself in front of Alexander. Alexander presents himself by saying, "I am the great king Alexander," and Diogenes presents himself by saying, "And I am Diogenes, the dog." And when Diogenes is asked why he calls himself the dog, he answers, "Because I fawn on those who give to me, I bark at those who don't give to me, and I bite those who are rascals."
15:12 So we've said all that and shown these images, noting the presence of dogs, precisely to speak of animality. And how animality is an essential element of the philosophy of Diogenes, of the Cynics, that is, of Cynicism. For animality is taken as a model for two central ideas of Cynicism.
15:51 One central idea of Cynicism is frugality — being frugal, not wasteful. And based on this idea that nature and animals are frugal, if one acts with frugality, one arrives at the other idea of Cynicism. And this idea is that of autarky. So that doesn't mean democracy, where the demos, the people, govern, but a state where government is self-government, autarky.
16:38 Cynicism takes animality as its model: frugality and autarky. And this is the moment to recall that the word "cynicism" — "Diogenes the Cynic" — actually means "Diogenes the dog." So the word "cynicism" — most of us forget what it actually means.
17:11 To coin words that didn't exist in French, a literal translation of "cynicism" would be "doggism" or "caninism." So there's still the root "canine," which is the root of "cynic" or "kynikos," meaning "dogs" — like "canine" in English. Literally, Diogenes was called Diogenes the dog.
17:41 Returning to animality as inspiration for Cynic philosophy, we also learn that animality provides a model for the absence of privacy, as well as other customs drawn from animals. So another element, a third element, is the absence of what we might call shame.
18:12 And one can say that by urinating, by relieving himself, and by masturbating in public marketplaces, Diogenes was affirming his own self-sufficiency as a man for himself. He became well known as this person who, as we've seen, lived in the street; he didn't work, of course, he always had a bowl into which people could give him food and money.
18:52 And also, he lived in the same way publicly as privately. So he urinated and defecated outdoors, in the marketplaces. He lived in this... barrel. He lived in what in Greek is a very large jar called the pithos.
19:22 So these jars were used to store either liquid or food, but also, because they were so large, sometimes used as coffins. That's an interesting connection already. The disciples and heirs of Diogenes the Cynic, among whom we count the founding fathers of Stoicism, another philosophical school called Stoicism.
20:07 So there was Zeno of Citium — among his heirs and disciples, they carried the model of animality even further than their master, Diogenes the Cynic, going as far as to propose things like incest and cannibalism. So we've discussed three elements: frugality, autarky, and the lack of distinction between private and public life.
Cynical cosmopolitanism: physis against nomos 20:49 All of it was inspired by animality. We would like to add a fourth element, also inspired by animality and nature for the Cynics, and that is cosmopolitanism. Diogenes the Cynic was the first to use the word "cosmopolitan" in speaking of himself.
21:20 Diogenes presented himself to Alexander as a dog, and he defined himself as a cosmopolitan. So a cosmopolitan means a "polites," a citizen, not of the polis, the city, but of the cosmos. Diogenes was the first to call himself cosmopolitan, a citizen of the cosmos. What does cosmopolitanism mean? For the Cynics it means two things at once.
22:07 First, the rejection of citizenship in the polis, in the city, and the affirmation of belonging to a cosmic community. So he doesn't belong to the everyday, real community — where you see neighbors, citizens who live and act in the same city — but he lives in a cosmic community.
22:47 So that means, that means there is a rejection of nomos, a rejection of law, the law of the city, in the name of physis, of nature. So, to be a cosmopolitan in the Cynic sense, one must reject nomos, the law of the city, because one must follow physis, nature.
23:28 Man constitutes himself in harmony and in accordance with the universe and its natural laws — not human laws of the polis, of the city, but, agreed, we respect natural laws. We live in the cosmos in harmony with plants and animals.
23:59 The Cynic carries his cosmic community with other Cynics. The Cynic is autarkic, self-governing through his own authority. However, there is nonetheless a community, but this community is a cosmic community. This community is formed by other Cynics, other wise men who dwell in the universe, in the cosmos, not in the city.
24:36 So these wise men are found, they dwell, they make up the community of cosmopolitan sages. So that's it, the sages — as we saw in the paintings, in the [Landseer painting?], we see that the lantern is added.
25:16 So the lantern is Diogenes the Cynic's attribute, the object he used to walk through the polis searching for wise men like himself, whom of course he could never find. So cosmopolitanism is life in conformity with nature. Frugality and autarky are key concepts of Cynicism.
From Stoicism to manifest destiny 25:54 And at the same time, these concepts are constitutive elements of the philosophical current that the Cynics inspired. This philosophical current is Stoicism, whose founder, as we already said, is Zeno of Citium. So now we can return to the initial image illustrating the encounters between Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander of Macedon. And we come back to conclude with two visions from Antiquity. What is Stoicism?
26:47 In Antiquity, two visions are proposed: that of Plutarch, who identifies Stoicism precisely with the new world order created by Alexander, and that of Cicero, who associates Stoicism with the beneficent Roman expansionism that brought civilization and order to the provinces.
