An interview with Philippe Kern

The importance of Solidarity; Cultural policy; The role of the creative community in times of crisis.

For our second interview, we invited Philippe Kern, founder and managing director of KEA European Affairs, a research centre specialised in advising territories and organisations on culture policy since 1999. He has authored numerous studies for European and national institutions on culture, copyright, culture and creative industries as well as audiovisual policies notably The Economy of Culture in Europe and The Impact of Culture on Creativity. His latest book, The Future of Cultural Politics, is really worth a read. You can follow him daily on Twitter. On our side, we brought Thomas Walker and Rui Quinta.

Enjoy.

Thomas: First of all, Philippe, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us today, it’s really exciting to get your perspective on these topics. To get started, we’d like to hear your definition of culture and its importance in the development of the European project.

Philippe: Oh, well, the definition of culture? There are so many definitions of culture. First, culture, I would say, is a way of living. It is linked to customs, habits, the way we dress, the way we speak, so it’s more anthropological. Then, the second aspect of culture is linked to policies, how governments are adopting policies or measures for people to educate themselves in art and how art plays a role in our development as human beings. And maybe a third aspect of culture — because we can give culture different definitions depending on the environment — is linked to industry. So what is behind culture from an industry point of view? A product, a service; as a book, as a song, as a film. So the aspect of producing something that comes out of the minds or the practise of artists or creative professionals. So the output of artists and creative professionals is culture.

Rui: I would add one thing, I totally agree with the openness of what it means, we are also working on culture in the context of organisational culture. Helping companies define their own cultures. And that’s another one, culture is a difficult thing to pack into one explanation or one answer.

Philippe: Yeah, organisational culture can be thought of as looking at the values of a company, in your instance. And I think, similarly, culture in a country or a community is about recognising a community in light of the way they live, the way they cook, the way they speak, and this is part of culture from an anthropological point of view; and obviously the anthropology of a company is key too because a company will focus on its own values which represent the culture of a given enterprise.

I think the word cultural might be a bit corrupted. This is an important element you’re mentioning here because culture wants to live outside of traditional economics. Whereas when you go to the idea of organisational culture, you are in the middle of economics, and profit-making, and how the culture can contribute in branding your company or your products or getting your employees to work towards certain goals because they’re motivated by this given culture.

Thomas: Going back to this concept of culture being almost the production of artists. Obviously it’s a little bit unavoidable, the coronavirus pandemic at the moment, I would like to get some insight into your perspective on the role of the cultural and artistic community in understanding and navigating crises such as this.

Philippe: For me, the first step on the crisis is that, obviously, this sector is deeply affected, like many other sectors. But artists that are living on performances — and most of them are — if you are a musician, a singer, a painter, you’re losing the aspect of reaching out to customers. Unless you can reach them through digital streaming, which doesn’t pay as well as when you do something that is live. So first, this community is definitely suffering a lot from the lockdown, which is also probably going to last longer than in other sectors because of the difficulty of keeping social distance in a crowded museum or in the theatre or in cinema or music festival.

However, in the situation of lockdown, we can see that when we are restrained and we’re at home we rely on reading books, rely on watching TV series or maybe having time to watch classic films. So we are very much dependent on the cultural products of the entertainment industry to get our brain going, to find a way of escaping our isolation and difficulties. So, in this sense, artists and professionals working with artists are very useful in this context.

Then we can consider how artists and creative minds, professionals like designers or architects — because of the way they ‘think differently’, as Apple would have said in the past — help us to imagine. Developing ideas that enable us to imagine the future that goes beyond the imagination of a doctor or a scientist or an engineer because they see things from a different angle, they have a different perception, a creative perception of things. And they may not come up with practical or concrete ideas, but they may come from an angle that may help people that are more grounded to, indeed, consider what could be the future of society, or what could be the danger of evolution in the economic, scientific or technological fields.

Artists always have a critical eye and we need those critical eyes, especially in a situation where we think this is the opportunity to build a better society. Everybody will have their own definition of what is a better society, but let’s say a society with more solidarity, more empathy, more justice. Then the artists and the industry working with artists are maybe in a position to make some concrete proposals.

