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How “AI Slop” is shaping the music industry

Jeux vidéos / Technologie, Musique, Non classé, Réflexions,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer only playing a major role in the tech and startup industry – it has also entered the heart of many creative industries. In recent years artists tried to figure out how they can utilize AI in order to enhance or implement in their music. This has sparked a debate among music artists, critics and fans. Some declare AI as the next step in a musicians toolkit; others are concerned it is undermining creativity, eroding artistic rights and flooding streaming platforms with soulless content.

The phrase “AI Slop” has emerged among critics and fans on multiple social media platforms, who use it to describe low-effort, mass-produced and uncreative AI music and visuals. Moreover famous artists from Billie Eilish to Sheryl Crow, cultural institutions like the Artists Rights Alliance and academics studying ethics in AI have also joined the conversation. Together they are pointing to a central question: can AI coexist with music as an art form, or will it reduce creativity to an algorithmic filler?

What exactly is “AI Slop”?

“AI Slop” is a slang term for the phenomenon when music created by AI feels cheap, uncanny or exploitative. Slop captures both the quality and the underlying ethical problem:

  • Low quality: AI tracks lack distinction, coherence and emotional depth
  • Disrespect: AI mimics voices or recreates artistic identity without consent
  • Deception: AI is not properly declared to bypass listeners criticism

In a short period of time, the use of AI has evolved from a potential small tool for fine adjustments to fully autonomous music productions.

“Anna Indiana” for example is the world’s first AI singer-songwriter, which was trained by multiple algorithms. The result is “creatively unimaginative” (Business Insider, 2023) and struggles with genuine emotional depth (Fantano, 2023).

Screenshot of the music video for “Betrayed by this town” by Anna Indiana.

Unfortunately AI is also being embraced by already powerful and famous musicians. Legendary superproducer Timbaland, who worked with many talented artists like Nelly Furtado, Jay Z or Justin Timberlake conquering the 2000s music landscape, is taking a new path by generating music with a new AI pop artist called “tata”. Simultaneously he founded a record label “Stage Zero”, which is signing only AI Artists. While already facing huge backlash for this creation, rumors of him emerged, allegedly training “artists” without the permission of the original musicians.

Screenshot from the music video “Glitch x Pulse” by tata.

Aside from the tacky and spiritless sound AI-generated music usually delivers, it also hits another nerve:

In order to generate music with AI, it has to be trained on previous data. But music is not just data, it carries identity, memory and a cultural meaning. Using AI to mimic these voices blurs the line between homage and exploitation. In the hardest case, “deepfakes”, they become a tool of manipulation, creating confusion for listeners, disrespect for the original artists or even pain for families of deceased artists.

In addition to the problems AI brings to the musical side of the industry, it is also slowly infiltrating the visual sphere of music, including music videos, album artworks and promotional materials. This development is troubling for several reasons: First of all the visuals produced by AI also often appear uninspired, repetitive and emotionally flat, lacking the intentionality and artistic touch that human designers can bring to the table. Secondly this trend undermines professional illustrators and designers, whose work has long been essential to the music industry. As record labels and artists turn to AI tools for quick and low-cost imagery, human visual artists are increasingly getting overlooked and therefore not paid.

For example the acclaimed producer Alchemist and R&B legend Erykah collaborated on a properly created song but utilized AI to animate a music video. The result is a messy conglomerate of tangled depictions and strange proportions. In one frame a boy seems to be very dislocated, because he has a shiny aura around him. In the same frame a girl holds a blunt, which has the same length as her forearm.

Screenshot from the music video of “Next to You” by The Alchemist and Erykah Badhu.

At last the ongoing problem is infiltrating album artworks, in the case of the newly released album “Songs for a Nervous Planet” by the well known band “Tears for Fears”. It was also produced by partly using AI in the creation process. The result is an astronaut in a field of sunflowers. The band itself described it as an “vibrant artwork that evoked a sense of sci-fi, futuristic themes, and an escape from what is known”. However the result, despite attempting to engage with such grand and nourishing themes, feels very dull and uninspired, failing to offer a meaningful or compelling representation of surrealism. 

Album artwork for the new Tears for Fears album “Songs for a Nervous Planet”.

The music industries perspective:

The Flood of AI Content:

One of the most visible consequences of the AI boom is the sheer flood of AI content on music platforms. Streaming services like Spotify or YouTube are already saturated with countless AI-generated tracks. These are frequently built from the same datasets, resulting in endless variations of unimaginative variations of background pop or ambient music. Additionally they are often uploaded under generic names, often indistinguishable from real artists. It creates an ecosystem increasingly defined by quantity rather than quality. What makes this development especially concerning is not just the quality drop off, but the way AI songs are now blending in with human artists.

An entirely AI-generated “band”, called “The Velvet Sundown” has managed to become a verified artist on spotify, gaining real traction with the help of playlist placements and algorithmic promotion. The “band” mimics an indie flair, using certain buzzwords and illustrating a 1970s inspired aesthetic. They even got a lead phrase: “you drift into them”, having a marketing language like a human artist.

The Velvet Sundown encompasses the troubling moment when synthetic, unauthentic art stops pretending to be artificial and instead passes as authentic. Apart from dissolving into one indistinguishable and boring feed of sound this development also dilutes the visibility and diminishes the earnings of real artists.

Public Criticism by Artists

In April 2024 more than 200 musicians signed an open letter against “predatory” use of AI in music. Signatories include Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj or Stevie Wonder. The message was clear: the usage of AI trained on artists voices without consent risks destroying livelihoods and disrespecting human artistry. 

Later on in the same year, a larger community, including ABBA, The Cure and Radiohead joined another statement protesting against using creative works to train an AI without permission. They declared such practices as unjust appropriation of cultural labor.

Journalistic Takes

Mainstream news outlets have also amplified these concerns. The Financial Times called AI tools as potential “theft machines”, harvesting copyrighted material. The BBC examines fears that unfiltered AI will trigger a “race to the bottom” in terms of music quality and economics.

These outlets stress that the problem is not of the future, but highlight the importance in the present. They publish many cases of big AI scandals, lawsuits and new appearances.

The Academic Perspective on Ethical and Cultural Risks

Beyond established artists and journal critics, academics began collecting musicians’ ethical concerns about AI. Common themes in interviews are: fear of displacement, anger about unlicensed data training and anxiety over recognition. Some acknowledge potential useful applications but most artists point out the lack of a proper industry framework that offers safeguards.

Other scholars raise major cultural concerns, arguing that AI music datasets are in favor of global northern traditions, ignoring much of the global south. This could potentially lead to a culture erasure, where AI not only imitates but narrows musical diversity.

In order to frame the current development ethical frameworks are suggested in academic literature. Researchers propose guidelines around transparency, explainability, fairness and regulation.

Constructive Uses of AI in Music

Despite all the negative examples, the question arises whether there is way to use AI to leverage or simplify creative processes without losing the fundamental spirit of artistry. Some artists are experimenting with AI as a creative partner. A leading example is Holly Herndon, who uses a type of AI “clone” of herself in her Holly+ project. 

With the help of AI she let others remix and reinterpret her voice, while simultaneously having control and establishing transparency rules. Instead of stealing someone else’s likeness, she shares her own. Therefore AI becomes a tool for empowerment, not an instrument of exploitation.

Similarly, some AI tools assist with production (e.g. drum machines or mixing assistance) without erasing human creativity. In light of this application, AI could become an ally rather than an imitator, if the listeners can easily grasp whether a track is AI-generated or performed by a human being and smaller artists are not repressed in the streaming landscape.

Conclusion:

The debate around AI in music is ultimately not just about technology, but primarily about the presented values. The tools themselves are neutral, what matters is the intention and framework behind their use. As the examples of AI artists and algorithmic streaming content show, the danger does not lie in innovation, but in exploitation: when technology is used to imitate, deceive, or replace rather than to inspire.

Ultimately we should ask ourselves:

Do we want a music culture defined by quantity, imitation, and profit, or one that continues to celebrate authenticity, originality, and human emotion?

Written by Linn Rietschel

Sources:

  • Article about public letter against AI misuse:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/02/musicians-demand-protection-against-ai

  • Article about Anna Indianas first song:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-artifical-intelligence-musician-anna-indiana-pop-chatgpt-spotify-music-2023-11

  • Article about potential good use of AI:

https://www.artbasel.com/stories/ai-holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-data-training-art-making?lang=de

  • YouTube link for Anthony Fantanos opinion about Anna Indiana:
  • YouTube link for “Next to You” music video:
  • YouTube link for “Glitch x Pulse” music video:

The Disco Myth: Why Studio 54 Still Matters in 2025

Musique, Non classé, Réflexions

A Legendary Door Reopens

I decided to write about Studio 54 after watching the recent documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer (2023) by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano. 

It reminded me that disco was never just a musical genre: it was a social movement, a way of being.

And this year, the mirror ball spins again: Valentino Beauty will reopen Studio 54 for one night during New York Fashion Week 2025 (Mixmag, 2024). Forty-three years after its closure, the club that once defined the 1970s returns as a luxury brand experience.

But beyond nostalgia, this revival raises questions. What did disco really mean to America then? And in a world obsessed with documentation and self-image, could a place like Studio 54 even exist today? 

Steve Rubell surrounded by Studio 54 guests © Bill Bernstein

Studio 54 and the Disco Era

When Studio 54 opened in 1977, New York City was broke, dangerous, and dazzling. Inside a converted CBS television studio on West 54th Street, founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager created a new universe – equal parts stage and sanctuary. The door policy was ruthless: celebrities, drag queens, Wall Street brokers, and unknown dreamers mingled under a sea of strobe lights.

The club became a living artwork. There were horses parading across the dance floor, snowstorms made of confetti, moon installations that winked at the crowd. Bianca Jagger famously arrived on horseback wearing white satin, instantly entering pop-culture mythology (PBS American Experience, 2019).