27:32 Domenico Losurdo wrote extensively on the implementation of the ideas of perpetual peace and universalism. Domenico Losurdo did not really make a connection with Antiquity when he speaks of this concept, but he speaks of Kant.
28:14 He does this in his book "A World Without War," the idea of the promises of peace from the past to the tragedy of the present. This work, "A World Without War," is complemented by his very well-known book "Liberalism: A Counter-History." In these books, Liberalism: A Counter-History, Losurdo analyzes, among several ideas, the idea you now see illustrated on the screen.
28:54 This illustration on the screen, called "American Progress," is the representation of a very widespread idea that Losurdo talks about a great deal. It is the idea of Manifest Destiny. This idea is very well represented by this illustration we see on the screen, which actually looks like a large illustration, but it is only a very small painting. It became very popular in the United States as a reproduction. So here we see the original painting.
29:43 So in this painting, we can see an allegory of Columbia, the woman at the center, who carries the telegraph wires. As you can see, in her hands there is a cable, it's the cable on the screen, and she also brings with her a wave of progress, the most advanced means of transport of the time, like trains, and in general she brings civilization to the people.
Hegel: religion and politics "birds of a feather" 30:24 We want to finish this introduction with two quotations from thinkers we are very familiar with. I'm talking about Hegel and Clouscard. To set a bit of context for this whole introduction, first we'll read the Hegel quotation.
31:00 And there, he speaks of the Hegel quotation following the excellent book by Bernard Bourgeois called Hegel's Political Thought. However, when the quotation says the word "religion," we think that this word can be replaced with other words, other concepts that might fit better with this quotation. So "religion" and "politics" have agreed like thieves at a fair, since the former taught what despotisms wanted.
31:39 Contempt for the human species, its incapacity to achieve any good, to be something by itself. And then Michel Clouscard, following on, "I love the fixed share," the phenomenology of homo erectus will thus be that of an ethnocentrism legitimized by its intentionality, gendering things, and its humanist finality.
32:18 Will this legitimacy go so far as to justify emission—premise? And we come to say that under the aegis of Hegel's maxim, everything that is rational is real, everything that is real is rational, we are now going to discuss the practice of our collective body.
32:51 Can I make a small pause just to come back to the last quotation? Can you hear me there? Yes, it's just to clarify, sorry, it's my pedagogical habits, but for our audience, the Hegel quotation, which I have often repeated during our workshops, is taken from a letter. The very young Hegel, still a theology student, writes to Schelling, who is not yet the champion of the counter-revolution. At that point, these are three young men mad about the French Revolution, about Rousseau, about Kant, etc.
33:34 And who have just gotten into trouble because they planted a tree of liberty in the courtyard of the theology faculty where they are students. So I just want to point out that Hegel, who has a very violent tone here—this quotation is very well chosen, thank you Branko, it sums up the whole tone of the letter. "Religion and politics have agreed like thieves at a fair." I say this because we have a certain image of a mystical, religious Hegel, and we believe ourselves to be Marxian—I say Marxian on purpose—by echoing that image.
34:12 That the old Hegel of Berlin took great care not to have too much trouble with his employer—who was not called the Ministry of National Education, that's an anachronism, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs—he was watched over by censors checking whether there was too much influence of Enlightenment ideas in Hegel's teaching. But otherwise, I mean, here it's very clear that he is making a very political critique of religion.
34:42 This is not the trial that Voltaire conducts... he is not in the process of destroying metaphysics or belief; he says politics and religion have agreed like thieves at a fair, politics serving to make the people swallow the discourse that political power wants them to hear. I don't want to interrupt because that introduction was very interesting. So, do you want to leave me the questions, or shall we continue?
The neighborhood paintings in Bergen 35:18 We continue with, perhaps, you see, we have an exhibition here in the place in Norway, in Bergen. And this is an exhibition made up of images of paintings that belong to neighbors of the place. And so, these are images that are very well known by the Norwegian people.
35:51 These are paintings that date from after the last world war. And the painters themselves sold these paintings by knocking on the neighbors' doors. And that is a very popular economy, we could say. That meant everyone had the opportunity to have a real oil painting on canvas in their home.
36:30 And that became a way of life for these painters. So this is something very specific done here in Bergen, in this neighborhood. But we are also trying to understand this phenomenon better because no one has written anything, no academic study, we might say, on this painting phenomenon. Even though we know they produced an enormous number of these paintings.
37:05 They are everywhere, everywhere. Every family has paintings like this. Here again, I'll make a small comment because what is brought up here is very rich and not very familiar to the French audience. You know, in Germany, they say a Frenchman is a short man with a moustache who doesn't know his geography well. Well, there you go, we often ignore what happens among others, a bit like the Americans, for different but analogous reasons. At one time, we were America.
