Everyone knows the famous Latin phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum. This may not be as fair as you think. This expression does not exclude, at the very least, that we must also prepare for peace, and even that this is more useful than preparing for war.
Any healthy relationship between nations is a guarantee of peace. Any cultural or artistic exchange, any mutual listening, any intellectual and scientific collaboration established in good faith is a guarantee of peace.
By stigmatizing Russian artists as we are doing right now all over the world, by canceling concerts and other cultural events involving Russians who say they are for peace – and we know they can say no more than that — we are not preparing for peace, because we are destroying something beautiful and great which by nature resists war.
However I look at the problem, I can’t think it’s fair to punish artists because their country has invaded another. It is done out of delicacy towards the victims and the oppressed, of course, but in fact it only contributes to building a Manichean vision of the world that reinforces the spirit of war rather than opposing it.
We feel powerless in the face of what is currently taking place in Ukraine: preventing this war from also taking place in the fields of art and culture would be a simple and dignified way of opposing violence and rising to the above it by preserving our humanity.
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