Dear authorities of the Transition, the biennial is a practice from another time, certainly popular through nostalgia for the past, but imagined to deal with issues that no longer exist. It is not in phase with the realities of today to take charge of the issues of culture and civic construction. This is also why attempts to resume the event have failed. I don’t count the official autosatisfecit and the articles ordered in the press. I am referring to the lack of real reports and studies on the impact of these takeover attempts with objective indicators.
Dear authorities of the Transition, ABANDON the path of the artistic and cultural biennale for our sector. It’s a choice of nostalgia. It is a choice of event policy. It is not structuring.
Dear authorities of the Transition, man is the raw material of any society and any economy. Its cultural driving force determines its status as citizen, inventor, producer, distributor and consumer. For a society, an economic space, to be effective, the men and women (citizens, inventors, producers, distributors and consumers) who drive it must be of good quality. Beyond the formal and informal places of training and education, they are exposed every day to texts, sounds and images that qualitatively and quantitatively influence their daily choices. These sounds, texts and images are emitted from books, theatres, concerts, televisions, radios, social networks, theaters and cinemas, public spaces, private spaces, etc. These sounds, texts and images are created, produced and distributed mainly by artists and cultural actors: writers, filmmakers, musicians, actors, singers, dancers, stylists, photographers, directors of photography, sound engineers, lighting designers, graphic designers, designers, intellectuals, architects, etc. .`For these artists and cultural actors to be a factor of transformation and social cohesion, they would have to be in a certain sustainability of actions, with a sustainability of their economy. For this, the existence of a market is essential, that is to say venues capable of buying and regularly programming cinema, theatre, dance, conference-debates, exhibitions, and to be places of mediation and dissemination of the values of democracy, tolerance and modernity.
Dear authorities of the transition, we had the pleasure of learning that 4.140 billion under the heading “-2.050 Promotion of artistic and literary creation” were added to what was generally presented as the culture budget in Mali, that is to say the operating budget of the public administration of culture. We thought for a short time that our plea was finally heard. But we became disillusioned very quickly. We understood that these 4.140 billion will mainly be used to organize a socio-cultural event without structuring impact.
Dear authorities of the transition, between the Covid 19 pandemic, the political crises and your current choices of diplomacy, the cultural sector is on the verge of implosion. We have lost the vast majority of our funding and are becoming less and less credible with banks and sponsors. Faced with this situation, more and more of the country’s most competent artists and cultural actors are expatriating their activities.
Dear authorities of the Transition, culture is not only a question of folklore, it is above all a question of expertise and engineering. Also, instead of a socio-cultural event, it is preferable that you invest in the development of a structuring program, such as the creation of a distribution network throughout the territory. It could be a network of 70 cultural facilities with spaces of 200 seats on average, capable of broadcasting theatre, music, dance, cinema, exhibitions, conferences-debates and hosting popular events. This would represent a potential of more than 2 million spectators and 10,080 dates per year for Malian artists and cultural actors.
This internal cultural market could be accompanied by an interministerial program around 2 national cultural emergencies: reading and the Internet.
Mali does not read. A country that does not read cannot truly claim development. A “National Cultural Emergency” could be imagined in favor of reading on an interministerial basis: National Education, Culture, Industry, Communication, Trade, Foreign Affairs and Cooperation… All the weight of the State, at the highest level, would be there put in place to legitimize the practice of reading and create the conditions for its exercise: bookstores, publishing, public libraries, etc.; associated with a “National Cultural Emergency” to make Mali a source of positive digital production. Even if for the moment slippages are very dominant, social networks are one of the areas where the creativity of Malian society appears best and in the most forward-looking way. It is also a technology where the “lag” on the most developed nations is small and recoverable. Training in digital creation professions, popularization of coding, national and international exchanges around the creation of content… are immediately feasible tasks. This “national cultural emergency” can be linked to the dynamism of private companies in the digital field and to the inventiveness of tens of thousands of young Internet users who are already active.
The implementation of this system could be accompanied by an ambitious citizen construction program that would reinvent our national narrative, popularize the good prospects of the new dynamics of post-crisis Mali and articulate the actions of the cultural community, local authorities concerned, companies, TFPs and the State.
Dear authorities of the Transition, ABANDON the path of the biennial! It’s nostalgia! It is not structuring.
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