37:41 So, since the whole world, that is Europe, spoke French at the time, we weren't going to bother learning other people's languages, and the Americans now are a bit the same. So that's why I allow myself to make a few clarifications. When Agnès says here, strictly speaking, it's about the city of Bergen where our friends live. I recall that Bergen was, for nearly ten centuries, the capital of Norway, well before Oslo. And that the hardy Viking merchants who went to colonize Greenland—Iceland first, then Greenland—set off from Bergen, which was both a major commercial and military hub. But that's not all. What she just recalled is the presence, richness and vitality of this popular art.
38:34 Now, this is hard to convey in France, especially in France, because France—I don't say this pejoratively, it's just a different kind of thing—France is known above all for an elitist, court literature and art. The historical importance of Versailles, the model that it set, the fact that from Racine onward, one never says of a girl "she's magnificent," one says "she's not bad," because only the king is magnificent.
39:04 So you understand that we... You see, this is how we've been taught litotes, the French language. And so, very quickly, the popular among us has been turned into folklore. It became somewhat pejorative, somewhat folklorized. Now, in countries on the periphery of Europe, whether the northern periphery, as is the case in Scandinavia, or the eastern periphery, as is the case among Slavic peoples in particular—I mean, the popular foundation is extremely alive. Look in Kusturica's films at the importance of popular music as soon as there's a wedding. It's not folklore. Nor is it a sound system with an amp playing music that comes from 10,000 km away, even if it's good—that's not the point. No, these are Serbian, popular, Russian, Norwegian musics. What we're seeing here is very important.
39:58 That's the first point. The second point is the extraordinary political work that Agnès and Branko do, in all modesty—because they don't spell it out, because they are modest, or rather they're not modest, they're humble, which is even deeper—that is, they go door to door to collect these paintings. In other words, there are many among us who talk about city art, street art, you know.
40:29 And in fact, it's always the same cosmopolitanism, isn't it? That is, we say here, look, typically Norwegian jewelry, and we see the same in Tokyo, we see the same at my place in Corsica in summer—it's always the same things. I call it Japanese-Scandinavian jewelry. You see, to be clear, that has nothing truly popular about it at all. Just as—this is a bit of a refrain of mine—pop music has liquidated the popular musics that were rich, abundant and diverse in each region. So, what they're doing is very politically important: allowing a neighbor—a neighbor is neither a social nor a political determination, but it's a very important determination at the level of the city, or rather it's a political relationship in the ancient sense of the term, isn't it?
41:22 Well, it's my closest fellow citizen, and it's very important that my neighbor can think he's going to be exhibited. It's extraordinary. So there, I pay tribute in passing to this initiative that you present in a somewhat marginal way, and I find it already goes far beyond what claims to be avant-garde elsewhere. There, I give you back the floor.
Banners and acanthus: the art of everyday life 41:53 Actually, this exhibition is part of a series of three exhibitions done in the same way. We already did one with the banners, which is also a very important phenomenon in Norway. The large fabric banner with embroidery decorations and paintings. We make our own banner too.
42:24 And here in this exhibition, we made copies of some of these paintings that we're showing. And it's always the same thing, it's a communication with the neighborhood, who lend us their own works to exhibit here. The next one, maybe you want to talk about it already, is the acanthus. We have three in this series where we try to appreciate the value of everyday art, of art in daily life.
43:06 Most people don't think that the banners we carry for May Day or for independence days in our regions lack works of art, but we try to highlight their aesthetic value. We also try to value everyday paintings, the painting of houses, like this one.
43:40 The next one will be about the acanthus, so the acanthus and plants. It's about the plant, the acanthus plant, the acanthus leaves. The acanthus leaf, which people know from Corinthian columns. We see the capitals with all these very elaborate plants. These plants are very interesting because they're closely linked to the transmission [of culture].
44:17 Alexander, who spread these plants, which became the most widespread motifs geographically throughout the entire history of humanity. Alexander led... He conquered. And afterward, it also passed to China, to Japan. And it also became part of Islamic art. So all that is the acanthus.
44:59 And afterward, it also arrived in Norway. And in fact, all traditional, folk art in Norway was based on the acanthus. So that's a very strong, very obvious connection with the talk. Yes, very quickly, this was a great surprise to me, as you taught me. I thought the acanthus was represented in Norwegian decorative art, like in all the countries you mentioned, as a result of Hellenic influence.
45:32 And there, you taught me that the acanthus has always been something very popular in everyday representations, in decoration, and particularly in the carved wooden churches, which are true jewels. You should look up on Google Images the churches. There are some in Norway, there are some in Russia, countries of very great wooden forests with carved wood where the acanthus motif is omnipresent. I give you back the floor.
46:03 That was my surprise. The acanthus is known here as "the French leaf." Right. But actually, it doesn't come from France, it comes rather from Germany and the Netherlands. You mean it passed through there? Exactly. Right, right. So shall we give the floor to you? Yes, please, Agnès.
The mimeograph, a productive force 46:36 We'd also like to give the floor to Oscar, our colleague. Yes, very gladly. They say the French are talkative and the English don't like that, so now he's going to take his revenge. I'll speak briefly about a third project we did, but actually it was rather in the same vein as the two previous projects we've discussed.