Bianca Jagger rides in on a white horse at during her birthday celebrations at Studio 54 in New York, May 1977 © Rose Hartman/Getty Images)

Yet behind the velvet rope, Studio 54 carried the rhythm of something deeper. Disco had been born in Black, Latinx and queer communities in underground clubs like the Loft and Paradise Garage. It was a rhythm of liberation, a celebration of bodies long excluded from mainstream stages. Studio 54 simply amplified it, turning subculture into spectacle.

Studio 54 was more than a nightclub; it was a laboratory of identity, where the beat itself became permission to exist.

Parallel Lights: Paris Is Burning

Yet while Studio 54 translated queer and Black creativity into mainstream stardom, other communities built their own stages. A few blocks and a decade away, Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) captured the underground ballroom scene where Black and Latinx queer people competed in “categories” – performing the glamour and status denied to them elsewhere. Both spaces celebrated transformation, but with opposite economies: Studio 54 traded on access and fame, while the drag balls of Paris Is Burning invented glamour from the margins.

Watching those ballroom dancers “walk” executive or model categories feels like a reply to the velvet rope of Studio 54 – a way of saying if you won’t let us in, we’ll build our own club. The same city, the same yearning for light, but radically different routes to visibility.

The Social Pulse of the 1970s

To understand disco’s power, we need to picture its world. America in the late 1970s was emerging from Vietnam and Watergate; feminism and gay liberation were reshaping public life. The dance floor became a kind of refuge, a temporary utopia where politics dissolved under strobes and sweat.

As historian Tim Lawrence notes, disco was “a collective experience of self-transformation.” Underneath the glitter was a social message: joy can be political.

For queer communities, disco offered a freedom rarely found elsewhere. It was both rebellion and therapy, a sonic space where difference turned into rhythm.

Studio 54 translated that radical energy into mainstream glamour. Its decadence fascinated America – a mix of money, desire, and inclusivity that mirrored the country’s contradictions. Much like the drag balls later captured in Paris Is Burning, it was about performing who you could be, if only for one night.

Excess, Glamour and Collapse

Every myth needs its fall. Studio 54’s success was as outrageous as its parties. Rubell once bragged that the club made $7 million in its first year (Britannica, 2023). But by 1979, the fantasy cracked: the founders were arrested for tax evasion, and the dream of endless freedom met the reality of capitalism.

At the same time, the “Disco Demolition Night” in Chicago (1979) revealed the cultural backlash. What began as a radio stunt to destroy disco records turned into a riot charged with racism and homophobia. The message was clear: not everyone wanted liberation on the dance floor.

Yet disco never died. It morphed into house, pop, and electronic music; its pulse survived through artists like Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. The mirror ball simply kept turning in new forms.

From Underground to Heritage

Fast-forward to 2025, and disco’s ghosts dance again. When Valentino Beauty chose to reopen Studio 54 for Fashion Week, it wasn’t just a party, it was a statement. Brands now trade on nostalgia; they monetize cultural memory.

But nostalgia can be double-edged. The original club was about anonymity and experimentation, not curated selfies. Today’s luxury version risks domesticating what was once wild.

Still, disco’s Black and queer roots are finally being recognized. In the past few years, Beyoncé’s Renaissance (2022), Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia (2020), and countless fashion collections have re-embraced that heritage. The Valentino event might be commodified, but it also reminds the mainstream where disco came from and who built it.

Jamaican-born singer and model Grace Jones embraces producer Allan Carr at ‘Grease’ premiere party at Studio 54, New York, June 13, 1978 © Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

Freedom in the Age of Surveillance

The question I keep returning to is simple: Could Studio 54 exist today?

Our nights are now lived under the glow of phone screens. Every dance, every kiss, every fall becomes content. The sense of danger, of losing control, has been replaced by performance for the algorithm.

Studio 54 thrived on mystery. You didn’t film it; you lived it. That intimacy is what made it sacred. Today, nightlife is more inclusive, safer, and often more political but perhaps less spontaneous. Freedom is filtered; privacy is a luxury.

The ballroom culture that Paris Is Burning immortalized hasn’t vanished either; it has evolved through shows like Pose and the global vogueing scene. What began as an act of defiance is now part of pop culture, just as disco’s beat echoes in today’s hits. Both remind us that freedom on the dance floor is never guaranteed. It must be reinvented, again and again, by those brave enough to perform it.

And yet, the need for spaces of collective euphoria hasn’t vanished. You can still find them in Brooklyn warehouses, queer bars, summer festivals, or even in Nantes in clubs like Macadam, where phones stay in pockets and strangers dance like it’s 1977. Maybe that’s the true legacy of disco: the constant search for moments that feel unrecorded but unforgettable.

Canadian activist Margaret Trudeau (left, in white) dances at the Manhattan nightclub and disco Studio 54 in New York, circa 1978 © Oscar Abolafia/TPLP/Getty Images

Why Studio 54 Still Matters

Studio 54’s myth endures because it speaks to a universal desire: to be everything, if only for one night. It was a place where art, hedonism, and identity collapsed into pure rhythm.

For cultural-management students like us, it’s also a reminder that culture is cyclical. Every generation rediscovers freedom, packages it, and sells it back. The dance floor teaches us that creation and consumption are never fully separate; they spin together like light on a mirror ball.

Personally, what draws me to that world isn’t just the glamour, it’s the courage. People danced as if no one was watching, because for once, no one was. In a world obsessed with visibility, that kind of invisibility feels radical.

The Light Still Spins

Forty-three years after its closure, Studio 54 still captures the imagination because it was more than a club. It was a manifesto. A belief that joy, diversity, and excess could rewrite social order.

As the doors reopen for one glittering night in 2025, perhaps the lesson isn’t nostalgia but renewal. Every era needs its dance floor, its soundtrack of freedom. The forms change (from vinyl to streaming, from drag balls to TikTok) but the impulse remains.

From Studio 54’s velvet rope to the community halls of Paris Is Burning, New York has always danced between exclusion and creation, proving that when culture closes its doors, art finds another entrance.

In the end, the mirror ball keeps turning, reflecting who we were, and who we still dream of becoming.

Written by Aliona Ousviatsev

Sources:

The French animation industry: a visionary tale of craftsmanship and national exception

Cinéma / TV, Pop culture

Flow, Gints Zimbalidis (2025)

In March 2025, French-Latvian animation movie Flow managed the impossible: with a team of under twenty animators and in partnership with Paris-based Sacrebleu Studios, made up of less than ten employees, Gints Zimbalodis won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film. This achievement is all the more impressive considering the harsh competition it faced, having to stand its ground against behemoths of the industry such as Inside Out 2 (Disney/Pixar), The Wild Robot (DreamWorks) and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Aardman Animations), whose respective budgets and marketing campaigns exceeded Flow’s by several orders of magnitude. But this win was not just a personal one for Zimbalodis and Ron Dyers, Flow’s French producer ; it was a collective one for the French animation industry which, after ten nominations in the category since its creation in 2003, finally brought home the golden statuette. Vindication at last on the international scene for France’s underdog audiovisual industry! Although, for many observers, it was just a question of time until one of the Hexagons’ many hyper-talented and fiercely independent animation studios finally snatched the highly coveted prize, symbol of global recognition beyond specialized festivals, and forced the usual suspects to make space at the table of international references of the animation industry. 

Let us then analyse one of France’s most prized audiovisual possessions: its animation industry. 

France and animation, a story that dates back to cinema’s very beginning

The history of animation films in France dates back all the way to 1892, when Emile Reynaud hand-painted Pauvre Pierrot, the first ever animation movie – before even the invention of the Cinématographe. Reynaud’s Optical Theater was the result of more than 15 years of development and experimentation, and ended up drawing in a massive crowd of over half a million spectators over the decade. However, refusing to adapt his work to the emerging cinema technology, Reynaud saw the success of his shows start dwindling, leading him to become increasingly depressed and eventually destroy most of his work in a bout of despair, making the memory of his groundbreaking work fade in the History books. 

Le Théâtre Optique d’E. Reynaud

Later on and throughout the 20th century, Paul Grimault is credited with becoming France’s first well-acknowledged animation director, producing many shorts, as well as the groundbreaking The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et l’Oiseau), in collaboration with famed poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film took over 30 years to produce, involved over 150 technicians and cost hundreds of millions of French francs to make. Eventually, despite many rough patches – both financial and human – its final version attracted over 1.7 million spectators in theatres and became an instant classic, cited as inspiration by Studio Ghibli founders Miyazaki and Takahata. At the time, this was the first significant animated movie made by a French studio that was met with such commercial success, as, until that point, virtually only Disney existed in the animation niche. This was groundbreaking, as the goal of Grimault and Prévert was to offer a story that offered rich philosophical reflection to an audience not just made of children but also grown-ups, and make moviegoers understand that animation works were not just mindless kid entertainment but rather just as much real films as live action ones. 

Le Roi et l’Oiseau, P. Grimault and J. Prévert (1980)

In 1973, René Laloux directed Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage), another groundbreaking work that would go on to win the genre’s first ever prize in the Compétition at Cannes. In the 1990s, director Michel Ocelot would revolutionize the genre again with his stunning work that deeply marked an entire generation of children – and their parents alike. His Kirikou movies, Princes and Princesses, Azur and Asmar, were seminal works that inspired filmmakers globally and, perhaps most importantly, showed investors that animation could be financially worthwhile. Alongside Ocelot’s work, films like Les Triplettes de Belleville and Persepolis garnered both critical and commercial success in France and abroad in the early 2000s, and cemented French animators’ place on the global movie scene as innovative disruptors characterized by remarkable technicity and artistry. 

