Right-wing and far-right elected officials relay the video of an artistic performance and accuse the town hall of Lyon and its mayor, Grégory Doucet, of having financed it.
The video of a naked man in a garden is widely shared on social networks, mainly by right and far-right media and elected officials. They accuse the town hall of Lyon of subsidizing shows with sex toys in front of children. The controversy started with a tweet from Pierre Olivier, the Les Républicains mayor of the second arrondissement of Lyon. “The city of Lyon and its mayor [écologiste] Grégory Doucet slashes 37 cultural grants to finance naked individuals in a garden with sex toys, in front of children. Militant and extremist use of the budget has no limit, neither does indecency”, he complains. The elected opposition member attached to his tweet the video of an artistic performance. It shows a naked man walking on all fours in a garden, smelling the vegetables, then about twenty people walking in circles, we see a few children.
The city of Lyon and its Mayor @Gregorydoucet cut 37 cultural grants to finance naked individuals in a garden with sex toys, in front of children. The militant and extremist use of the budget no longer has any limits. Neither does indecency. pic.twitter.com/fpzDBxoSsD
— Pierre OLIVER (@poliver69) June 13, 2023
The video, devoid of context, was immediately taken up by several media and elected officials on the right and far-right, denouncing a form of sexual exhibition financed by the town hall, some even calling on the authorities. Lots of things circulating on social media about this, let’s take stock.
An artistic performance of ecosexuality
This is an excerpt from an artistic performance by the young company Lundy Grandpré, made up of a dancer and a designer. According to information from franceinfo, the performance actually took place two years earlier, in June 2021. The artists had set up this project during their artistic residency at Factatory, in Lyon, and presented it in a private place, to a restricted audience. , only informed guests, relatives of the artists, connoisseurs of the art scene of the moment, and some of these guests brought their children. It is therefore not a show given especially for children.
The purpose of the performance, titled “Becoming a larva”, is to question the relationship of human beings to nature and sexuality. She is part of an artistic current called ecosexuality or ecosex, founded by two American artists in the 2000s. A current that advocates a radical form of ecological activism based on the idea of defending the environment by acting towards the planet as towards a lover and who uses absurd humor to convey his message. In this performance, sex toys are planted in clods of earth, as if they were asparagus. If the two artists did get naked at one point, during the performance, there was no sexual act.
A grant validated unanimously in the cultural committee… where the right sits
This performance was not subsidized by the town hall of Lyon. The Lundy Grandpré company has never received a subsidy from the municipality at the present time, but it has made its first request for a subsidy for this year 2023 and the town hall has indeed decided to award it one of 1,500 euros, one of the smallest amounts granted to artistic companies or institutions. It must be voted on at the next municipal council. It is in this context that Pierre Oliver wanted to denounce the use of public money made by the town hall. He made him reject this subsidy in his borough council on Monday June 12, but he knows that this will have no consequence on the next vote.
“Should this type of practice be sponsored by public money or not?”, wonders the elected official, with franceinfo. He laments a “political use of subsidies” and severely criticizes certain productions by artists, such as these sachets of plants to make infusions called “The Painkiller”with the A of the anarchists and the drawing of a woman threatening a policeman with a whip, or “Tsunamiiii” with the drawing of a naked woman, in a yoga position, in a puddle.
Opposite, the cultural assistant, Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, denounces a futile controversy and “misleading” from the right. She explains to franceinfo that this subsidy was validated unanimously by the cultural commission of the city, in which sit two representatives of the party Les Républicains. “That’s what makes me wonder”she comments. “This is a grant as part of a boost for young graduates [des grandes écoles lyonnaises]. If our role is not to support artists, I don’t see what is”, she adds. The young artistic company receives 6,000 euros in state subsidies as part of a program to help young up-and-coming artists.
Context of strong tensions between right and left in Lyon
In reality, beyond questioning the place of nudity in artistic creation, this controversy occurs in a context of strong opposition between the right and the left around Lyon. A month ago, in May, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, led by Laurent Wauquiez, a member of the Republicans, decided to operate a “rebalancing” of its cultural subsidies: it gave less to major cultural institutions in the sector such as the Center chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, La Comédie de Saint-Etienne as well as to several associations, and completely abolished that of the Théâtre nouvelle generation of Lyon, for the benefit of smaller rural actors. The left then strongly criticized the right.
>> In a forum, former Ministers of Culture question the cultural policy of Laurent Wauquiez in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
It was therefore a month after that that Pierre Olivier, close to Laurent Wauquiez, decided to launch the controversy by reversing the roles: now it is the right that criticizes the left. “What shocks me is that for a year, we heard the mayor of Lyon be upwind against the rebalancing of the budget for culture in the region of Lyon, and that now he is doing an ideological rebalancing”he explains to franceinfo.
The opponent criticizes the town hall for wanting, in parallel, to reduce the subsidies of 37 associations, including the Lyon School of Brass which maintains the organ of the Saint-François church in its district which will receive 2,900 euros in 2023 instead of 4,000 euros in 2022, the dance company Hallet Eghayan (40,000 euros in 2023 instead of 60,000 euros in 2022) or even the dancers of Pockemon Crew (8,000 instead of 10,000). Franceinfo was unable to obtain the number of subsidies which would, on the contrary, increase, nor that of new subsidies.
The less visible consequence of this political controversy is that the artists of Lundy Grandpré received dozens of hate messages in 24 hours, some openly LGBTphobic. “They are very bad”, regrets the assistant to the culture of Lyon. A few hours after the start of the controversy, they made their Instagram account private so that no other images of their performances could be taken up on social networks.