47:06 But also what Branko discussed. And it's also the image of the Facebook event. Oh yes. A mimeograph. So it was a machine called a mimeograph. In France, it was rather called a "ronéo." And like the painting, and maybe a bit like the acanthus, it was once very, very well known, very popular, very common. But today, forgotten. And in fact, it was the first photocopying machine.
47:42 For reprography. Yes, exactly. It was portable, it was easy to use. And there you go. And I'm bringing this up also because we recently did an interview in this journal. I hope you can watch it. It's called Perspective, it's the journal of the INHA, the National Institute of Art History in France. So it's an interview in French, about our work and also our research on this machine. We've been researching for five years now. And last year, we gave a conference at the University of Westminster.
48:25 And after that, we did this installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. So it was an installation with the mimeograph machine—the photo is magnificent. And we made a print, a 40-meter print I think, in that room. There you go. So if you want to see more of our work and also the theory behind our research on this machine, machine number one, you can look at this journal.
49:12 I also think it's on the INHA website. I think it's not up yet, but in a few weeks the interview will be on the website. With this photo? With this interview. With this interview, ok. I'll take advantage of what Oscar just said to point out to our regular listeners, once again—it's no coincidence to me that our friends did research, a real inquiry into the mimeograph, in the sense of "inquiry," into what? Into a productive force, to stay Marxian.
50:00 It's a progress in the technology of reproducing speech and messages. That's above all what it is. Oscar rightly says that now it's been forgotten—yes, by the younger generations certainly, which he belongs to. But I remember very well that in the high school where I taught, in every high school, before class, we'd go to the mimeograph machine, as we said, to hand out to students the texts we were going to work on. It was extremely widespread. But I'm speaking only for France, of course, in the whole developed world.
50:36 It's very interesting that people working in an artistic context focused on something that apparently isn't a work of art, even though I find this photo magnificent. But it is a masterpiece, all on its own, even a dialectic. Between this machine and the parquet floor and the paintings and the historical, traditional depth surrounding it, it's extraordinary.
"To you the pleasing, to me the making" and the margin in the page 51:07 And there's nothing jarring in this gathering. There, I give back the floor, but thank you very much for drawing attention to the mimeograph operation. Oscar reminds us of the main reason for using the mimeograph: it was in order to be able to publish our own books. So here is one of the books we published, called "We Did It All By Hand," the title of this book is a phrase from Michel Clouscard.
51:55 To me the pleasing, to you the making. That's a line from Michel Clouscard. So that's the title of the book. Absolutely. Thanks to him. I'll remind you that this is the blacksmith god, the toiler, the proletarian of Olympus, that is, Hephaestus Vulcan, speaking to Narcissus. That's what I'm showing you. Well, there it is.
52:28 Hephaestus says to Narcissus, to you the pleasing, to me the making. That's still the division today. Which makes me think, I'll make a little leap to come back to Diogenes, in case some haven't yet understood everything that's extremely rational in your introduction despite appearances, despite the disjointed, discontinuous appearances, it's very convergent. I mean, Diogenes' economy, what does he live on? You say, he lives off his little bowl, like the good Buddhists or like... I saw, I worked in Islamic countries, where imams give young people like that bowls so they go find food for him.
53:21 And that goes back to the highest antiquity, the priests of Amun in ancient Egypt, all the fellahin brought them cows, sheep, fruits, grains. It's extraordinary! And the Buddhist clergy even now in Thailand, they live off that. No, I'm just recalling that in passing. So, that's why I'm very glad that you... I remember, it's an anecdote, but I'll be quick. I was in Ivory Coast, I was... Local contracts, that means being paid like an Ivorian teacher at the time, I won't tell my whole life story, but expatriates in the heart of the jungle, in the virgin forest, there's an Amazonian-like part of Ivory Coast.
54:01 And so, we often saw each other in the small French community with our Ivorian colleagues, there were 80 of us French lost in the jungle, so to speak. Most were teachers, but others were cooperating in medicine, etc. And there were also, among us, Italian planters, pineapple or Verona planters. There was an Italian who was staying with us and who had told us over the radio, because down there that's how you communicate, they're very isolated places in the forest.
54:36 When I heard some Italians from back home who were in the desert, I picked up their car-to-car exchanges, they said they were going to arrive in Ivory Coast, I told them when you arrive come by. So I'll go quickly, we had a meal with the passing Italians, a magnificent Range Rover, mind you, that had crossed all that. And with them there was a Frenchman, here comes Diogenes. A young Frenchman, it was right after '68, you see, very much a '68er. Okay? Well, I was very glad they ate our food, drank our aperitifs, made a stop, a rest there.
55:15 But he starts to be a bit ironic about us. You're teachers, you earn your living laboriously. You see, me, I don't need to work. Me, I wanted to see Africa, well, I hitchhiked with Gino, he picked me up. I told him, you idiot, why are you spitting in the soup? At least keep quiet, be smart. Because if everyone did like you, who would pick us up hitchhiking? Diogenes' cynicism is about making people forget that for there to be a margin, marginal people, there has to be a page. The margin is within the page. If you remove the page, there's no more margin.