Azur et Asmar, M. Ocelot (2006)

A rich national academic web…

Along with those original arthouse movies, France also developed a more commercial – but praised nonetheless – animation industry that relies heavily on beloved comics IP, such as the many Astérix & Obélix, Lucky Luke or Tintin films and series that have flourished through the decades and continue to be resounding successes, as Alain Chabat’s recent Astérix & Obélix : The Big Fight (Le Combat des Chefs) highlighted. The miniseries premiered on Netflix to rave reviews from French and international audiences alike, praising it for both its plot and the quality of its animation. Indeed, French-trained animators are renowned for their training, honed in some of the most prestigious animating schools in the world, such as Les Gobelins in Paris whose students regularly go on to work for some of the biggest actors of the industry in France or abroad. Beyond Les Gobelins, the Atelier de Sèvres, LISAA, ESMA, Nantes’ Ecole Pivaut and many others train artists in State-recognized curricula all over the country, turning their students into seasoned animators able to work skillfully on all sorts of projects. These schools are organized through the National Network of Animation Schools (RECA), which aims to link together institutions that offer training whose quality is deemed indisputable across the industry, in order to provide information and opportunities to students of the craft. This network is sponsored by public and private actors of the industry, who champion the training of new experts and wish for the industry to maintain its demanding standards in the work it puts out. 

Ecole d’animation Les Gobelins, © GOBELINS PARIS

… that expands into powerhouses studios

With hundreds of new graduates entering the job market every year, France has witnessed a concomitant boom in animation studios, with more than 200 active ones in the country – they were only 78 twenty years ago – that work not only on movies, but also on TV shows, music videos, advertisement, etc. Recently, Fortiche Studios was universally applauded for its work on Arcane, developed by Riot Games, where its characteristic style of animation which treats individual frames like canvases to hand-paint, earned lead studio animators Faustine Dumontier and Bruno Couchinho an Emmy Award each for Outstanding Achievement in their field. Not long after the first season of Arcane came out and stole away the breath of both audiences and industry actors, Netflix released Blue Eye Samouraï, another French-animated epic that was met with resounding success and cemented even more, if that was even possible, the special place French studios take up in the industry, especially in the eyes of international global audiences. 

Bruno Couchinho and Faustine Dumontier at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards Ceremony © Fraze Harrison for Getty Images

Acknowledgement by industry leaders keeps on increasing

This momentum is bound to keep going, too, since more and more prestigious film festivals have started including animation films within the full spectrum of their official selection instead of sorting them out into a specific category. The Cannes film festival hosted 15 animation films across categories during its 2025 edition, whereas during the 20th century only 3 movies were ever selected at all. Out of those 15 movies, about half of them were French-made, showcasing the special attention French animation filmmakers are receiving from their peers in the most prestigious institutions. The Annecy Film Festival is commonly acknowledged as the most significant animation film festival worldwide, and attracted in 2025 over 135 000 visitors and 18 000 badgeholders, coming from 118 countries. Over the years, the attendance of the festival has steadily risen, and major studio representatives have started taking residence year after year in the festival’s film market. 

Amélie et la Métaphysique des tubes ; M. Vallade and L.-C. Han was selected both at the Cannes and Annecy film festivals

Financial aid is ever increasing, from both national and international sources

Thanks to the ever increasing visibility of French animation on the global scene, international collaboration has become a pillar of the industry, accounting for about 25% of the average animation movie’s financing plan. This dynamic translates into heightened international sales, with other countries distributing more and more French animation films that reach an ever greater audience, generating dozens of millions of dollars of revenue and establishing France as the third biggest world animation films exporter after the US and Japan. Between 2011 and 2020, French animation movies generated two-thirds of their ticket sales abroad ; those numbers are unheard of for French live-action movies. Similarly, France ranks as the fourth country receiving the most orders for animated series worldwide, with 38 new requests for programs being passed in 2024 by platforms all over the world. 

This growth of interest in animated works means an increase of subsidies allocated by public structures such as the CNC, the National Center for Cinema and the animated image. This key structure for moving-images industries collects money through the Special Tax on the Audiovisual, which consists in retaining a fraction of revenue collected on every movie ticket sold in France, to inject back into the industry through many different programs and subsidies. As the animation sector grows, it calls for more financial aid to support its evolution and ever growing ambitions, which public institutions must follow up with in order to properly foster national film production. As such, between 2015 and 2024, public aid in animation filmmaking has reached an impressive 20% of the average movie’s financing plan, not quite to the level of the rest of the movie industry (25%), but still significant considering the newness of the industry compared to the rest of French cinema. 

Despite this success, the global crisis looms

However, over the last two years, a major crisis has overcome the animation industry worldwide, and France hasn’t been immune to it. Although the national industry has managed to keep its head above the water better than other countries, the Covid crisis has had dire social and economic consequences, especially in North America. Since the American industry is a significant driver of program demand due to its many streaming platforms and diffusors, the weakening of these players’ orders is felt worldwide. The French Ministry of Culture has announced its wish to better support the industry and reinforce public aid to the sector through renewed subsidies programs, but the question remains to see if that will be enough to counterbalance the weight of the American withdrawal. 

Moreover, the rise of AI technologies is a worrying new element that directly threatens every facet of an already weakened industry. Seven leading professional organisations of the animation field (the SACD, the Société des Réalisateurs de Film, the Guilde Française des Scénaristes, etc.) published a communiqué in late September calling for public and private institutions, as well as moviegoers, to take a stand against the use of generative AI in animation moviemaking. This follows the announcement that UK-based Vertigo studio will produce a movie entirely generated by AI, despite the turmoil the advent of this new technology has brought upon the industry. Anxieties regarding issues of environmental protection, intellectual property and the precarization of already hazardous jobs have caused professionals to raise concerns that this crisis is an industry defining one ; so far, the future of animation is looking quite bleak. 

Professional guilds of the industry which published a communiqué against the use of generative AI in animation filmmaking

Written by Valentine Gauthier Richard

Sources:

Accueil

Intimacy Coordination and Opera: an overlooked yet crucial and necessary consideration

Musique, Réflexions, Spectacle vivant

Intimacy Coordination and Opera: The Last Frontier?

Carmen, Tcherniakov © Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie – De Munt (2025) (Production – Bruxelles, belgique)

In an interview published on October 12, 2024, with the French outlet Brut, timed with the release of Gilles Lellouche’s now-blockbuster L’Amour ouf, actress Adèle Exarchopoulos explained that she had already worked with an intimacy coordinator while preparing sex scenes for Lena Dunham’s series Too Much. “It suddenly becomes a choreography,” she said, “so you’re no longer surprised when someone does something or takes a risk. And that actually makes you feel much freer.”

Similarly, earlier this year, Benjamin Voisin and Lina Khoudri spoke ahead of the release of Carême on Canal+, describing how an intimacy coordinator helped them feel more fluid, confident, and connected in their performances, especially in a series with so many intimate scenes.

While the topic has become increasingly common in the film industry in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it remains largely absent from the world of opera, an art form that, paradoxically, is built on the very same dynamics of intimacy, power, and staging. So why such a gap? Is it merely the reflection of opera’s well-known conservatism? A sign of society’s limited understanding of the repertoire, where the frequency of intimate scenes is often underestimated? Or perhaps a symptom of resistance within institutions and among stage directors themselves?

This “blind spot” in opera’s relationship with intimacy coordination raises pressing questions at a time when theatre and cinema are increasingly adopting such practices. To explore this issue, we will first look at how frequently intimacy, and even sexual violence, appears in opera, both in the original librettos and in modern productions that foreground nudity and sexuality. Then, we’ll examine how the introduction of intimacy coordination could work within an opera house, drawing on examples from North America, where the practice is more established. Finally, we’ll turn to the persistent resistance from within the institution itself, from professionals to critics, that may explain why opera remains behind its artistic counterparts.

Sex and Rape Scenes in Opera: An Underestimated Reality

Die Walkure, Castelluci © Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie – De Munt (2023) (Production – Bruxelles, belgique)

Many still underestimate how often sexuality and nudity appear in opera. But a quick look at the repertoire reveals just how full this art form is of sexually charged or violent moments. Even within the librettos themselves, opera abounds with scenes of seduction, coercion, and assault.

Among the most famous examples is Don Giovanni by Mozart (1787), where the libertine title character, often portrayed as a sexual predator, attempts to rape Donna Anna in the very first scene, setting the entire drama in motion. Similarly, in Puccini’s Tosca (1900), Baron Scarpia tries to rape Tosca in exchange for sparing her lover’s life; Tosca ultimately kills him in self-defense. In Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925), Marie is seduced and abused by the Drum Major, a brutal depiction of social and sexual violence, adapted from Büchner’s play.

While these depictions of rape and sexual coercion were rarely staged explicitly in the 18th and 19th centuries, contemporary directors are far less restrained. Many now incorporate sexual violence, even when it’s not directly stated in the libretto. For instance, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Carmen at the Aix-en-Provence Festival controversially added a rape scene just before Don José kills Carmen at the end of the opera.

Beyond scenes of rape, many operas also feature moments of sex or nudity that raise important questions about the need for intimacy coordination. Indeed, while debates on the matter are still ongoing, it seems increasingly clear that “intimacy” extends far beyond sexuality. It also encompasses anything involving the body, consent, and emotional vulnerability between performers. From this perspective, many contemporary opera productions contain scenes that clearly call for the presence of an intimacy coordinator.

One striking example comes from the staging of the first two parts of Wagner’s Ring cycle at La Monnaie in Brussels, directed by Romeo Castellucci. For this production, the Belgian Federal Opera launched an open call seeking around a hundred extras willing to appear nude on stage. The announcement read: “Do you enjoy being naked on stage? Take part in Castellucci’s Rheingold! Selected participants will be asked to crawl and roll on stage and will be placed in close proximity to one another in a confined space. La Monnaie will provide flesh-colored underwear to simulate nudity. Applicants must be between 16 and 80 years old and available from October 24 to November 9, 2023.”

L’Or du Rhin, Castelluci © Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie – De Munt (2023)

Here, nudity was justified as part of Castellucci’s pursuit of a stripped-down, minimalist aesthetic, a kind of visual purity meant to echo Wagner’s original artistic vision. Yet, even if the volunteers appeared to consent freely to their participation, their work was unpaid, raising further questions about power dynamics, consent, and the protection of performers’ well-being within the operatic world. This raises another issue: the often-limited attention paid to extras in the world of opera, who are sometimes treated as little more than “cannon fodder.” A telling example can be found in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging of Carmen, which includes an orgy scene in which a male extra performs a striptease in front of the entire ensemble, prompted by Carmen herself. For the performer involved, such a moment could easily be perceived or experienced as humiliating or degrading, highlighting once again the lack of safeguards and consideration afforded to non-principal performers in opera productions.