Rui: The last thing you mentioned was industry, so first of all, it seems like you are describing Europe, you talk about justice and solidarity, I recognise this as one of the words that you tend to use the most, the word solidarity. But you ended up saying this connection between industry and artists; I have in mind two recent examples here in Portugal. You know, you look around, you see what artists are trying to do. You see them being invited to give concerts online and participate in a lot of activities, but it was really interesting to recognise that the two most interesting and provocative things I’ve seen in these last weeks. One was from a girl called Luisa. She’s a screenwriter, an actress and an entrepreneur. So she has this creative side and she had an idea of building an online platform for theatre, but she’s not disconnecting that from having a business model associated with it, and from having a vision for that project that isn’t constrained to this specific moment that we are living in. The idea came from that specific moment, she’s building it, she’s putting money into it, and she’s trying to understand how to sustain it through the future.

And another interesting idea that I saw in these last weeks came from the brand sides. Not only asking things of artists because you see that a lot, people, you know, calling artists to say, do you want to do this? It’s just a concert. It’s half an hour. We’ll bring people and they earn zero money with it, they just gain exposure. But I saw an example now from a beer brand here in Portugal, that it’s actually paying artists, supporting them and not only asking for something for free. So it’s interesting, this connection between artists and the brands that typically support them. Now they are asking more than giving, and when you mentioned industry and artists I made this connection between an artist connected with this entrepreneurial feeling because, you know, there’s a clash there sometimes.

Philippe: I think that three points I’d like to make on what you just said. First, artists — more and more — have to become entrepreneurs because, in the European context, there is less and less public money. So artists know if they want to be able to fund their activities, they will need to go to the market in one way or another, and they will have to manage their own future. If they want to make this their life, they know they will have to get into this aspect of entrepreneurship. At least initially, until maybe they can offload it to somebody that really is a manager because you don’t want artists to become managers; they lose their soul in a way. But they need to think in those terms because of the economic situation. and it will be even more like this in the future.

The second aspect is that, historically, brands have always been trying to associate themselves with artists. In terms of identity, or in terms of reaching out to some customers. A beer brand may want to reach out to young people, so they reach out to the best or most popular young singers in order to attract those customers. Another brand may want to be associated with some more mature artists. With technology brands, they want to be associated with this world of cool, fun, aesthetic, attractive, that gives a feeling of experimentation to which people can identify themselves. So this has really become a kind of an aestheticisation of the economy. This is something that industry has been using a lot for the last 30 years and I think this is important.

And the third aspect that I would add to what you just said, there has been what we call artistic intervention. So sometimes there are people who are contacting artists to help industry, to help companies in the same way that they would call on a consultancy or a designer. They call on artists to think on the way they could manage their industry or their enterprise differently, to look into their processes, and maybe instigate a new process that is being used in the creative industries to encourage innovation. A way of getting the people to appreciate their work-place in a different way through dance practice, through photography and so on. It’s relatively marginal but some enterprises have called on artists for their competence and skills to help them innovate, to help them change their physical space, to help them change their human resources, help them develop new products and new services.

So the idea here is to say that artists have specific skills and competencies; coming back to what I said earlier, which is in fact, they create. They are the original innovator. And very often our society thinks of innovation as technological innovation and forgotten some other aspects of innovation that are more human-centred, linked to emotion, linked to brands and to better workspaces. This is where art, artists, culture industries can contribute.

Thomas: I would like to touch a little bit more on the first point that you made there about the lack of public money in the arts; because, for me, I feel like when we look to the cultural institutions that seem to be defining our time on a global scale, I think of American corporations, I think of Netflix or Disney or even Facebook to some degree. So I’d be interested to understand your perspective on these technology companies and globalisation in our perception of culture and cultural activities.

Philippe: This is a big field. I think the way we experience culture today and especially the way young people experience culture is going to be mainly through digital networks. And obviously, those networks are based outside of Europe. They’re based in the USA, in California, they’re based also increasingly in China. And the question that is important to consider for Europe’s artists, Europe’s cultural industries is, what do we make of this situation? We are dependent on companies that don’t have the same values, that are based outside, that work in a different way, they don’t even understand the word culture. For them, it’s entertainment. They don’t understand the world of art. For them, it’s business. How do we get into this new environment?

And here there is a need for the sector in Europe — whether it’s in publishing, whether it’s in cinema, whether it’s in music — to act more collectively, because, you know, take a Portuguese artist or a French artist or a Danish artist, if they go on their own onto these platforms, they will be marginalised. They are too small a market. The language market is too small.

