Speaking of culture, the CAQ makes culture-leisure a culture to amuse the people while we let them down, while we do nothing for their food insecurity, while we do nothing for the climate emergency, against heat islands and flooding in our cities. Let us think of these young environmental activists from the British collective “Just Stop Oil” (Stop oil) who covered or touched their hands on paintings by masters at the National Gallery (Constable, Turner, Van Gogh) to say: what is the use of culture if we have no more water, what good are these wonderful paintings if the earth is burning?
So what is culture in Quebec when our belugas are dying of cancer in the river or when our books are floating in our basements flooded by the negligence of governments who do not think about greening our living environments? What is culture when our loved ones die in the carnage of COVID-19, what should we film, say, write? […]
And all those stories of our parents that will not be told, like a lost and yet so essential culture, our very memory! No, culture is not a hobby, culture is there for the urgency of saying, for an adequacy with these times of neglect, anxiety, fear and distress with a kind of hope, culture is there to launch a cry of hope while there is still time, to also teach us how to navigate in this depressive world, she is there to talk about existential angst in these times of energy crisis, race against the deadly clock of the planet which will soon no longer be habitable, ravaged by pollution.
Culture is there to express feelings in direct contact with our human condition, our future between life and death. This is culture, this is the meaning of culture; a culture which is not the culture-leisure of this inept government, a culture which has faith in this country, which wants to speak about the beings who suffer and who love in this country, a culture capable of transcribing what haunts us, a culture that speaks of the urgency of living.