In Light of This, What Policies Can Opera Houses Adopt to Safeguard Artists’ Consent and Integrity? How Might the Introduction of an Intimacy Coordinator Change the Landscape?

During my internship at La Monnaie as a production assistant, I had the opportunity to discuss this subject with several artists. Among them was a well-known singer, who will remain anonymous, who confided: “I’ll admit, if I’d been asked my opinion, I probably would have refused outright to meet with an intimacy coordinator. I’ve managed without one my whole career, so why start now? But looking back, I realized it made perfect sense for the scene we were doing. Everything was choreographed, which removed any potential awkwardness with the other performer and freed up mental space to focus on the acting and the music.”

Despite such testimonies, European Opera houses still lag behind their counterparts across the Atlantic. In the United States, the role of intimacy coordinator has been officially recognized since 2017, with accredited training programs and around eighty certified professionals nationwide. In France, by contrast, there are only four official practitioners, most of whom work primarily on international productions. While HBO has required the presence of intimacy coordinators on all productions featuring intimate scenes since 2018, French productions involving them can still be counted on one hand.

Monia Aït El Hadj, a French intimacy coordinator, explains that she often works with foreign productions filmed in France, such as Emily in Paris or Les Liaisons Dangereuses. French professionals, however, remain hesitant to call on her services, fearing they might lose creative freedom in their staging. Yet, as she explained in an interview with France Culture on February 17, 2023, her work in no way undermines that of directors. On the contrary, it aims “to support the director and the actors in creating scenes involving nudity, simulated sex, or sexual violence.” As she describes it, this process begins as early as the script reading: “We talk with the director to see how to create the intimacy envisioned, while respecting everyone’s boundaries. Then we move on to rehearsals, to see how the director wants to choreograph the scene. Choreographing doesn’t take away from the authenticity of what audiences will see, just because we describe what we imagine in technical terms, like in a dance, doesn’t suddenly make it mechanical or less spontaneous. Not at all.”

Although the profession first took shape in film and television, it has slowly been making its way into the world of live performance, albeit with a noticeable delay, only beginning to gain ground in the early 2020s. In January 2022, the Royal Opera House in London brought in Ita O’Brien as intimacy coordinator for its production of Theodora, sending a strong message to the European opera world. A year later, in 2023, venues such as the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona also announced plans to work with intimacy coordinators, though still on a more occasional basis, for example, for their staging of Antony and Cleopatra. Across the Atlantic, however, the integration of these roles into the performing arts has been both earlier and more firmly established. 

In 2022 at the Metropolitan Opera (New York), intimacy directors were engaged for no fewer than six productions, (Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Eurydice, Rigoletto, Don Carlos, Lucia Di Lammermoor, and Hamlet.)  One of them, Doug Scholz-Carlson, an intimacy director at IDC, who is also an actor and the artistic director at the Great River Shakespeare Festival stated about intimacy direction, coordination, and choreography as they relate to opera: “What I see really often in opera, when I see opera performed, is the chorus all in a brothel and they’re all supposed to be people in a brothel, which means they need to be touching each other in a certain way. And what I see is a bunch of work colleagues touching themselves very, very politely and trying to, while touching each other very politely, simulate being in a brothel. And it really doesn’t work. And the reason that happens is because they are trying to protect each other’s boundaries without having had a conversation about what those boundaries are.”

While the need for intimacy coordinators now seems undeniable, the opera world has been notably slow to embrace the practice — especially compared to the film industry, and even more so within European houses. Why this hesitation? And who are the skeptics of such a policy?

One of the reasons most often cited by stage directors is the fear of losing artistic control, of adding to the creative process. As Siobhán Richardson, co-founder of Intimacy Directors International, noted in an interview with Opera Canada (May 31, 2019), this concern remains widespread. Others worry that choreographing intimate scenes could compromise their spontaneity or emotional truth.

Opera’s deeply rooted traditions also play a part. Rehearsal schedules are typically compressed, and singers often arrive only shortly before opening night, leaving little opportunity for open discussion around intimacy on stage.

Finally, cost is a significant factor. With state and local funding for the arts steadily declining, many opera houses are forced to make hard choices about where to allocate their resources. In that context, hiring an intimacy coordinator is still often viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity.

Written by Judith Laithier

Sources:

4Memes, Blackness, and the Power of Circulation

Pop culture, Réflexions

© by Archive Pinup Magazine (Becky Akinyode)

Internet memes are more than funny images or viral jokes – they are a form of affective media practice. While some memes circulate globally, their formats, humour, and conventions are often shaped for specific communities, producing moments of shared understanding, inside jokes, and relatability. Memes do more than entertain: they help form collectives, connect people through shared experiences and feelings, and make everyday life socially and politically visible. Scholars like Brigitte Weingart and Florian Schlittgen describe memes as “interventionist tools for the micropolitics of everyday life,” capable of highlighting inequalities while also enabling experimentation and connection.

A clear illustration is the Twitter meme “It me.” Its minimal structure – just two pronouns and no verb – creates a self-objectifying, almost childlike way of identifying with an image or feeling. Users recognise themselves in a gesture, an expression, or a scenario while participating in a collective circulation that goes beyond any single iteration of the meme. This example shows that memes gain their power not from static content but from the way they move, evolve, and generate shared affect within and across communities.

It is in this context of circulation, connection, and collective affect that Aria Dean’s work is particularly illuminating. She frames memes not simply as cultural objects, but as expressions of Blackness in motion, a relational, circulating force that carries cultural labour and vernacular far beyond its origins. In Dean’s view, Blackness is “real but not actual”: it is ascribed, collective, and operational rather than material, and memes are one of its clearest digital manifestations.

 © by Intervening Arts

Blackness as Operational and Collective

Dean’s key insight is that Blackness cannot be pinned down as a stable object or identity. Instead, it exists in a state of “radical ontological agility”: moving across contexts, generating affect, and operating as a relational force rather than a material entity. Digital memes mirror this agility. Like Blackness, memes are collective and mutable: they transmit cultural labour, shared experience, and affect while circulating beyond individual control. In this sense, memes exemplify the relational, operational, and collective dynamics that define Dean’s understanding of Blackness.

Meme Culture as Inherently Black

In her 2015 essay Poor Meme, Rich Meme, Dean argues that meme culture is fundamentally shaped by Black creativity. Memes carry the improvisational energy, linguistic rhythms, and humour of Black communities, encoding shared experiences in formats that travel widely online. From “It me” captions to viral dance clips and absurdist imagery, memes perform Blackness in motion, influencing how audiences experience and relate to culture collectively.

Dean emphasises that memes’ survival strategies – adaptation, remixing, and circulation – reflect long-standing traditions in Black cultural practice: adaptive, improvisational, and relational. Even when memes move into broader networks or are decontextualised, their structural and affective roots in Black life remain visible in the forms, rhythms, and humour they carry. Meme culture is not simply produced by Black communities; it is shaped by Black cultural logics.

© by Real Life Mag

Circulation as Value and Power

Dean draws a compelling parallel between memes, Blackness, and capital: all gain meaning through circulation. Memes become significant not as static objects but as events moving through networks, being shared and interpreted only to then be appropriated and reimagined again – and so the cycle continues. Similarly, Black cultural labour has historically been recognised and consumed without full credit or compensation. Circulation produces value and visibility but also exposes inequities in both online and offline systems.

The “poor image” quality of memes – low-resolution, quickly remade, endlessly circulated – serves as a metaphor for the resilience and relationality of Black cultural production. Memes thrive not in polished presentation or proprietary ownership, but in their capacity to travel, change, and generate affect. Like Blackness itself, their strength lies in circulation, relationality, and collective engagement.

© by US Magazine (Nick Young)

Affect, Collectivity, and Political Potential

Memes are deeply affective, shaping shared feelings and experiences. The humour, joy, frustration, or exasperation encoded in a meme communicates collectively, signalling belonging and fostering networks. Dean argues that this affective circulation carries political potential: memes make everyday experiences visible, amplify underrepresented voices, and create solidarity.

At the same time, memes remain vulnerable to appropriation and co-optation. The same mechanisms that allow Blackness and affect to circulate – their visibility, mutability, and relationality – also expose them to exploitation. Dean’s analysis highlights circulation as both a source of power and a site of precarity, reflecting broader patterns in the distribution and valuation of Black cultural labour.

Memes as Expressions of Blackness in Circulation

Dean encourages us to see memes not merely as entertainment but as expressions of Blackness in circulation: operational, relational, and collective. Influence and value emerge relationally, through movement, remixing, and affect, rather than through fixed ownership or singular representation. Memes are low in resolution but rich in affect, fleeting but generative, and closely tied to the histories, labour, and creativity of Black communities.

Next time you scroll past a viral meme, consider its journey: who created it, how it moves, and what histories and communities it carries. Memes are microcosms of collective Black life, carrying affect, labour, and cultural knowledge through everyday digital networks. In their circulation lies both power and possibility.

Written by Emily Kindermann

Bibliography: 

  • Dean, Aria. “Labour, Art, and the Vernacular Aesthetic Online.” Lecture, Digital Interventions: Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics, Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Intervening Arts, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 9 May 2025.

Neo-Chinese Aesthetic: The Business Strategy Behind Cultural Re-Export

Mode, Réflexions

The concept of « New Chinese Style » was proposed by the renowned Chinese architect Liang Sicheng. Initially, it was mainly applied in the field of architecture. With the rise of the « national style », the style of « New Chinese Style » is no longer limited to the field of architecture; it also has applications in accessories and clothing.

