🌐Towards a culture of joyful ecology. Reflections on new cultural institutions to help us in our struggles

⇒ This article is also available in French here.

Public discourse on the subject of ecology is evolving in waves. Five or six years ago, all the signs seemed to be pointing towards an ecologisation of the political sphere. Under pressure from mass mobilisations by activists, even senior officials from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) were forced to announce a “European Green Deal”. Reforms such as phasing out the use of internal combustion cars by 2030, the willingness to recognise ecocide as a crime and the “nature restoration law” were implemented and could be seen as first steps in the right direction.

Today, these same politicians are dismantling their own ecological reforms while agents of a new digital fascism are on the rise. In the newspapers, in the very curation of modern art museums, the ecological crisis is being replaced by artificial intelligence as the hegemonic subject of interest, in resonance with the rise to power of the Silicon Valley elites. Armed with their influence and gigantic resources, they are spreading digital Messianism to every corner of the globe, burying the ecological political pressure of the late 2010s.

The ecological movement has not yet really managed to take root in our cultural institutionsn in a lasting and positive way. For example, the creation of three (three!) new professorships for AI-related research has been announced at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (where Kilian teaches), despite the ecological disaster AI represents. No comparable chair in either the arts or the humanities has been designated for ecology even at the peak of its hype. Few festivals or cultural institutions have modified their programming to allow ecology to become not just a rhetorical statement, but a guideline for a radically changed structure that would —among others— require a different relationship to means of transportation, food, production and inclusion that does not yet fit into the precarious and tight-knit structures of cultural festivals and other institutions.

Talk of ecology is seldom accompanied by feelings of joy, desire or excitement —feelings that are powerful levers for mobilisation. On the contrary, ecology is often associated with renunciation, restriction and a guilty conscience —in short, feelings that in no way stimulate enthusiasm. Ecology is still too often seen as being linked to problems related to a “nature” that is external to us, a territory to be terraformedn to meet our needs thanks to the technological promises of geo-engineering or the production of alternative energy resources. Our cultural values —those of freedom, solidarity, political autonomy, quality of life, mobility and joy— are only found in “critical” fringe discourses considered as expressions of our culture that seem change-worthy in the face of ecological collapse. They are rarely presented as a central field for ecological transformation in any positive and enabling way (think here of the myth of the “tragedy of the commons” as it is commonly presented to us in defense of private property). The task of cultural workers therefore seems to us to be of paramount importance in bringing about the change that is needed if the next wave of political ecologisation is to become more deeply rooted in our cultures.

This article discusses two examples of the cultural institutionalisation of ecological and social protest to inspire a reorientation of the political field. The first example is the annual ritual celebration of the abandonment of the Grand-Ouest airport project in France, carried out since 2019 by the Cellule d’Action Rituelle on the ZAD Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The second is the performativen declaration of a bank holiday in Austria to celebrate the anti-nuclear victory in the referendum of 5 November 1978 on which currently an array of artists and cultural agents are working.

Emotions are powerful levers, and fear, anger and shame are not the only ones that can be aroused by ecological thinking.

 

January 17 is a public holiday!

On January 17, 2018, the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, during the first presidential term of Emmanuel Macron, declared the abandonment of the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, giving rise to scenes of jubilation and a sense of victory for the “ZAD”. The ZAD is a territory occupied and inhabited by a manifold mix of people who had not only been fighting this project for over forty years, but have equally fought for other, better and more sustainable ways of living in times of ecological collapse. In the course of the protest, the territory was renamed from the state-bureaucratic term of a “Zone d’Aménagement Différé” (deferred development zone) to a “Zone À Défendre” (zone to defend) that has become the key fight of French ecological and social struggles over the past two decades and a place of fertile resistance ever since.

To attempt to dislodge the protesters even after the airport project had been abandoned, at the beginning of April 2018, 4,000 police officers, drones, helicopters and tanks set about destroying a third of the shacks on the ZAD, flooding the area with tear gas and blocking crossroads with water cannons. Although the ZAD was threatened by the gigantic state forces of the joint military and administrative institutions, the fragile embryo of utopia developed a certain creativity of struggle, barricades with pinecones, people with constantly wet feet linked to an unparalleled network of mutual aid. By the sheer force and plurality of this resistance, the state was forced to end its attempted eviction of this ZAD and an agreement on legalisation was reached. In the ZAD, no one was proud or satisfied, but it meant a means to survive and maintain what had been fought for and partially won —and so tough negotiations got under way— and remain ongoing.

In some places, this at least partial victory over the state was tinged with wounds whose scabs are still being scraped off. A certain idea of the ZAD disappeared with the destruction of the insolent shacks under the tracks of the tanks and the loss of a complete break with the state-capitalist system and its legal apparatus. Although it marked a major victory, the abandonment of the airport project will remain linked to the trauma of the evictions for a long time to come.