They need to get together to represent something that, from a market point of view, is substantial enough to be of interest to those platforms, for those platforms to reach a deal with them and agree to distribute them. The big battle for me is not so much production. I think Europe is strong in production, we the talent and are producing for a very reasonable amount of money compared to other parts of the world. And there is still public funding that is enabling this to take place, just as R&D exists for science. But what is missing now is this ability to reach out; to be able to work with those platforms and develop services that relate to what our artists and our culture represent. And I think the biggest challenge over the next few years, is how can we, as a cultural operator, achieve what some EU politicians are calling digital sovereignty.

So digital sovereignty, not only in terms of technology, developing digital platforms, also in terms of making our cultural content, products and services available. Not only to the audience in Europe, or nationally, but also internationally. I was surprised when I was working in China, how little the Chinese were exposed to European culture, in terms of books, in terms of films, in terms of music. And this made me realise that we really have to make an effort to ensure that these digital technologies also work for our European talent.

Thomas: Speaking a little to the to your time living in China. As Asia in general and China, in particular, are gaining more and more technological and economic relevance on the global stage. How do you see this relevance being echoed in the cultural sphere?

Philippe: I think we’re moving into a different era now because in the past the Chinese, well, were criticised for pirating cultural products, making them available for free. Now you have strong industries in China and they want also to develop intellectual property. They want to manage their IP rights, and so there they are fighting against pirates in the same way as European companies or American companies.

So I think that the market is slowly getting ‘cleaner’ in this respect. And there is clearly political will to develop their cultural industry. They know that today they are very dependent on the West for content, because our political system, our education system has always fostered creativity, individual expression, free expression. And so over the last fifteen years, the Chinese government has tried to put resources on developing first a cultural infrastructure, and secondly, in enabling the development of local content. Well, then the problem, obviously, is how can this work in a country which is constrained politically. So can you develop creativity in a system which has problems with freedom of expression? Which wants to control what is going out? Where there’s still a strong censorship policy? So this is going to be one of the challenges if China wants to raise and become a heavyweight in the cultural and creative industries.

We’ll see whether the autocratic system can enable this. I have some doubt about it, but I don’t know. The other aspect is certainly that, you know, with platforms like WeChat, I was amazed; technologically-wise their product, for me, was better than Facebook or some other social media. The Chinese have already monetized it, they are very advanced; with artificial intelligence, they are far ahead of Europe. And so, technologically, undoubtedly, Silicon Valley has moved to the Pearl River Delta, to this conservation Gwangju, Hong Kong, Shenzen for me, this is clear.

And I think, probably, it will be for the Europeans to see how they can manage this relationship with the Chinese and develop some kind of “win-win” whereby the Chinese need content, they need to understand the creative process; and whereby the Europeans need to access Asia, they need to access the world, and maybe they will be able to through the digital enterprises that are based in China.

I think the Chinese would also want to come to Europe with their culture; but there is such a cultural gap, independently of language. This is going to be a huge challenge over the years from a Chinese point of view. But obviously, they will want to see some kind of exchange taking place so that they are not only seen as distributing Western content.

Rui: I didn’t quite get what you meant when you mentioned Silicon Valley versus Shenzen or Wenzhou or Shanghai?

Philippe: OK, so here what I’m saying is that today there is a centre of digital technology development and artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley in the US. But I believe that now the Chinese, especially in this part of the world, the south of China in this conurbation called the Pearl River Delta, which has around a hundred million inhabitants, which includes Hong Kong, Shenzen, Zhuhai, and Macao. So this whole region has been developed by the Chinese authorities as a kind of innovation point. And I believe this is going to, not take over, but it’s going to be a kind of second Silicon Valley because all the big Chinese companies like Huawei and Tencent are based in this region. There are a large proportion of entrepreneurs that are not publicly backed that are actually private entrepreneurs. There is a large amount of money there because the equivalent of the stock exchange for new companies is based in Shenzhen and not in Shanghai. So there is a whole ecosystem being developed here to help the fostering of technology start-ups. You find a lot of young Europeans, young Americans, looking for jobs that are actually working there and contributing to its development.

Rui: When I read your book, you talked a little bit about the power of Netflix and this relationship between American culture and Chinese culture and European culture. And I had this kind of a small insight that actually takes me to the same place. It seemed like a strange loop. But if, for example, if we look at South Korea, you look at K-pop and it’s influenced by American culture. And then the last winning film at the Oscars was a South Korean film. But these creations that come and emerge from South Korea, if they are influenced also by American culture, isn’t that result an American result? Or is it transformed in a way? Or valued because of the kind of a connection between this? Or I’m just oversimplifying?