The interpretation garden of traditional Chinese style culture in the current era background is contemporary design based on a full understanding of contemporary Chinese culture. The « New Chinese Style » is not just a collection of traditional elements but combines modern elements with traditional elements through an understanding of traditional culture to create things with traditional charm, allowing traditional art to be appropriately reflected in today’s society.

This article aims to reveal a rarely-discussed perspective: « New Chinese style » is far more than just a cultural phenomenon; it is a business strategy actively designed and systematically promoted by capital (specifically referring to strategic venture capital institutions, large brand groups, and industrial capital). Its ultimate goal is to complete the modernization « translation » of Chinese culture and lay out replicable business model pipelines for its future « reverse export » to the global market.

Risk Management In Track Investment

People have always regarded capital as following the footsteps of culture. However, the opposite is true; it is capital itself that makes the choices and shapes this path.

Based on scientific discoveries and technological inventions, hard technology that has been accumulated over a long period of time. Its investment threshold is high and the cycle is also very long. Therefore, in order to seek certainty, capital has chosen the consumption and culture sectors. « New Chinese Style » is supported by the government, has the most mature global consumer goods supply chain, and can address the identity anxiety of the Z Generation. Capital has discovered that this is a sector with monopolized cultural discourse rights and controllable costs.

When it comes to building a brand, the most overlooked truth is that the product is just the entry point; what users truly purchase is the « better version of themselves » in their hearts. Producing physical goods is easy, but generating meaning is difficult. And « New Chinese Style » can transform cultural symbols into brand assets. For instance, a certain fragrance brand does not simply sell « the taste of the White Rabbit candy ». Instead, through packaging design, copywriting stories and the offline environment, it sells the unforgettable childhood memories that cannot be replicated. The significance of this series lies in its ability to be replicated, iterated and scaled by capital. This is precisely what capital values most – the scalable premium value.

All over the world, people have diverse cultural backgrounds and values, which directly influence consumers’ behaviors. Consumers in Europe and America may place greater emphasis on technological innovation and environmental protection concepts, while in the East Asian market, consumers may pay more attention to the practicality and price advantages of products. The « new Chinese style » localized marketing helps brands establish an emotional connection with local consumers. By using cultural symbols, a brand can establish a friendly image in the minds of consumers.In today’s world where globalization is facing setbacks, relying excessively on a single overseas market or a single cultural image poses risks.

Exception, photo by Guanrong ZHANG

On the special theme day of « Coexistence of Lines and Webs » at the China Pavilion of the World Expo, the finale was an Eastern aesthetic fashion presentation. Drawing inspiration from the charm of Tang Dynasty brocade and the bamboo patterns of the Song Dynasty, it delved into the essence of Eastern culture and incorporated traditional handicraft techniques such as hanging dyeing. In the dialogue between Eastern and Western aesthetics, it reconstructed the clothing language that integrates the past and the present.

The « Narrative Engineering » Behind Marketing

The marketing of « New Chinese Style » is not only about advertising; it is a meticulous « narrative project ». Its professionalism is grossly underestimated by the general public.

Corporate social responsibility here is no longer a cost, but rather traditional cultural content materials and trust. Integrating traditional elements into art installations can help better preserve historical culture. Traditional art can be reinterpreted and presented in new ways. This is the unique cultural and artistic charm of intangible cultural heritage that interprets the current trend of installation art, driving the continuous innovation and upgrading of intangible cultural heritage. The application of traditional materials is transformed into a practical implementation of the « sustainable oriental philosophy ». This achieves two goals: externally, it meets the ESG investment standards and the moral aesthetic standards of consumers; internally, it establishes a supply chain barrier and cultural authorization authenticity that is difficult for competitors to imitate.

Fang So, photo by Guanrong Zhang

This « Art Museum Night » product appreciation event is not only a cultural feast, but also a profound dialogue between tradition and modernity, the past and the future. It allows everyone to quietly experience the collision of classic and fashion, and the new charm is once again perceived through its inheritance and preservation. 

The exhibition items include the « Art Museum Night » show products as well as the three major series of autumn humanistic urban and lifestyle products.

In recent years, more and more young people have been drawn into the world of traditional Chinese culture, such as experiencing intangible cultural heritage, participating in folk activities, visiting ancient buildings and other cultural tourism projects. These projects have continued to be extremely popular. Traditional culture is now being widely spread through social media and gradually reaching a wider audience. Brands’ selection of cultural elements is not based on simple intuition or feelings. Instead, they use social media popularity analysis and e-commerce search term databases to conduct « data mining of cultural elements ». Which historical figures have a « fan creation » foundation among young communities? Which ancient poems and sentences are more likely to trigger social dissemination? The data analysis results directly guide product development and content creation. The so-called « cultural revival » is actually a set of algorithm-recommended « high-potential cultural IP lists ».
The offline stores of « New Chinese Style » brands have long gone beyond being simply « places for shopping ». They are more like a comprehensive venue that integrates cultural experiences, social spaces and lifestyle, allowing consumers to immerse themselves in the charm of Chinese aesthetics while making purchases. They are designed as immersive theaters, serving as the physical conclusion of the brand’s narrative. Here, the space design, salesperson’s remarks, even the scents and background music, are all meticulously arranged, with the aim of completing the final experience and confirmation of the brand story by consumers. This is an aggressive innovation that completely transforms « retail » into « cultural service industry ».

Fang So, photo by Guanrong Zhang

Final goal: Build The Export Capability Of « Cultural Standards »

As China’s overall national strength continues to grow, Chinese culture is expected to achieve more extensive international dissemination within the next 20 to 50 years. Although this is a long and arduous process, with continuous efforts, one day « Guofeng »(A trend style that integrates elements of traditional Chinese culture with modern aesthetics, it represents cultural confidence and a love for Eastern aesthetics.) will be able to create a craze in the European and American markets just like Japanese culture has done. All these measures are aimed at a much broader and less spoken-about business objective: to participate in and lead the « standard-setting » of global lifestyles.

The concept of slow life advocated by « New Chinese Style » aligns perfectly with the current development trend of society. With the promotion of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, significant improvements in work efficiency will provide people with more leisure time. At that time, a slow-paced lifestyle that values enjoyment and quality will likely become the mainstream. And Chinese style can perfectly interpret this leisurely, elegant, and return-to-nature attitude towards life. A cup of tea, a piece of ancient music, and a set of simple and elegant clothing can create an atmosphere that complements the slow life. Just like how Nordic style defines minimalism and functionality, « New Chinese Style » attempts to define a contemporary Eastern philosophy of « finding tranquility in the midst of chaos and concealing clumsiness in technology ». This is no longer trade; it is the infrastructure output of cultural soft power.

Author: Guanrong Zhang

Book Covers: The end of a French cultural exception?

Littérature
La Maison vide, Laurent Mauvignier, published by Les Editions Minuit

On Tuesday, November 4, after a month of deliberations, the Goncourt Prize is finally announced. Almost immediately, bookshop windows fill with the same volume: a white cover, framed by a thin blue border, bearing only a few words: La Maison vide, Laurent Mauvignier. Yet, for some years now, something new has been added. A half-jacket in vivid red now wraps the book, subtly unsettling the quiet equilibrium of its pale, traditional tones. 

This gesture, that can be seen as minor, in fact signals a deeper shift taking place within the French publishing industry. It reveals how even the most established symbols of the French literary tradition (sobriety and visual neutrality), are increasingly challenged by new aesthetic and commercial logics.

To understand the symbolism behind it, we must first consider the visual tradition that has shaped the identity of French literature for over a century. In France, the appearance of a book, its sobriety, has never been a matter of design, but a cultural code in itself.

The Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), founded in 1908, quickly distinguished itself through an almost ascetic visual identity: a white cover with a red title, a restrained use of typography, and a refusal of ornamentation. This “graphic poverty”, as critics often describe it, was not due to a lack of imagination but a deliberate aesthetic ideology. It reflected the journal’s ambition to represent neutrality, dignity and a form of literary purity. This editorial position would profoundly shape the visual language of French publishing throughout the 20th century.

This tradition was later theorized by Gérard Genette in Seuils (1987), where he developed the influential concept of the “paratext”, being everything that surrounds the text itself including titles, covers, typography and even promotional elements. For Genette, the paratext serves as a threshold between the book and the reader: it announces, guides and in many cases helps sell the text. Yet in France, the commercial potential of the paratext has long been viewed with suspicion. Influential publishers aligned with the NRF tradition, such as Gallimard or Editions de Minuit, rejected visually pleasing or spectacular covers, associating them with market logics, seen as unworthy of high literature.

The adoption of the white cover across major publishing houses soon transformed it into a cultural norm. The choice of white was anything but neutral: it conveyed a sense of purity, intellectual prestige, and voluntary austerity in a country where visual restraint often signals good taste. From this point of view, literature was not supposed to seduce the reader through colour, illustration, or typography but through language alone. The cover’s silence, its refusal to speak, was part of the book’s cultural authority.

This position, implicitly elitist but fully assumed, created a clear boundary between what was considered legitimate literature and more popular or commercial genres. While science fiction, crime novels or romance novels embraced colour, imagery and expressive design, the French classical literature insisted on graphic minimalism to showcase cultural superiority. The white cover thus functioned as a marker of ideology of anti-market distinction, a way of saying “Here, we produce literature, not entertainment”.

However, the French ideology of visual austerity must be analysed in comparison with international publishing markets. In the Anglo-American publishing sphere, the function and status of the book cover have evolved according to radically different cultural and economic principles, where visibility, marketability and graphic identity play central roles. Examining this contrasting model offers a necessary point of view for understanding the pressures currently reshaping French editorial practices. 

In the English-speaking world, where cultural and economic norms are shaped by competition, consumer visibility and strong marketing infrastructures, the book cover is not a secondary paratext but a central strategic tool. The book market is vast and highly competitive, simultaneous releases in numerous formats and genres are the norm. In such an environment, a cover must capture the reader’s attention in a matter of seconds. Visual seduction is not only accepted, it is expected.