55:56 Millions of fools like you and me who work, I say that because I've never worked as much as since I retired, who slog away so that others can say that work isn't necessary. Heidegger the Nazi, work comes from torture. That should be left to the Marxists. There, I'll give you back the floor, but I wanted to say it. We did the English translation because there wasn't one. So that's the title.
The bilingual book and the Russophile region of the north 56:26 This is the excerpt from Progressive Refoundation. We won't be on the big screen. So I'll try to do the beginning. Hello, hello. So that's the title. And after that, inside, I'll show you a little bit. After that we quoted Rosa Parks, the civil rights movements of the United States.
57:01 It's a nice piece. The very strong line. Me, no, I don't think I have to stand up. And then, we... Oh wait, I don't know the... No, you didn't show me what you're saying. No, I didn't show that. There, there.
57:33 You have to stand up. And after, that's what we discussed a bit earlier. And yes, there. So we made a little frame. Even in English it's clear, but everything is always clearer in English. I have to keep talking.
58:05 So there we did the translations, I don't know if it's done very well, but in any case we put in the two figures of Narcissus and Vulcan, Hephaestus. I'd just like, because it's absolutely not known here in France at all, if it's alright with you, if it doesn't disrupt your program, to say a few words about this region of Norway which is almost Russophile, in this country which is nevertheless a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty, Norway, which was the cradle of NATO and which has a border with Russia, with the tensions you can imagine right now.
59:01 There is, and I learned this thanks to you, and to my great surprise, a whole region where there's great sympathy among the inhabitants, it's a rural region, so mostly Norwegian farmers, for the Russians who liberated them from the Nazi boot in 1944. But if you'd like maybe to summarize that, if that's alright with you.
59:49 And then the south to the north. But in Scandinavia, from Europe perhaps, we see the North as rural parts. But actually, I think they don't find themselves very rural because they're very close to Murmansk, you see, in Russia. And for them, it's more natural to go there than to Oslo. It takes five days by car.
1:00:22 Murmansk. Yes, that's it, the port. Yes, a city. Of course, the great Russian port. Exactly. So, there are three countries that know each other there, it's Russia, Norway and Finland. And Finland, yes. And so, because it's also a very important region, geopolitically. Of course.
1:00:53 But then, of course, for the people there, they're used to working with Russia. Historically and geographically, you mean? Yes, exactly. Decade. So, the history project. Yes, so we worked on a history project for this region. There, we found that people, as you say, for them, it's difficult to understand the sentiment against Russia.
1:01:36 Russophobia. Yes, because for them, it's like a normal legend. So to go to the theater, they go to Murmansk. Ah yes, right. Because they also have a visa, all the people who live near the border, they have a visa specifically to visit that border region. So they go listen to Ibsen or Chekhov in Murmansk? Yes, exactly.
1:02:07 There's a very rich history in this region. And particularly, this Russophobia, it's been going on for a long time too. It wasn't just recent. It was really after the Second World War and before. At the start of the Cold War, you mean. Yes, and after the Second War. The histories, of course, change and change over the years. It was an incredible region, very, very beautiful.
1:02:37 Have you been to the region, Oscar? Sorry? Have you been to the region, apparently. Yes, of course. Right. If we're speaking enthusiastically about someone who loved it. Yes, with a very, very strong history. Can you give the name of the town that's a bit central to the region so we have a reference point, if your friends want to find it. Yes, we worked in the town called Kirkenes with a K. There, Kirkenes.
1:03:07 And now, we're going to start our project again near Kirkenes, in the town called Vardø. Yes, what's interesting about Vardø is that the United States has a very large radar on the small island of Vardø. I think it's been there since after the last world war. So it's really a very tense geopolitical place.
1:03:46 Yes, but the people there, they're very... they take it as something everyday. It's very, very, very important. But they experienced something incredible there. Because Norway, we have to remember, Norway was occupied by the Nazis since the last world war. So that war, that's the most important in Norwegian history. And these regions were very important precisely for the Soviet border and the terrain.
1:04:28 So the Soviets liberated these regions six months before the rest of the country. And afterward, the Nazis burned all the regions. These are things people don't know about, that's why it's good to recall them. But we, we think we're lucky to work there.
1:05:00 Yes, but we have a bit of an illusion that the Scandinavian countries are a bit outside of space and time, seen from here, that they're on the margins of history, whereas on the contrary, there would be no Normandy for us if there hadn't been Norway or Denmark. Maybe there are questions? Philippe, maybe our listeners would be interested.
The collective, its name and the discovery of Clouscard 1:05:34 I'm interested in questions.
1:06:17 – Yes, yesterday you just gave us a little view from your balcony over the harbor. So, I'll just put...
1:07:00 First, I should say that we're a group of three members, that is, Agnès, Oskar and myself. The three of us started the groups back in 2015. And we worked in Paris and in Bergen and in London.
1:07:31 Right, essentially. So you travel a lot. Yes, but I have the impression that you're only three, that's not many, but you're relatively well known in the art scene. It seems to me. We do a lot in any case. We do more work than would be expected for three people. There, right. That's what it seemed like to me. I'll show you though.