Philippe: South Korea, for me, is the best example in terms of how policy can enable a country to export its culture or its artists or its talent, even if those talented artists have been influenced by some other place in the world and actually China is looking at South Korea as an example. I remember, you know, at the time I was living in London and South Korea had opened a kind of representation office for their talent and cultural products.

I looked at it and thought, who would be interested in a Korean product or a Korean animation or a film? And I see today, 25 years later, it just shows the result of constant policy from government, deliberately setting up screening quotas, for instance, in cinema to enable local production to exist, supporting local film directors, local producers in order to access an audience.

And here we are with Parasite, a film in the Korean language, not even an English language film, because if Europeans want to win an Oscar, very often they make an English language film. Here, I think it’s the first time in the history of Hollywood that a non-English language film won the Oscar for Best Film. You’d have Best Foreign Film, but it’s the Best Film.

So for me, this is kind of a breakthrough of how even a small country can make a difference. You remember also the records broken with Gangham Style. It was the first Youtube video to have 1 billion views, with South Korean pop music, you know.

Another example, in Europe, is Denmark. Denmark has 6 million people and they are very successful in their TV series, in their film productions and they show, that through political support and developing a strong film school, you’re able to compete. A traditional capitalist would say, ‘Americans are better at making films, so let them make films and we’ll do something else. We’ll focus on agriculture or, labour tasks.’ But actually, it shows that policy can really have an influence in enabling your creative professionals to exist not only locally, but also internationally. And South Korea, in this respect, is a very good example.

Thomas: Talking a little bit more from this international perspective. In The Future of Cultural Policies, your recent book, you talk about the emergence of a Planetary Civilization. Could you explain this concept a little and talk to how you see the current crisis affecting its evolution?

Philippe: From my experience, I can see that people — especially of your generation — are all connected worldwide. Most of them speak English, so there is a kind of common language. And actually, they don’t care so much about national issues, or even about the concept of Europe, because for them, you know, the world is just out there. Maybe it’ll be different now it’s more difficult to travel, but there is social media so you can connect with people everywhere.

I can see this with people, young Chinese, young Americans, young European, young Africans, they are confronted with the same issue. They speak almost the same language. And that’s why I’m saying there is something that is a kind of a formation of a planetary civilization. So it’s a way of looking at it, from an optimistic point of view, something is intrinsically uniting us and especially young people working in creative hubs, in FabLabs, technicians, artists, marketing people, designers, they work together, collaborate, participate. They are part of international networks. And this is what I think is the uniting force, and at some stage will confront the Populists; confront the people that are narrowing down global issues to national and local issues.

This is what I think needs to take place. Currently, there are no instruments, there are no institutions that can help this community to express itself, to influence development. This is where I see b.creative in the future; if we are able to develop this association. Enabling this exchange across continents on social issues, economic issues and for this community to contribute and realise that it has a say in world matters.

Thomas: So thinking about these uniting forces, I’m led back to a word that we mentioned earlier, which is solidarity. So it feels like we are cultivating the sort of global solidarity. And obviously culture plays a really big part in this on a national level; but it seems a little bit to me that, by very definition, culture isn’t global. So how can our cultural industries or as you say, institutions, help to promote this solidarity on a global scale?

Philippe: So indeed, culture is not global, it’s localised, but we have to recognise that some aspects of culture are global. I mentioned the language, the English language, for instance, I mentioned Hollywood movies, pop music, classical music, some forms of cultural content are already global. And then, what is also global is this new way of working, the fact that people are communicating through social media, the fact that Netflix can offer an Antonioni film throughout the world. So this element of globalisation of culture exists. And you have very strong global brands in the cultural field, some global artists that travel throughout the world.

So with issue of solidarity, the first thing is that I see a lot of activity of artists in the social field, they are being called upon as social entrepreneurs to help with cohesion in neighbourhoods, in regenerating urban areas, in getting communities to talk to each other as part of intercultural dialogues with migrants, with people that have been disconnected from traditional cultural activity. So they play a big role there, and I think they have the experience and competence to enable these intercultural interactions. And therefore, especially in a European context, where we are so fragmented because of our different history, our different pride. We have been at war all the time, you know, amongst the Europeans. So the idea is to see how can we integrate the Europeans, independently of this market where goods and services circulate freely, how can we ensure that a German has empathy for a Portuguese or an Italian at a time of crisis and is ready to share or give mandates to their politician to share some of their wealth in order to enable this construct to continue to work.