This dynamic explains why marketing departments occupy a structural place within the editorial process. They can, at times, play a more important role than editors themselves, particularly in large American or British publishing groups where sales projections, target readers and visual positioning are decided before a book goes into production. In contrast with France, where covers are often designed internally or given to discreet designers, Anglo-American graphic designers enjoy significant visibility. Their names appear in trade publications, interviews, sometimes even on the book itself and many are recognized as creative figures in their own right.

Birds of La Plata, W.H. Hudson, published by Penguin Books, designed by David Pearson

An illustrative example is David Pearson, renowned designer for Penguin Books and a key figure of contemporary British cover design. Known for his minimalist yet expressive designs, Pearson exemplifies the status of the designer as an artist whose work goes beyond the book industry. His aesthetic has led him to collaborate with Wes Anderson on cinematic visual concepts, as well as with diverse companies such as Hermès, The New York Times or Christie’s. Such trajectories are emblematic of a cultural ecosystem where the book cover is considered an independent graphic object, not just a functional wrapper.

In this context, the cover functions as part of a broader marketing package: it must be visually striking and crucially photogenic. Its design is conceived to perform not only in bookstores but also on social media feeds, online retailers and digital recommendation platforms. The Anglo-American market cultivates a logic of visibility where the book must stand out and be shared.

Although merchandising practices do exist in France, they play a less determining role, especially for the so-called serious literature still governed by the cultural codes of sobriety and tradition. The Anglo-American model, by contrast, assumes that the success of a book starts with its capacity to be seen.

The Anglo-American emphasis on visibility, branding and graphic impact has begun to exert an influence on French publishing. While the white cover tradition remains strong, a growing number of publishers have started experimenting with colour, illustration and typographic creativity. These changes reveal a slow but significant shift, as French editors navigate the tensions between inherited visual austerity and the demands of a competitive, modern marketplace in mutation.

From the early 2000s onward, the French publishing landscape has undergone a gradual yet decisive visual transformation. A new generation of independent houses, creative, daring and experimental, has begun to challenge the long-standing dominance of the minimalist cover. What started as isolated initiatives has now become a broader cultural shift, reshaping the relationship between text and image in France.

The Actes Sud editions stands among the most influential pioneers of this shift. Early-on, the house adopted a distinctly modern visual signature: an elongated book format, high-quality textured paper and a carefully curated iconography. This approach showed that a literary work could maintain its seriousness while embracing a strong aesthetic presence. Other publishers, such as Le Tripode, have taken more freedom in their approach by tailoring each book visual identity to its author, atmosphere or narrative universe. Colours, illustrations and patterns are seen as extensions of the text rather than distractions from it. 

New covers of Zulma published books, designed by David Pearson

But perhaps the most emblematic one is the case of Zulma. When the house commissioned British designer David Pearson to reinvent its visual identity, the shift was both radical and immediately successful. Pearson’s distinctive geometric patterns transformed each book into a recognisable part of the new artistic direction of the house. Within a few years, Zulma’s sales reportedly tripled, showcasing how a bold design strategy can revive a publisher’s image and widen its audience. 

Beyond editorial creativity, technological changes have further accelerated this evolution. The rise of online book retail has introduced a new constraint: the cover must remain visible and readable even when reduced to a tiny digital thumbnail. With such conditions, overly bland designs tend to disappear visually, overshadowed by bolder competitors. Strong typography, high-colour contrast and distinctive patterns have thus become of new must-have elements of cover design. What was once a purely aesthetic choice has turned into a technical necessity.

Terre des Hommes, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published by Graphic Gallimard and designed by Riad Sattouf

These pressures have progressively pushed traditional French publishers to adapt. Coloured bands and half-jackets, once exceptional, are now the norm even among the most conservative literary houses. Prize-winning books are increasingly accompanied by visual emphasis and new collections aim to refresh classic titles with contemporary graphic interpretations. The creation of Gallimard Graphic, which reissues work in collaboration with prominent designers whose names are featured on the cover, exemplifies the institutional pivot.

This change is also driven by the expectations of a younger, globally exposed audience. To many new readers, the traditional white cover appears as cold, elitist and uninviting. The decline of the white aesthetic therefore also marks the decline of a symbolic frontier between expert readers and the general public. In this sense, the move toward more colourful, accessible designs may help democratise access to literature, reducing the intimidation once associated with the French classical literature.

Far from signalling the disappearance of a French cultural exception, the recent evolution of French book cover design reflects a process of renegotiation rather than rupture. White covers are still the norm for French traditional publishing houses. This restrained design, once a proclamation of literary purity and cultural distinction, is not being abandoned but recontextualised in a publishing environment that must navigate through global competition, digital visibility and the expectations of a younger readership. What results is not the triumph of one aesthetic over another but a more fluid market where tradition and innovation coexist. 

This negotiation highlights a deeper problematic: how to redefine what cultural legitimacy looks like in the 21st century. By allowing colour, illustration and graphic experimentation into the realm of serious literature, the French publishing world is trying to answer this question. In this sense, by shifting from white minimalism to more expressive designs, French publishers do not reject tradition but rethink how it can continue to resonate in a world where the act of reading (and of choosing what to read) has itself profoundly changed.

Author: Justin Wiesler-Lambs

Beyond the Red Carpet: The Business of Film Festivals

Cinéma / TV, Réflexions

In May 2023, I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, thanks to a “cinéphile” accreditation that I obtained through Audencia’s film association Les Hallucinés. We were a group of ten students heading to one of the most famous cultural events in the world, and everything looked exactly like I had imagined. Red carpets, evening dresses, high heels, Hollywood stars, journalists, photographers, glitter everywhere, it honestly felt like stepping into another world. I was completely amazed.

Of course, watching celebrities wasn’t my only activity. I also broke my personal record: 15 films in five days. Seeing world premieres in the same room as critics, professionals and other film lovers is a feeling I will never forget. I returned in 2024 for the 77th edition, once again with my cinephile accreditation and ready for another intense week of screenings.

But everything changed in 2025. That year, I didn’t go to Cannes as a spectator, I went as an intern for a film distribution company. And suddenly, I discovered a completely different version of the festival. One that most people never see. I experienced the fast-paced world of the Marché du Film, the endless networking, the pressure to sell as many films as possible, to buy the most promising ones, and the reality of thirty meetings a day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., followed by more work once the day was “officially” over.

Only the evenings offered a moment to breathe, and that’s when the glamour of Cannes came back: VIP invitations to premieres, parties organised by distributors, events in villas, private beach parties, even yachts. The contrast was surprising, almost surreal.

This mix of glamour and intense business made me want to write about the real nature of A-list film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin or Venice. Beyond the image and the glitter, what actually happens behind the scenes?
What do these festivals really represent for the film industry?

The Festival as a Cultural Showcase… and Also a Brand

Yet behind the spectacular and glamour façade of each festival lies something essential: the artistic mission of showcasing cinema. Category A festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlin and TIFF) all share this goal, but each expresses it differently. Their awards reflect distinct artistic visions. At Cannes, the Palme d’Or is one of the highest distinctions in the film world. Winning it often guarantees an international career, long-term critical recognition, and sometimes even a place in film history. Cannes tends to highlight strong artistic statements, bold cinematic voices, and films linked to major contemporary auteurs.

The Venice Film Festival, with its Golden Lion, values narrative audacity and formal innovation. It is prestigious but also recognized for spotting unique, sometimes more experimental works. There is often a desire to push the limits of cinematic language.
Berlin stands out for its political and social orientation. The Golden Bear frequently goes to committed films that explore contemporary issues such as migration, minorities, inequality, or geopolitical tensions. Berlin positions itself as a meeting point between cinema and public debate, a place of reflection rather than spectacle.

Beyond the main awards, the richness of these festivals also lies in their many sections. At Cannes alone, audiences navigate between the Official Competition, Un Certain Regard, the Directors’ Fortnight, Critics’ Week, Cannes Classics, and the ACID programs. For cinephiles, it’s an endless playground: first features, restored films, independent cinema, and major international productions all coexist under one roof. This diversity allows many forms of global cinema to be seen and to gain exceptional visibility. Media-wise, each festival cultivates its own image. Cannes, by far the most publicized, leans into glamour. Its red carpet ritual is known worldwide and fuels social networks every year. Venice, more discreet but elegant, attracts those drawn to Italian charm and the refined atmosphere of the Lido. Berlin is less shiny but more oriented toward public access and sociopolitical engagement.

Over time, major festivals haven’t just become cultural events; they have turned into international brands : Cannes illustrates this perfectly : the golden palm, appears everywhere during the festival, on posters, tote bags, beach towels, T-shirts, and in official boutiques along the Croisette. This visual omnipresence strengthens a recognizable identity. Buying a Cannes tote bag is like bringing home a souvenir from the Louvre or a concert: it’s a symbol, a cultural marker.

Berlin has built a more engaged and accessible image, especially through its mascot, the bear,  which appears on colourful, instantly recognizable posters. Venice, with its winged lion and Italian elegance, cultivates a more artistic, sophisticated, almost literary image.

These identities are deliberate: Cannes bets on absolute prestige; Berlin on diversity and engagement; Venice on artistic refinement.

The Golden Lion, the top award of the Venice Film Festival, for which socially and politically engaged filmmakers are once again competing this year. (© Alberto PIZZOLI/AFP)

The Golden Bear award for Best Film, pictured during a news conference after the awards ceremony at the 61st Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin February, 2011. @REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

Golden Palm 2024. ©Patrick Csajko

Brand strategies reinforce this positioning: partnerships, sponsors, hospitality programmes, and digital content. They don’t just finance events, they help shape the festival’s narrative. Today, festivals are no longer just places where films are screened. They are cultural and economic ecosystems that produce symbolic and commercial value.

