The winter start of 2022 already has an aftertaste of that of the previous year. As soon as they return from the holiday break, artists and cultural workers must go back to the drawing board to, first, rebuild a production and performance schedule, then consider post-pandemic cultural life. Should we rebuild the link between artists and their audiences? Imagine a new way to drive the cultural industry? So many challenges to which must be added the exodus of cultural workers exhausted by the crisis.
The singer-songwriter Geoffroy had already postponed the release of his new album twice Live Slow Die Wise, which will finally be released on January 19. By its confidential tone and its acoustic folk orchestrations contrasting with the electronic pop of its previous recordings, it is the very type of “pandemic album” – alas, even the formula has become a pleonasm since all the albums to be released will have been composed and recorded during the pandemic…
A month ago, optimism had returned to the musician. This very nice disc will appear, will follow a pan-Canadian tour of 17 concerts before considering finding its fans in Europe. Today, he is resigned: “I live it day by day, says Geoffroy. It may sound cliché, but I realized that planning too far in advance doesn’t really make sense anymore. I have hope [que les concerts reprennent] for the summer because this pandemic always seems to calm down during the summer, but until then I have no idea what will happen. »
“Before December 16, our prospects were very good, everyone was happy” to be able to present shows in full halls, recalls Manon Morin, general manager of Réseau Scènes, a regional grouping of multidisciplinary performance halls. This new closure without appeal of the theaters has thrown a cold shower on an environment which was the first to suffer from the confinements, she underlines.
“Until when will the rooms remain closed? asks Manon Morin. We do not know. Once again, what is complex is that over the different waves, the broadcasters had made their rooms accessible to artists, for creative residencies or to design virtual concerts. We had imagined COVID programming to support artists and welcome the public, with variable gauges. Until this government announcement, we were open to the maximum of our capacity, but we had worked hard to get there. »
Solidarity
“Today, we must above all remain hyper-empathetic and supportive of the various artistic communities,” insists Nathalie Maillé, director general of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, believing that it is still too early to imagine a reconstruction of the functioning of cultural industries. in Quebec: “Could the community think about rebuilding when we are still in crisis? Collectively, everyone is still in shock. »
Should artists who wanted the new year finally be one of reunion worry that the public is reluctant to come back to see them in theaters, performance halls and cinemas? Nathalie Maillé answers by asking us if we had visited a museum during the holiday season, when the halls and cinemas were forbidden to access. “I went there. And I confirm that the public was there. The public wants to return to meet the artists. For now, the important thing is to trust the culture community, which has been resilient for 22 months. I want to say: let things go, it will be rebuilt. Let’s stay optimistic. This vision of a recovery in 2022, we must focus on that. Admittedly, we will have to restart later than expected, but we will restart. »
Obviously, live performance was the hardest hit by the crisis. What awaits him in 2022? A keen observer of the dynamics animating the Quebec cultural milieu, Professor Martin Lussier states first of all that “the digital experience will never replace the spectacle live, because if the important thing was to see the artist, the room itself, the fact of living the same experience together, in the same place, will never be compensated”, reinforcing the feeling of the cultural stakeholders that the public will be there again.
Overview
Nevertheless, the return to normal – that of before the pandemic – for the cultural community could have to give way to a “new normal” that Martin Lussier is already trying to define. With his colleagues, the professor in the Department of social and public communication of the Faculty of communication of UQAM has been measuring for almost two years the repercussions of the pandemic on the cultural environment in Quebec.
He first insists on the transformations undergone by the medium since the beginning of this crisis and which give a glimpse of the future of creation and cultural dissemination: “We have seen the emergence of very niche independent artistic practices; the precariousness of cultural enterprises has worsened and has not necessarily been compensated by the practices that have emerged during the pandemic, such as those relating to the digital shift”, online concerts being the most convincing example. “Then there are these changes in the very consumption of culture and the way in which it is accessed, that is to say the “remote” consumption made possible by digital technology. »
The researcher already foresees how the revival of live performance will be articulated: “First, it is to be expected that show programmers will call on works that require little production”, one man shows, solo creations in dance and theatre, musical performances in small groups, “because the artists will not have had time to prepare otherwise”.
It is to be expected that show programmers will use works that require little production, because the artists will not have had time to prepare otherwise.
Then, Martin Lussier foresees the arrival of proven successes, of ” blockbusters, plays already staged, perhaps already presented, productions that have been worked on during the releases [de mesures sanitaires]. Finally, a last hypothesis can be put forward: we will witness the emergence of new artistic practices — experiments, test benches — proposed by new actors in the cultural milieu. Because the pandemic has had a disastrous effect on the Quebec ecosystem, many workers and artists have left the industry, several companies have closed. We can imagine that at the relaunch, newcomers, still unknown, will come to fill a space left vacant”.
The exodus of cultural workers is precisely the main concern of the community, since it will take available labor to reopen one day. Nathalie Maillé, from the Conseil des arts de Montréal, confirms this: “Our greatest concern is the demobilization of artists and cultural workers. Although we look forward to the future with optimism, this labor problem that is experienced in many sectors, we are experiencing it in a dramatic way in the cultural sector, both in terms of recruitment and retention of workers. This new closure of theaters has worsened the situation. »