Nonetheless, January 17 is now a public holiday at the ZAD. It’s a time to heal collectively from the blows received in this struggle, from the trauma of evictions, from fatigue. It’s a time to think about other struggles, to celebrate victories, to give ourselves courage and support. Every year now, something a bit grandiose takes place: nature walks in the area, flamboyant banquets, the occasional raising of a new roof, cake competitions linked to the struggles, a cabaret, concerts, a ball, a party; it all depends on the year and the energy.

Deep rooted bottom-up processes have a transversal way of affecting all levels of society and are thus much better equipped to gather the capacities to socially find just and inclusive responses to challenging problems.

And on this day too, there’s a ritual

A word that fills a void, seizes on doubts and transforms them into commitments and responsibilities. It’s something else, a tool or strategy to bring into focus roles and agents that have been passed over in silence by most: mud, newts, bonds, the imaginary, disproportionately unbalanced power relationships. A healing rite to give new strength to this movement, to the struggle.

Since January 17, 2019, the first anniversary of the abandonment, -h- and the Laboratoire d’Imagination Insurrectionnelle together form the Cellule d’Action Rituelle. The C.Δ.R’s research-action at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes ZAD is developing around practices for making common those that have been eradicated by capitalism. So, we have set out to (re)invent customs, start things over again, setting off from the individualism that is characteristic of neo-liberalism. Such a “ritual” is a discipline of attention, of relationship, of “being at the heart”. It’s about linking Félix Guattari’s three ecologies: the one associated with nature, the collective ecology, which produces thinking for many, and the individual ecology. We need to strike a balance. There can be no commons without the people who take care of them, who keep them alive, without a community.

The ritual of January 17, which perpetuates within us the memory of the victory but also of the struggle and its continuity, is also the moment when we call for other victories, when we link ourselves to other communities, to other commons. On these occasions, we can just as easily invoke the protective forces of our territory, rekindle the ties that underpin our vitality, replay the history that is now ours, and remind ourselves that the struggle is not over, that if we managed to succeed once, then we can do it again be it here or elsewhere. And this strength, the strength of the promise that one day our struggles will succeed, we pass on like a nourishing fire to others, those who come to rejoice and hope with us.

So, every January 17, the C.Δ.R uses a wobbly practice, a balancing act, experimenting with an aesthetic based on a bizarre and motley syncretism, to blend playful dimensions and poetic gestures. Hordes of monster policemen are defeated, buildings are given seals of magical protection activated by anarcho-pagan karaoke, state-capitalist kings and queens are tied up in roasts and thrown into the fire in general jubilation, the leases we were forced to sign are transformed into projectiles against those who seek our downfall, we remember that we are fighting from and for the territory where we stand up(on) and for.

Fabulating like crazy, making things up, throwing them away, starting again, making strange connections, mixing everything up. Just like capitalism, which digests and re-appropriates everything. But living on the ground, being situated, asserting that the things that happen there can only happen there, at that moment, even though forms and stories echo elsewhere. And to carry these echoes, to support them, to amplify them from this celebration that is January 17. Inviting those who are or will become our friends to join us, like that time when, exceptionally, the 17th was not in January but in November to mark the 10th anniversary of the failure of “Operation César”, the first major eviction attempt by the police back in 2012 that, obviously, failed —the resistance jokingly called themselves “Operation Astérix”— and who might win this battle in Brittany? A sewn and embroidered banner had been specially made that day to be given to those fighting in and around Sainte-Soline against the mega-basin projects, which was the major fight of 2023n. And a few months later, in the middle of the fields, on the march towards an ecocidal project, we were able to see the same banner standing up to companies of mobile gendarmes, in clouds of tear gas, in the middle of explosions.

January 17 is a time to rally together, to remember that victory is possible and to rekindle the desire to carry on together. January 17 is a promise, a long-term commitment to this area and others linked to it. It’s about empowerment, about joy, about not letting ourselves become disillusioned, even if sometimes it’s hard, because we’re not superhuman.

By ritually commemorating and celebrating the abandonment and defeat of ecocidal projects, the aim is not only to get a section of society on board with the need for ecological transformation, but also to celebrate the joy and desire of becoming ecological through more victories.

November 5 will be a public holiday!

The second example we would like to discuss is the future commemoration of a victory that took place over 40 years ago, but whose potential, in our view, has remained dormant ever since. This victory took place in a country whose activist base is more conservative than that of France —Austria— but which nevertheless managed to free itself from the grip of nuclear energy and its extremely long-lasting destructive force, even before it could really take hold.

On November 5, 1978, after years of militant struggle that forced the government to hold a referendum on the issue of nuclear power, Austria —by a narrow majority— democratically voted to become a nuclear-free country. Although construction of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant had been completed and could have been turned on the following day, it was never brought into service following the referendum result. Since then, it stands on the banks of the Danube, 60km upstream from Vienna, as a memorial to a long-term disaster that was avoided.