1:08:02 And we work, we could also say, we always work under the name Alt går bra. We don't work under our own name. It's always, the thing we do, it's always the things of Alt går bra. As a collective, okay. Exactly, that's it. I'll take the opportunity to ask you to comment on why Alt går bra? Why that name? In French, so, everything's fine. Can you say why? Yes, maybe everyone knows the Godard film, it has the same name. Tout va bien.
1:08:41 Yes, absolutely. In English, it's "all is well." So, it's a bit... it raises a question, everything's fine, but it also reflects an interest in affirmative dialectics. We make an effort to really seek out affirmative dialectics in our work. So that's it.
1:09:13 I think that works very well. Right, yes. I do see the allusion to Godard, indeed. It's not really an allusion to Godard. No, but I recall the title of the film, indeed. Branko, do you have anything to add to the same question? Mr. Oskar answered very well. It remains ambiguous, it's a phrase that stays ambiguous.
1:09:44 That's a very good answer, that, not giving a univocal answer. It's also a popular phrase. Of course. Is it by chance, among the meanings, I don't want to favor one so as to respect that polyvalence, but is it among those meanings also the one that, yes, in Norway, we have no problem? We have no social problems here, there's no problem...
1:10:16 I'm not looking for that. No, no, no, no, it's fine. Yes, it's not exactly the parts. It's not a problem, it's really if there's a solution and we can find a solution. Right. Yes, hence the affirmative dialectic, indeed. Exactly. Right. Me, I'm quite surprised, I'm quite surprised by the way Michel is received. He's taken very differently by different groups, people, etc.
1:11:03 And I would have liked to know, since I know you did a show a long time ago based on the capitalism of seduction. You've done all sorts of things on that. You cited Clouscard again. Would you have a word to say? How did you come to Clouscard and what is that author's place in your work?
1:11:33 That's a good question. We met Dominique Pagani because of Clouscard. We find that the universe of discourse is closing in more and more. And we find that Clouscard brings a voice different from what we're used to and that it can help us with problems.
1:12:11 We've read quite a few of Clouscard's books, as well as other authors connected to Clouscard too. Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Lucien Goldmann, Lukács, Domenico Losurdo he suggested to us. Jacques D'Hondt, did you want to say something, Agnès?
1:12:43 Agnès, I said it. It was important for us, the ways of understanding the world that he shows. Clouscard's modeling of it. By the way, it seems to me that you knew Clouscard before you met me.
1:13:16 We met... Dominique Pagani, In Search of Clouscardity. Philippe's question comes back. What put you on Clouscard's trail? Because he's not the most widely distributed author. Not at all. If I recall correctly, it was Gilles Questiaux. He already had very good things to say about Clouscard.
1:13:47 I also find that it's among the best reviews, as we say, or the best commentaries on Clouscard's work. Coincidentally, I'll take the opportunity to point out that today, this morning, Gilles Questiaux posted on his blog a reflection on the societal movements shaking up our societies. He comes back to the MeToo wave, in particular, and to the Polanski affair. That's why I'm mentioning it. It's one of the best texts I've seen on the subject.
Bourgeois cosmopolitanism and proletarian internationalism 1:14:34 Gilles Questiaux blog, just search that and it'll come up today. So that... A question has come in. So if you can hear me well, because I know I have a slight mic issue there. We can hear you very well. I hope it's fixed. So it's a question from Lili Martinet. Let me read it to you. What attitude should one adopt in the face of the caricature of cosmopolitanism presented as proto-Bolshevism by some? Thank you all so much for this event.
1:15:13 There, I'm happy to answer. Thanks for the question. There, I'll hand the floor right over to you because you're the one who threw out the cosmopolitanism topic tonight with Diogenes. I'd just like to quickly state the thesis. I am anti-cosmopolitan, I am chauvinist, nationalist and my hexagon is my fortress. Okay? That's the thesis.
1:15:48 The antithesis is not at all artificial borders. Me, I'm also quite happy sipping a cocktail. Me, it's Bernard-Henri Lévy, it's whatever you like. It's either Cohn-Bendit or it's Macron. Me, I have my... I'm glad to find the same figures in a cocktail bar in Hong Kong, in Mexico City and in Abidjan. That's the antithesis. And now, I propose the synthesis to you. I dismiss both the fascistic retreat back to back. My words are precise. Not everything fascistic is doomed to be fascist.
1:16:31 The fascistic retreat into a fantasized national identity, and laissez-faire, laissez-passer and bourgeois cosmopolitanism — the synthesis is proletarian internationalism. There, that's a modeling I'm recalling that we've somewhat forgotten. Internationalism presupposes that there are nations. It's the era when there were still nations, when for instance Airbus was built. It wasn't the Europe of Brussels that created Airbus. No, no, it was really negotiations between sovereign states. There, that still existed back then.
