Re: [-empyre-] modernity antiquity

["Millie Niss" <men2@columbia.edu>]

I am very interested in the state of new media in France.  I lived in France 
for several years and studied some there, and I dated a computer scientist 
from France for four years, so I have some experience with using computers 
in France, but not specifically with new media. art.  Many things about the 
educational system and the culture could explain the problems with French 
new media that Isabelle Arvers described.  On the other hand, I have some 
contact with French new media people (Patrick Burgaud has helped me with 
some French applications, and we plan to do some work together, and I also 
did a little translation for the Paris Connection project that Jim Andrews 
organized http://www.turbulence.org/curators/Paris/ which was a multilingual 
project that presented some French new media artists along with critical 
essays on their work..  So I know that there IS some interesting new media 
work done in France, but I am sure that Isabelle is telling the truth and I 
can imagine the attitude that many French people might have about new media.

I lived in France when I was learning to talk and went back almost every 
summer and my father taught me to read and write in French.  When I was 16 
and had finished high school in America, I went to France and attended lycee 
(Terminale C) and received my baccalaureat C (in 1990).  (The bac is the 
exam at the end of French high school and it is quite grueling and hard 
compared to American school.  When I came back to the US and went to 
Columbia University, I was awarded 12 credits for having gotten my bac...in 
physics, math, and chemistry -- and none in French.  By comparison, Columbia 
only gave students who had taken advanced placement classes 2-3 credits and 
only if they had the highest score...  The bac C was the version of the exam 
that emphasized math and physics.  Now, in an attempt to reform the 
educational system, they have renamed all the bac versions and combined them 
etc. but plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...)

At the time I was studying for my bac in France, everyone wanted a bac C 
because "ca ouvre tout les filieres" and it was widely thought to be much 
better to be "scientifique" than "litteraraire."  The dichotomy between 
scientifique and litteraire people was a big topic and everyone seemed to 
think that people were one or the other and could not be both.  In France, 
to become a CEO or a politician, one usually has to go to a Grand Ecole, 
which most of the time means an engineering school, and you get into these 
schools by competitive examinations that are quite difficult.  This is very 
different than America where politicians are usually not intelligent in the 
academic sense (I do not claim that French politicians are better than US 
ones, but many of them are educated to a high level).  Also, here engineers 
do not become rich bosses at companies-- business people do, and technical 
people are less powerful.  The result of the emphasis on engineering and 
science in France is that if you aren't scientifique you have more trouble 
getting ahead and literary studies are looked down on.  So many literary and 
artistic people resent the scientifiques and their influence on society, so 
they become anti-scientifique and hate technology.

The result is that fields which require both artistic and technical 
interests and abilities are not well-developed.  I did not do new media yet 
when I lived in France most recently (89-90), but as a student in Terminale 
C I was actively discouraged from literary & cultural pursuits.  The 
literary people also saw me as a member of the enemy camp and were jealous 
that I was in the advantaged group and that they, the literary people, would 
not be able to get good jobs unless they were among the very best, most 
elite litteraire students who were preparing for the entrance exams to the 
few Grandes Ecoles that didn't involve math, such at Normale Sup in letters. 
I knew some of these elite literature people and they had multiple interests 
and weren't against technology, but these people were not average and the 
people I knew who actually went to Normale Sup had parents who went to 
similar elite schools and had been groomed since childhood for the exams and 
success...


I would be curious to know from French people if the conflict between 
scientifiques and litteraraires is still happening and if the scientifiques 
are still winning...

Millie

P.S.

I enjoyed studying in French lycee, but at the same time I was aware that 
the system was elitist and that many students were forced into vocational or 
technical education and never got the kind of course I was taking, and even 
within academic courses, there was competition to get in the good courses 
and there were many special tricks that educated parents used to make sure 
their children were in good classes while poor children got a worse 
education.  For example, I was in C which was the hardest track 
academically, but my school had three Terminale C classes and I was in the 
worst one, with all the immigrants and "redoublants" -- students who had 
failed and were repeating the yeart.  This was because the school was 
certain that an American would be less good academically than French 
students.  There were many students in my clas swho were 20 years old 
because of redoublement whereas I was only 16.  I later found out that if I 
had been clever I could have been in the best class -- by taking German as 
my first foreign language.  I had signed up for English because of course I 
speak fluent English and did not know that much German.  But parents who 
understand the system well get their children to always take German as a 
first language because that puts you in a better class.  I could have been 
in that class and still taken English as my first language on the exam...



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <iarvers@free.fr>
To: <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 5:15 AM
Subject: [-empyre-] modernity antiquity


> Hi,
>
> Is Modernity our Antiquity? History is a cultural concept, it is not 
> natural,
> but it is a very strong concept of the Modernity.
>
> It reminds me the movie « Disneyland, my native village » by Arnaud des
> Pallières that makes a parallel between Paris and a new Disneyworld. The 
> Eiffel
> Tour or Parisian monuments are becoming the Mickey's of the new millenary.
> France is spending so much money to preserve its patrimony that there is 
> very
> few money left for the creation. Patrimony is the first department of the
> French cultural budget.
>
> We are far away from putting the same amount of budget in the field of 
> research.
> It seems to me that in France, our "post-modernity" consists in preserving 
> our
> antiquity.
>
> And it is not surprising too that France is one of the first voice to say 
> that
> new media art is ghettoized from the whole contemporary art world because 
> it
> focuses too much on the techne. It seems even like "old fashioned" to say
> nowadays that you work in the new media art field.
>
> Perhaps it is because digital art sounds so bad in French?
>
> What we can say for sure, is that this discourse has political and 
> economical
> consequences, by denying a specificity to new media, in France we have:
>
> - less and less budgets for this "art that doesn't exist" or this "art 
> that we
> won't give a name to"
> - in the last main contemporary exhibitions in Paris, only 2% of this kind 
> of
> art practices were shown
> - No production center for new media
> - No press
> - Few art critics
> - Very few initiatives to rely research and art
>
> If there is such a need for new media to reconnect with the art history to 
> give
> a value to emerging creations, I guess that it is because the modern 
> concept of
> art is still going on.
>
> Isabelle Arvers
> www.isabelle-arvers.com
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