Behind the Scenes: The Festival as an Industrial Machine

Discovering the Cannes Marché du Film from the inside completely changed how I saw the festival. Far from the cameras, the Palais des Festivals becomes a gigantic maze of stands on several floors. Production companies, international sales agents, distributors, VFX studios, and AI start-ups all cross paths there. Unlike the glamorous screenings, this space has nothing spectacular. You see tired professionals doing 25 or 30 meetings a day. Sellers present their catalogues; buyers compare, negotiate, and take notes. Market screenings help distributors evaluate films before acquiring rights.

Marché du film 2022, Cannes @ Loïc Thébaud

Berlin, Venice (to a lesser degree), and Toronto also have markets, but Cannes is by far the largest in the world. Many of the films that will later be released in cinemas or on streaming platforms are negotiated there.

Each actor plays a specific role: producers pitch projects, international sales agents sell territorial rights, and distributors buy films for release in their own countries. For instance, a French distribution company can also act as a sales agent abroad, offering a film to Spanish, Japanese, or American buyers. This parallel world is essential to the economic life of cinema. Without these markets, most films would never reach an audience.

Major festivals have become economic epicenters where international sales, pre-sales, co-production agreements, consulting deals, derivative rights, and even technological partnerships are negotiated. Cannes is a place where a film idea can find a co-producer, where a finished film can secure twenty foreign distributors, and where platforms like Netflix can spot their next hit.

Festivals aren’t just business spaces; they’re also places for networking and reputation-building.

Different accreditations (press, buyers, sellers, producers, students…) reflect the diversity of participants. Conferences, panels, masterclasses, and professional cocktails structure the days. People talk marketing, strategy, and communication, all within an environment where the festival’s prestige becomes a tool of influence.

Networking is central. Being present, being seen, being recognized sometimes matters as much as signing a deal. Festivals are spaces where reputations are shaped and professional relationships grow.

Festivals as Strategic Actors in the Global Film Market A film screened at Cannes, Berlin, or Venice doesn’t have the same trajectory as one released without a festival premiere. Festivals generate buzz, attract press, allow critics to position films, and help secure additional sales. Sirat by Oliver Laxe made headlines not just because it won a secondary prize, but because it was one of the most talked-about films of the festival. It created a huge buzz thanks to its extremely experimental approach. Many viewers described it as something they had never seen before, a film that takes risks, breaks narrative expectations, and constantly pushes the audience out of their comfort zone. It’s bold, disorienting, sometimes even shocking, and the fact that a work this unconventional was awarded at Cannes contributed even more to its visibility and impact. Yet it was the film that generated the most attention, far more than the official winner, Un simple accident by Jafar Panahi.
This is the power of festivals: they create narratives around films.

SIRAT, Oliver Laxe @ El Deseo/ Uri Films / 4 a 4 productions / Filmes Da Ermida / Los Desertores Films

A Simple Accident, Jafar Panahi @ Jafar Panahi Production / Les Films Pelléas / Bidibul Productions / Pio & Co / Arte France Cinema

There is also the idea of the “festival circuit”: some films travel from festival to festival, building an international career through selections and awards. This is a strategic path, crucial for their global distribution. Festivals remain key places for experimentation. Sections like Cannes XR or Venice Immersive show that the future of cinema also involves virtual reality and immersive technologies. Green practices are slowly emerging, even if progress is still needed. Streaming platforms (Netflix, Prime Video, MUBI) are now deeply embedded in film markets. Marketing strategies are shifting too: a simple “Official Selection” label on a poster can increase a film’s visibility.

Finally, moving from the role of an amazed spectator to that of a beginner professional taught me something essential: cinema is never just an art. It is also an industry, an economy, and an international network. Category A festivals reflect this dual nature perfectly. They are places where the magic of cinema meets the realities of the market. They feed the dream, the red carpet, premieres, prestige, but they are also spaces of intense work, strategic stakes, and decisive negotiations. Today, when I see a red-carpet walk on TV, I no longer look only at the dresses or the photographers. I think about everything happening behind the scenes: meetings in the Palais, tightly scheduled appointments, discreet negotiations that will determine where and how films will be seen around the world. Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto are not just cultural showcases. They are key players in the global film market, hybrid spaces where dream and industry coexist. And maybe this duality is what makes them so fascinating.

Author: Ana SOTOMAYOR

TV Series as a Reflection of Daily and Societal Anxieties

Cinéma / TV, Pop culture, Réflexions

For a long time, TV series were perceived as simple entertainment. We watched them to pass the time, relax after a day’s work, or escape from the everyday. Today, this view is increasingly outdated. Some series no longer simply seek to entertain: they disturb, question, and sometimes leave the viewer with a profound sense of unease.

Contemporary series portray our world more than imaginary ones. They stage our fears, tensions, and contradictions. They show us what we experience collectively, but also what we feel internally, often without managing to articulate it. As such, they become genuine tools for social and psychological reflection.

Squid Game is a striking example of this. The end of the first season, when the game organizer turns out to be the old man and invites the main character to his deathbed to reveal the truth, goes far beyond a simple plot twist. The viewer understands that this extreme violence was merely entertainment for a few bored, wealthy figures, and that the old man created it because he had lost all hope in humanity, seeing people as devoid of morality. The main character, on the other hand, retains his faith in humanity, believing we should help each other instead of constantly destroying ourselves.

Similarly, The Bear, although much more realistic and intimate, provokes deep reflection. It doesn’t shock with violence, but with the constant tension and exhaustion it portrays. These two series, very different in form, nonetheless show the same thing: series are no longer just stories to watch from a distance; they have become experiences that affect us personally and collectively.

Today, series occupy a central place in our daily lives. They are part of our routines, our discussions, and our way of consuming culture. They are no longer just watched in a family setting or occasionally: they are « binge-watched, » analyzed, commented on social media, and sometimes even used as generational benchmarks. Certain lines, scenes, or characters become common references, shared far beyond the screen.

This success is also explained by the fact that series now take the time to develop over the long term. Unlike cinema, they can explore complex human trajectories, show the psychological evolution of characters, and dwell on the consequences of their choices. This extended temporality allows for deeper immersion and reinforces the emotional impact on the viewer. In this sense, series do not just tell a story; they accompany the viewer. They create a particular, almost intimate bond, which explains why certain works leave a lasting mark. When a series deals with anxiety, loneliness, or failure, it doesn’t do so abstractly : it shows it through concrete, recognizable situations close to our own experience.

The Fiction Closer to Reality

With the rise of streaming platforms, series have gained freedom. They can address darker, more complex subjects without necessarily trying to please everyone. They move away from simple and reassuring narratives to offer stories more rooted in reality. Television fiction has become a space where we talk about work, precariousness, loneliness, social pressure, and mental health. These themes, once secondary, are now central. Series no longer serve to escape reality but to observe and present it from another angle.

Another important point concerns the characters. Perfect heroes have almost disappeared. In their place, we find tired, lost individuals, often in conflict with themselves—heroes with flaws because they resemble us; they are profoundly human, which allows the viewer to project themselves and identify more easily.

In The Bear, Carmy is not a hero in the classic sense. He is brilliant but unstable, demanding, and sometimes unbearable. In Squid Game, the characters often make morally questionable choices, dictated by fear or despair. These imperfect figures make the narrative more realistic and more unsettling.

Two Forms of Anxiety, But a Single Humanity

Squid Game stages extreme, almost absurd violence. Yet, this violence is not gratuitous. It serves to represent a world where individuals are trapped in a system of permanent competition. The game participants are not monsters : they are indebted, marginalized, or socially excluded people.

The anxiety running through the series is collective. It does not stem from a personal problem but from an economic system that pushes individuals to confront each other and abandon their moral ideals to survive at all costs. Each ordeal recalls a well-known logic: winning at the expense of others, accepting unjust rules, and considering the human being as a replaceable resource. The final scene of Season 1 reinforces this idea. It shows that all this suffering was only intended to entertain a privileged minority, and that, according to the game’s creator, this suffering is merely a metaphor, a staging of what humankind is today. This revelation echoes a feeling widely shared today : that of being caught in a system that benefits a few at the expense of the many, and that the participants in this system accept it.

Conversely, The Bear does not rely on a spectacular concept. Everything takes place in a restaurant kitchen. Yet, the tension is constant. The noise, the speed, the arguments, and the stress create an almost oppressive atmosphere.

The anxiety here is intimate. It is linked to grief, the relationship with work, the quest for perfection, and the inability to let go. Carmy carries a deep malaise within him, fueled by his past and constant pressure to succeed. The series shows how work can become a place of suffering, even when it is a passion. Each character impacts their job based on the psychological state they inhabit, imposing a chaotic process that only resolves when each of them manages to coexist in the best way, and after significant personal work on both sides.

Different Scales, One Human Anguish

What particularly distinguishes Squid Game and The Bear is the scale at which anxiety is represented. Squid Game chooses exaggeration, shock, and violence to highlight very real mechanisms. The game functions as a metaphor for a brutal economic system where competition crushes all forms of solidarity. The rules are clear but deeply unfair, and the characters have virtually no room to maneuver. The anxiety is visible, spectacular, and collective.

Conversely, The Bear shows a much quieter anxiety. Nothing extraordinary happens on screen, but everything seems constantly on the verge of collapse. The series reveals what it means to live under pressure daily, in a demanding professional setting, without recognition and without real space to express emotions. Here, suffering is not externally imposed; it is integrated into the rhythm of the characters’ lives.

Despite these differences, the two series converge on an essential point : they show individuals trapped in structures that overwhelm them. In Squid Game, the system is violent and explicit. In The Bear, it is more diffused, embedded in the norms of work, success, and performance. In both cases, these series question the place of the human in models that prioritize results, efficiency, or profit over well-being. Whether visible or silent, these anxieties concern us all. They reflect experiences that many people live, at different levels, in current society.

An Anxiety-Provoking Context

If these fictions resonate so much, it is also because they are part of a particular context. Economic crises, professional uncertainties, pressure to succeed, mental fatigue: the feeling of insecurity is widely shared.

In this context, series become spaces where these tensions can be expressed. They give form, a story, and faces to anxieties that are often diffuse. Through their characters and narratives, they highlight the fragility of a balance that has become difficult to maintain. They show individuals confronted with high expectations, the fear of failure, or the loss of meaning, in a world where stability seems increasingly fragile. In this sense, series act as indicators of the collective psychological state of our time.