And so this is what I’m saying, that artists and culture have a specific role to enable this integration, this understanding, this mutual empathy, which creates a form of cohesion, going beyond economic integration. And in this respect, what is also important is that we ensure that products circulate. So today I’m living in a country, for instance, in Belgium where the people speak Flemish, they don’t watch French-speaking productions that are made on the other side in the same country and vice versa. Even if sometimes they actually contribute financially, but distribution in those parts doesn’t take place. So how do you get people to talk to each other if there is little cultural understanding? And the same is happening at the European level and worldwide. It’s easy for politicians to use cultural prejudices to put people, and nations, against each other. You always have to find an enemy. In a situation where the world is confronted with sanitary challenges, with climate change, with a lot of global issues. We need to create solidarity. Today, solidarity is coming from the fact that half of the planet is locked down. So we just realised, well, we are all in the same boat. So this is something; and then artists and culture can contribute, if they’re properly distributed, to create this empathy, and this mutual understanding between people and fight back against cultural prejudices that still exist in Europe despite 50 years of economic integration.

Thomas: That actually touches quite a lot on the topic of my last main question, which is about Europe and thinking about this fragmentation of the European cultural identity; we have shared policies, we have budgets, we have some institutions. My question is, what’s missing? What more can we do?

Philippe: Ah, where to start? I think the problem is that the member states that have created this European Union have to accept that they have to go further than simply thinking in terms of “We have a market and we exchange our goods and services freely. We have a customs union. Our people can move from one frontier to the other.”

They need to think of Europe more as a political project, creating a sense that we are European citizens. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be a Portuguese or a Scot or French or whatever. I’m just saying that on top of your identity, your local cultural identity, there is this concept that Europe as a whole represents some values: democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression. Which makes Europe a unique place, and we have to defend these values. So Europe is also about enabling citizens to realise that they are part of something bigger.

Thomas: It feels like it’s almost on an emotional level, that this rallying needs to be done.

Philippe: I’m not sure, because when you see how nation-states developed in the 19th century, it has always been about storytelling. Now, what is a narrative that makes you think French or German or Italian or Spanish? This narrative is based on, “We won some battles, we have some enemies. We developed the flag, we developed an anthem.” You know what I mean here.

So now, we have to develop this European narrative. I’m not necessarily saying we should copy what has taken place with nation-states. We don’t we need to need to identify an enemy. The values I’m proposing are all positive values. What makes us different from the Americans or the Chinese?

So you say it’s emotional, but I’m unsure, I think it’s common sense. It’s also common sense in a view that when we had a crisis, you can feel that tomorrow the European Union could disappear. You know, there is Brexit. Maybe tomorrow the Dutch are going out. Anything can happen now. And so we could lose 60 years of peace in Europe; 60 years of people working, collaborating together, and I think it would be a grave mistake.

Rui: I’d like to close with two questions. So now imagine, Phillipe, that it’s January 2021. How are you feeling?

Phillipe: There are two answers, the negative one is that it’s going to be like before; nothing has changed apart from the fact I need to wear a mask when I go out and I need to be careful in dealing with people. But society is even worse because we had to get the economic machine back and we didn’t dare change the way we consume or the way we act.

And the second one, because I’m an optimist by nature, would be to say, “Wow, we have made great progress. The Europeans Union made some great decisions in order to make Europe a political project. We have developed the tools, the financial tools, the economic tools to work more together and so on.

More confidence that Europe, as an entity, can have an influence in the development of the world and avoid issues linked to artificial intelligence, big data management is left to others that don’t necessarily have our values. I’m not saying that all values are better than others. And I’m just saying that I attach great importance to the values of freedom, private life, rule of law, democracy. I hope that by the first of January 2021, we’ll have made some progress.

Rui: That was cool, so it’s interesting because this question on the study that we are launching actually starts with it’s January 2021, How are you feeling? And then we have three options: optimistic, pessimistic or an open canvas for you to say whatever you want. So I’m going to ask you one last thing. I’m going to ask you to close your eyes. Now, it’s 2025. Look around. What do you see?

Philippe: Well, this is where I see I lack imagination. I lack perspective. I’m not an artist. Honestly, I have no clue. I want to be surprised. I want to be surprised and I’m ready to be surprised. So I don’t see anything. I just see a surprise.

Later in the week, we will be back with an interview with Andrea Bauer about blockchain, trust and much more. In the meantime, subscribe to our Substack newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything 📨.