1:17:13 Right, so there, I don't want to monopolize the floor, I just wanted that little formalization, quick modeling. And besides, I believe that behind Lili's question — is that it? — Lili is alluding to the fact that indeed, it was already in Nazi propaganda that the Jews, the Bolsheviks — in the mouth of the Nazis it's exactly the same thing. Besides, Bolshevism comes from that Jew Marx, and as for Jesus, he's the first communist in history.
1:17:50 The only time he allows himself to be violent is to drive the merchants out of the temple. And it's no accident that all relation to the other — to the other in terms of nation, the geographical other, the climatic other — even if it's tropical countries, they view it with suspicion. It's the open door to communism.
1:18:20 It's the fear of intrusion, of interference, which is typical of paranoia, if we wanted to psychologize the matter. That's my first answer, but I presume it's addressed mainly to this evening's speakers, that is, to you. What do you think, Branko, Oscar, or Agnès?
Ikea, time of transition, and the dialectic of nation and region 1:18:50 I can also throw out a first answer. It's not an answer at all, but there's this exhibition behind us, where we show paintings made by local painters. Not necessarily contemporary artists, people who sold door to door and at the market.
1:19:20 One of the questions we ask ourselves with this exhibition is that these painters — they stopped working in the '60s and '70s. And what replaced these oil paintings that filled people's homes up until the '60s and '70s, and even up until today? When there's none of that left, what is there?
1:19:54 The answer is very sad, maybe it's the same answer as in France and other countries. Norwegians buy from Ikea. Instead of buying paintings, they buy posters, paintings, other things from Ikea. I don't know if that's a first answer. In any case, it's… an answer.
1:20:25 I think that's a good part of the question answered. But we... for us, this session is very important to take part in because we're precisely looking for a somewhat more precise answer on these subjects. But it doesn't worry us too much if it stays open too. We think things are changing very fast. So maybe we can have a few provisional answers. We must always keep working on it.
1:21:06 I thank you for that theoretical modesty. I myself am struck by the speed of the changes taking place, as if we were in one of those rare eras when we experience history almost in real time. And so that has made me very cautious about peremptory or overly general statements. And I'm thinking of that passage from Hegel's preface to the Phenomenology, because he lived through an era such as comes only once every twenty centuries, the era that begins with the storming of the Bastille and ends at Waterloo.
1:21:41 And at one point he says, moreover, it is not difficult to see that our time is a time of transformation, of gestation, and of transition to a new period. I'll stop the quotation there, but it makes it all the more difficult to want to rush a conclusion. On the other hand, to come back to cosmopolitanism, and to de-dramatize it and put it in a less fast-moving, more familiar context, I'm thinking of a country where I lived in Africa, which is the Ivory Coast. It has a border with Burkina Faso to the north — that's all you need to know to understand what I'm going to tell.
1:22:31 In the 1970s, there was a chain of stores you might call big retail, but on an African scale, it was modest, and it was national, Ivorian. The Ivory Coast had a standard of living, an economy much more prosperous than the regional average. There are ethnic groups that were cut in two by colonization. Northern Ivory Coast is the Senufo ethnicity, which should interest you as a visual artist because it hugely influenced Modigliani.
1:23:07 You know, the almond-shaped eyes like that and the very elongated nose. I believe I have one, the mask. It's not here. It's the same ethnicity that's in southern Burkina. So I'm comparing two nations and a single ethnic group, as they say in anthropology. But economically — Mr. Ouattara, that's a name, Senufo, very common, it's the name of the current president of Ivory Coast. Mr. Ouattara, on the Ivory Coast side, knows he can find batteries for his radio right there, downstairs from his home, in a big retail store, whereas in Burkina, where there was very great poverty, especially before Sankara...
1:23:53 Besides, Burkina is a reservoir of migrant labor who come to work in the coffee and cocoa fields of Ivory Coast, hence the tensions, by the way. What am I trying to say? I mean that a region has the nation it deserves, and vice versa. If a region receives nothing from the nation to which it belongs administratively, I understand that it would have inclinations to want to break away and demand its autonomy.
1:24:23 If there's no social rebate, no economic rebate. That's why it's so important in today's struggles to ensure that the law is the same in Alsace, in Corsica, in France, and that public transport is guaranteed even in rural areas where there aren't many travelers. I'm recalling here the dialectic of nation and region. If the nation does its job, which is to be there for everyone, for the general will, then there's no tension between nation and region.
1:25:02 If there is tension, it's because the nation has forgotten to be a nation, because it has become the property of a few. There, that's how I pose the problem. I don't solve it, I'm as cautious as you, I don't know how it will turn out, but it's around these notions that it plays out. You see, with my Corsican roots, the problem comes up often. For a very long time, Corsica was a place of banishment — we sent, a bit like in Guyana, we sent criminals to penal colonies, amid malaria and mosquitoes, that's what Corsica was. And from time to time we called on Corsican thugs, bandits, mafiosi, as often happens in poor countries, because originally the mafia is a local solidarity network, it's Robin Hood. Originally, that's what it is, originally.
1:25:51 We called on Corsicans to put up posters in Paris during election campaigns, etc. It's only natural that at some point, the Corsicans, who did everything to establish France's authority in the colonial empire — there were many expatriate Corsicans there, fleeing poverty at the time — it's only natural that now they do the opposite, complaining about French colonialism.