Since then, Austria has not only been constitutionally free of nuclear power, but has also built up a broad consensus across all political divides, forming a certain “national identity” as a proudly anti-nuclear country. This constitutes an almost unique element of environmental identity not found in most other countries in the world.

It also shows the sustainability of social decisions that have derived from a deliberative, bottom-up process. Whereas the representative model of party democracy tends towards polarisation and oscillation, deep rooted bottom-up processes have a transversal way of affecting all levels of society and are thus much better equipped to gather the capacities to socially find just and inclusive responses to challenging problems: nuclear power is now no longer an object of serious debate in Austria —the political process around Zwentendorf has produced a consensus that a more minimal democratic form like representative votes is less likely to achieve.

However, the unifying and forward-looking potential of this victory has manifested itself little in the everyday business of Austria and its outlook on the ecological future. “Green” political agendas hardly ever get a majority vote in the representative voting system distorted by populist newspapers, corporate interests and fascist demagogy. On the contrary, Austria has a horrible ecological balance and its sociology is marked by very strong social and cultural polarisation, breeding the frustration and ressentiment that current fascisms thrive on. To invent a tool to counter this symptom of latent “fossil fascism”, which is widely shared in most nation-states of late capitalism caught up in ecological catastrophe, a group of artists and activists called the Committee for Gradual Incapacitation (CGI) is calling for a national public holiday to commemorate the Zwentendorf referendum and —as such— declare a first ecological public holiday to alter our own collective memory and identity to foster a more enabling community.

Although there are more people in Austria today who recognise the need for ecological change than there are denominational Christians, almost all public holidays are marked by Christianityn —even if a majority of people no longer know what the origin or significance of many of these holidays are in the Christian calendar (for example: Annunciation or Assumption day). We are convinced that the downward spiral of ecocidal capitalism is also the result of the frustration caused by the emptiness of our cultural and social institutions (like the aforementioned loss of meaning of the Christian holidays) and the problem that they can no longer convey any joyful meaning or mobilising potential. We are standing on a cultural void of hyper-accelerated consumer capitalism and have to face the threat of planetary extinction without any cultivated toolset to go about the problem in a cultured manner. We believe that a public holiday for Zwentendorf could be a first step towards this aim of opening up our cultures to a joyful ecological paradigm that is open to the future. Emotions are powerful levers, and fear, anger and shame are not the only ones that can be aroused by ecological thinking. According to Elin Kelsey, the lack of action on climate change is not the result of a lack of information, but rather of what she calls a “hope gap”. The majority of people are very well informed, but in the absence of scenarios that give hope and the desire to act, “pure” information has more of a paralysing effect that she calls “climate doomism”.

This is exactly what the new cultural task concerning ecology could be: to focus on historical instances or something that could be called a victory in the ecological struggle and to cultivate rituals around them to produce more positive and enabling feelings. To fight against the ecocidal status quo is to fight against the climate of despair and doomism on which late capitalism depends. For this, we do not only need utopian scenarios, but concrete institutions to anchor their future memory in re-occuring ritual repetition. The Cancellation Day of Zwentendorf would, from this utopian angle, be only the first of many new holidays, commemorating historical and future cancellations we will need to achieve in order to survive well in times of collapse. By the proliferation of such holidays, we would also achieve a major lever in making society more ecological: radical work reduction. But instead of a rational, somewhat technocratic solution of reducing the normal working week from 40 to 25 or 20 or 15 hours, we could just amass new holidays that impede us from working too much while at the same time re-anchoring our identity for the struggles to come.

Conclusion

The decision concerning Zwentendorf is exemplary in this respect, as was the victory over the Notre-Dame-de-Landes airport: by abandoning a catastrophic infrastructure project, paths towards a sustainable future have been opened up. While the old and still dominant narrative sees these events as a “step backwards”, ad hoc “traditions” such as the Zwentendorf festival or the victory over the airport at NDDL can reveal the strength and beauty of refusing the false promises of a technocratic/techno-solutionist future, and moving towards tangible, achievable, liveable futures. In this, we can already foresee a more forward-looking notion of progress, freed from its tendency to homogenize the entire world by a rationalist, modernist and simplifying principlen: progress synonymous with the pluralisation and joyful diversification of ways of living (among humans and non-humans). Progress as a social task of devising new forms of sociality and communality in order to come up with inclusive and emancipatory ways to rebuild society in a time of ecological demise.

By ritually commemorating and celebrating the abandonment and defeat of ecocidal projects, the aim is not only to get a section of society on board with the need for ecological transformation, but also to celebrate the joy and desire of becoming ecological through more victories (such as the halting of motorway, airport and other infrastructure construction that can be described as major useless projects) that can serve as an impetus for the production of more desirable and inclusive ways of life and ways of creating society. These new cultural institutions can then serve as a powerful engine of attraction, helping the struggles against ecocidal capitalism and its ally, fascism, to grow in strength.