Fiction That Creates Connection

Faced with this type of fiction, the viewer is not indifferent. They are no longer simply in front of a story that they passively consume. Series like Squid Game and The Bear emotionally and morally involve the person watching them. They provoke a feeling of discomfort, sometimes guilt, but also identification.

In Squid Game, the viewer is confronted with a disturbing question : how far would they be willing to go to survive or succeed in an unfair system ? In The Bear, the question is more intimate: how much work pressure are we supposed to accept as normal ? This shift from fiction to personal experience reinforces the power of the narrative.

By staging these anxieties, series also offer a form of recognition. They tell the viewer : what you feel is not isolated. This identification creates a strong bond between the work and its audience. Series then become spaces for shared reflection, where everyone can project their own doubts and tensions. As with any cultural object or art form, we see a reassuring or heavy projection of who we are in them.

Today, TV series play a much more important role than it seems. They no longer merely entertain : they observe, criticize, and question the world in which we live.

Squid Game and The Bear show two different faces of contemporary anxiety but ultimately tell the same story : that of human beings confronted with systems, expectations, and pressures that overwhelm them. By bringing these realities to the screen, fiction invites us to step back and reflect on our own place in society. These series do not give us ready-made answers, but they ask essential questions. Ultimately, it is perhaps this involvement of the viewer that explains why series occupy such an important place in contemporary culture today. They do not just represent the world; they confront us with it. And that is perhaps their most valuable role.

Author: Paul SAOUD

Blood antiquities: The complicity of western museums in the Syrian conflict

Architecture, Arts visuels, Réflexions

When we think of war, we think about destruction. However, there is often a silent war against memory. The conflict that ravages Syria since 2011 has not only tragically displaced and killed millions, but has also erased a good part of Syrian’s historical heritage, that is to say the cradle of civilization. This allowed the existence of a network of looting and trafficking, transforming millennials of history into cash for terrorist organizations. What is worse, this trade requires a market. While the stealing takes place in the war zones of the Middle East, the destination for these blood antiquities is the very nice and polished galleries of Europe, the United States, and the Gulf. There is consequently a disturbing connection between armed conflict and the art market, allowing groups like Daesh to industrialize the pillage of numerous sites. Prestigious European institutions, through real negligence or voluntary blindness, became the financiers of terror.

The industrialization of pillage: an empire built on ruins

Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State (Daesh) consolidated control over parts of Syria and Iraq, a territory presenting at least 4500 archaeological sites. Among these were nine UNESCO World Heritage sites, where first ever signs of urbanization and writing were discovered. For the terrorist organization, looting those places represented a dual opportunity: destruction of polytheist symbols, and clandestine pillage for financial gain. Since the beginning of hostilities in 2011, over 320 archaeological sites have been irreparably wounded, looted, or obliterated. For instance, the ancient cities of Mari, 3rd millennium BC, and Ebla, renowned for their royal archives, have been bombed and destroyed. Other sites, Dura-Europos, often named the « Pompeii of the Desert » and the legendary greco-roman city of Palmyra have suffered complete erasure of the map. To categorize those action, Waleed Khaled al-A’sad, former director of Syrian antiquities uses the words « cultural genocide« . This shows that the very identity of a people is getting voluntarily and systematically deleted. Satellite images from late 2014 revealed the extent of the issue: the site of Mari was scarred by over 1300 excavation craters, by bulldozers and heavy machinery, destroying a lot of precious paintings that were almost 6000 years old…

Investment of Zimri-Lîm, 1766 B.C., mural of Mari – now destroyed

The scariest part is how Daesh’s operations are highly hierarchized, in Diwans (departments). The terrorist organization established a « Diwan al-Rikaz », a department for natural resources, which controls the exploitation of oil, gas, and antiquities. On May 15th of 2015, a raid by the U.S. Special Forces on the site controlled by Abu Sayyaf, the financing chief of Daesh, showed intelligence that exposed how sophisticated the group’s administration is. Seized documents included receipts indicating that in just one province (Deir ez-Zor), the group had collected 265 000 $ in a tax called khums, perceived on local diggers. Following estimations, the total of trade in that province exceeded 1,3 million $.

The economics of terror: financing terrorism with artifacts

However, estimating the precise revenue generated by this illicit trade is very difficult due to the blurred nature of the black market: estimates vary significantly between intelligence agencies and international organizations. The high estimations made by the Russians asserted that Daesh generated up to 200 million $ annually from the antiquities trade. Then, in October 2015, Iraq and Interpol estimated around 100 million $ per year. However, French and American intelligence agencies offered more modest figures. The French Center for the Analysis of Terrorism estimated the 2015 revenue at approximately 30 million $, while the U.S. government estimated between 30 and 50 million $. Nevertheless, it does not matter the exact amount of money : what counts is the importance of this revenue in Daesh’s propaganda. Indeed, after being successfully raided by the UN, Daesh faced a big drop in oil revenue. In this context, antiquities became merely a vital « substitution resource » : history was sold to keep the machine running. For another example, artifacts stolen from Dura-Europos alone could be worth nearly 18 million $ on the art market. And if you think of  the thousands of archeological sites still available, the financial potential is crazy.

The supply chain: laundering history

The journey of a stolen artifact before it arrives at a gallery or a museum in Paris involves a complex process of laundering, in order to blur the illicit origin of the artefact and integrate it into the legal economy. The primary passage for these artifacts are the porous borders of Turkey and Lebanon. Once across the border, the objects enter the informal grey market. Since many of these items come from illegal excavations, they have never been photographed or documented by official archaeologists. This is the most important moment, because they get invisible to databases like Interpol’s Stolen Works of Art register. But the journey is not finished : to sell antiquity at a good price in Europe, it needs good provenance, which means a documented history of ownership. Traffickers and dealers easily forge these documents. Commonly, they claim that a Syrian artifact belongs to an old family collection dating back to the 1970s (before the 1970 UNESCO Convention which prohibits the import of unprovenanced cultural property). And on top of that, the market is flooded with faux: up to 80% of Syrian antiquities seized in Lebanon are actually forgeries or have forged documentation. All of this is because of the important demand of European galleries and collectors, which complicates the work of law.

Institutional complicity: The Louvre scandal

For years, museums maintained little to no concern, acting very detached from the question. However, recent scandals revealed that even the most prestigious institutions are not that clean. The most known scandal hit in May 2022 around Jean-Luc Martinez, the former president-director of the Louvre Museum (2013–2021). He was a famous expert appointed as France’s ambassador for international cooperation on heritage, and was suddenly charged with « complicity in organized fraud » and « money laundering » for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Investigators suspect Martinez voluntarily closing his eyes on the strange provenance of several Egyptian artifacts acquired for millions of euros. The centerpiece of this scandal is a pink granite stele bearing the name of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The investigation revealed an international network of scammers. The stele was sold to the Louvre by a Parisian expert, Christophe Kunicki. Kunicki was already suspected in a similar trial in the USA, for a golden sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh purchased by the MET for 3,5 million euros. However, another investigation proved that the sarcophagus had been looted from Egypt in 2011 during the Arab Spring and smuggled out with forged papers. The Met was forced to give it back to Egypt in 2019. The implication of such famous experts proves that the precautions taken by major museums are not sufficient. This is a disturbing question: was this only negligence, or was it a deliberate maneuver to secure prestigious acquisitions? Despite multiple efforts to cancel the trial, the Paris Cour d’appel confirmed the guilt of Martinez in February 2023.

The response: law enforcement and state hypocrisy

Different institutions try to face this crisis. France has mobilized its specialized unit, the OCBC (Central Office for the Fight against Traffic in Cultural Goods). Established in 1975, it has police officers with expertise in art history and criminal investigation. The OCBC has been crucial in those cases, for example with the arrest of five prominent Parisian antiquity dealers in June 2020. They are the ones currently investigating the theft from the Louvre in October 2025. What’s more, the French customs also do a big job, intercepting a lot of shipments. To raise public awareness, the Louvre held an exhibition in 2021 displaying statues from Libya and Syria, destined for the black market but intercepted at the border. However, the political response often balances between tactless statements and uncomfortable realities. In 2014, Philippe Lalliot, the French ambassador to UNESCO, stated, « Even when the dead are counted in the tens of thousands, we must be concerned with cultural cleansing« . The majority of museums today do not really take précautions regarding this scandal, because let’s face it : in Europe, we’d rather finance terrorism and death of thousands than missing on the opportunity to appropriate a beautiful sarcophagus.

The shadow of colonialism

The real problem underlying here is the habit some museums took of stealing and taking ownership of their colonies’ patrimony. The Louvre’s department of oriental antiquities has over 150 000 objects, many of which were acquired during the colonial era. Under the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon (1923–1946), archaeological excavations were governed by the principle of « partage« : finds were divided between the country of origin and the excavating nation. This legal framework allowed thousands of objects from sites like Mari and Ras Shamra to enter French collections. It established a big European ownership over Middle Eastern heritage. Nowadays, the debate has finally shifted towards restitution. For instance, the return of the Mari tablets to Syria between 1996 and 2004 demonstrated that repatriation is possible, yet it remains an exception rather than a rule…

Towards a change ?

Terrifyingly, the connection between the “refined” world of European art galleries and the brutal war of Syria is real. The blood antiquities trade is not only a crime against property, but a mechanism that transforms human heritage into funding for terrorism. The scandals involving the Louvre and the Met demonstrate that the art market’s opacity is a systemic feature. It allows a form of laundering where the illegal origins of an object are erased by the reputation of a prestigious museum. As long as institutions prioritize possession over provenance, and as long as collectors view ancient artifacts as mere commodities, the pillaging of history will continue. Europe often positions itself as the guardian of universal culture. However, the evidence suggests that in its hunger for accumulation, it forgot that this heritage is no one’s property.

Author: Kenya Meziere