1:26:21 There, you see, the dialectic can change like that depending on the era. But I don't think there are regions of Norway demanding autonomy. Maybe Lapland, but I don't think so. Amélie, could we get a better view of the paintings behind you? Amélie, let's try. Amélie, can you move a bit.
Visiting the exhibition: familiarity and social shame 1:26:52 Amélie, that's better now. We couldn't see the pretty white house. Amélie, do you want to explain what we're seeing there? So, all the painters here, is it — claiming or not — ... not very... who works in the street. A portable one, yes.
1:27:23 And it's not a painter who worked in these... In these places? Yes, in these places, around here. And that's the whole building we see. He painted around here. So people know it very well. It's familiar, all right. And what's interesting, in fact, is that it's urban painting, whereas in Norway, it's nature painting.
1:27:56 It's the usage. Yes, yes. Yes, that strikes me too. But this, it's all the city. Yes, that's a very interesting remark, Branko. So apparently he made 100,000 paintings. There, fantastic. And sold, as was explained.
1:28:29 And it was really sold essentially door to door. Yes. Here, it's the example of the same strip behind that. There's a copy that we made. All right. We can see it's the same spot. When you say 'we,' that's you. It's the two of us, actually. Oh really? That's how it is, he said. As Oscar would say, it's Art Går Bra.
1:29:02 In the work, we don't distinguish who did what. Very good. Very good. Here, these are different painters. It's a collection since… The neighbors, they came here and said 'I have a painting.' And we said 'Yes, come with your painting.'
1:29:34 And after that there's... So we listen. It was really a very, very good idea. And if it's... Here, this woman, her name is Maharet, she lives nearby. So she's one of your neighbors? Yes. We put up the photo with her, giving us the painting. One of your neighbors, yes. Just a moment. Yes, they're very, very well known in Norway.
1:30:08 I think they are also known in France and in England. They are very familiar. But they are also a little bit of a bad view. It's a very interesting question. Why is it bad? And what would you answer? What would you answer, what? Oscar, at first glance. I think there are two very interesting things about this type of painting. It's very familiar.
1:30:46 The scene is very familiar, but so is the form too. I understand well. There's nothing provocative about it. Exactly, yes. That's the opposite of contemporary art. I'm glad you start with that answer because we see the homogeneity of this evening's session, which began with Branko's long development on Diogenes. Diogenes plays at provocation all the time. Isn't that right, Branko?
1:31:19 Exactly. It's through cynic work. Nicolas, it's folk art that asks for recognition and wants to be recognized by people for whom it's familiar, and people who recognize each other in both senses. They are recognized, but they also recognize the place, the town, the neighborhood, the landscape. I think it's important to remember that this is right after the Nazi occupation.
1:31:53 People were tired of the war. They really wanted to rebuild something. They wanted a real house with real paintings. They wanted things to have that weren't too... Peaceful. Yes, very difficult. It was already difficult. But I also think about why it's looked down upon. There's also an economic side to it. Because this is painting for people who don't have the means to buy the most expensive works of art.
1:32:42 There's a bit of shame there, I think. We're not proud of it. That's good, Agnès has the social nose for it. The nose — that's what we say for dogs, the nose for it. That's it. Well, but…
1:33:13 There's a somewhat special version here too. I don't know if it's possible to see it. He put the thing in the... It's 3D. Yes. More 3D. Three what? 3D. Ah yes, yes, all right, all right, all right, all right.
1:33:45 It's a bit hard to see. Anyway, it makes a nice decoration for the venue. Yes, and we have big windows, so with the coronavirus and everything, everyone can see. Exhibitions are a must. And have there been visits since this exhibition? Yes, we're quite surprised because there are a lot of visitors.
1:34:19 And also, we've just appeared in the papers, the Bergen newspapers, the exhibition. There are so many people coming, 10 people or 30 a week per day. That's a lot for a city when it's going well. I understand. There are only 250,000 people, so that's not bad. These last few days, we've had 10-15 people a day.
1:34:56 I'm going to repost on our website — I'm not talking about the Facebook page, but I'll repost on our site, on the friendly sites page, the contact details and the link to go to the Algarbra pages, and I'll put them back on our Facebook page for this occasion. Actually, I'll tell Thomas to do it. Yes, we shouldn't conclude on their behalf, but… I think we should say hello, thank you again.
1:35:30 Yes, of course, thank you for the invitation. Thank you above all for agreeing to take part, even though we didn't give you much time to prepare — barely 3 days, and not even that for Oscar. Thank you especially to you. I recall that you sometimes come to spend a few days in Paris, Agnès and Branko. Usually we live in Paris and in Bergen. With Covid, it's a bit difficult.
1:36:08 Thank you very much. Once again, from the introduction until now, I found it very homogeneous and very clear in its originality and strangeness. Which made me very happy. Thank you, Dominique. Thank you too, Philippe. I always end with a big thank you to Philippe, who always performs miracles with very few resources. Thanks to everyone.
