Teachings of the State of False Exception

by Aleksi Barrière

What have we learned from the coronavirus pandemic? The question itself is somewhat crass — an event that has caused millions of deaths and dramatically disrupted millions of lives cannot be reduced to a teachable moment. One might anyway wonder, in the light of history’s repeating cycles, whether a society has ever ‘learned’ anything from any tragedy at all.

However, that question does often spring to mind. Not only, and not primarily, when observing people’s attitudes toward handwashing and all forms of contagious disease prevention, which have largely returned to their pre-pandemic levels. Also not only when listening to discussions about public health, that sometimes give the impression that a generational opportunity for broader medical education (and scientific education in general) has been missed. In truth, the list of structural issues that were raised between 2020 and 2022, and since then dismissed, is staggering. When someone writes about the ‘teachings’ of the climate crisis in the 2045 anniversary issue of Kompositio, the assessment is likely to be similarly depressing.

Seeing the pandemic as an opportunity was a popular idea during the first coronavirus spring, and not just among food and clothing delivery companies. At least in my social circles, people commented on pictures of the Venetian Lagoon, turned bright blue again as it recovered from mass tourism, more than they spoke of the mass graves, the thousands of hurried cremations, or the situation in nursing homes. Many of us did start living and producing in shorter chains, and a new kind of conversation culture and solidarity emerged online.

I myself was one of those who tried to develop artistic projects remotely, searching for new forms that suited the new situation; I trusted that those working on the independent scene had the expertise to create live performances in situations requiring creativity and agility, and that this expertise would now be transmitted to others. Despite the restrictions and limited resources, a lot of content was produced then, perhaps too much of it. Many sought new education, learned languages, or wrote and composed without commissions.

However, this is only a small part of the pandemic experience, cheerful (if panicked) highlights of one social bubble. In reality, the pandemic acted as a watershed: some were able to work remotely and marvel at returning songbirds, while others had to ensure the continuity of supply chains and expose themselves repeatedly to the virus. Some calmly contemplated the future, while others were going bankrupt and had to undergo hasty professional retraining. Some rekindled their relationships with their spouses, started families, or built new independent lives for themselves, while others went through depression, divorce, fell victim to domestic violence. Although the restrictions at each stage were basically the same for everyone, they affected different social coordinates in different ways. For the majority, the reality of the coronavirus was crisis management, and crises reveal structural inequalities.

I have myself been very privileged in my work as a stage director and librettist: although lost opportunities cannot really be quantified, most of my performances were postponed rather than canceled. Sometimes I even benefited from other people’s cancellations, that created performance opportunities for those who were able to adapt to the constantly changing restrictions. The burden was not entirely on the shoulders of the artists of course, and the attitude of some institutions was exemplary: when the Aix-en-Provence Festival was canceled in the summer of 2020, artistic director Pierre Audi decided that daily testing would allow us to proceed with the stage rehearsals for Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence, which had been scheduled to premiere.

We spent many months with the music, including a year of assimilation between rehearsal periods during which it was possible to modify the score in light of our experience of the stage, as if it were independent contemporary music theatre with greater resources — as a result, the work was exceptionally mature by the time of its premiere in July 2021, and could continue its tour in the best possible conditions in the following seasons.

However, most venues and festivals around the world did not take such a constructive approach to the situation, and many new productions — in particular of new works — were canceled without compensation under the ‘force majeure’ clauses in the artists’ contracts. Numerous freelance performers I worked with wondered why their rights were better respected in underfunded ensembles of the independent field than in large institutions, in terms of cancellation conditions, logistical needs, and for instance compensations for video recordings of performances, which were then being so desperately bombarded online. What was painful for these artists was the realization that there was nothing new about this situation: crisis management strategies had simply exacerbated the art world’s ‘normal’ practices to a critical point, revealing their underlying values.

Around the same time, I proposed a co-production model to a French concert hall that would enable smaller performances to be organized by local artists while international visits were on hold. It was deemed a better strategy to wait and return to ‘normal,’ meaning flying in entire orchestras from abroad. Many opera houses have praised the success of Innocence, but few have taken note of the fact that it was made possible by an unusually long production time, long-term continuity within the creative team, and a network of collaborators growing together over years long before the coronavirus — all things that stand in stark contrast to the usual methods of the opera world.

That is why the question “What have we learned…?” is utterly absurd: we have not wanted to learn, what we wanted was to resume business as usual. If possible at a lower price, and by transforming the substitutes offered by younger artists and digital markets into cost-effective products.

During World War II, philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote eighteen short theses on the concept of history, the eighth of which begins with the statement: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of exception’ in which we live is not an exception but the rule.” Pandemics, wars, crises, and the ensuing tremulous demands for ‘efforts,’ ‘sacrifices,’ and ‘sobriety’ always affect most harshly the same social groups, the very groups that already suffer most under so-called ‘normal’ circumstances. Such a state of false exception will never be the fantasized opportunity to turn the world upside down: our crisis-ridden, crisis-powered world already does live upside down.

According to Benjamin, ‘our task is to bring about the real state of exception’ — one that is not merely a continuation of crisis management, but enables genuinely new, diverse, and solidarity-based relations of production. A real state of exception cannot arise from catastrophe alone. It requires the realization that a healthier world is indeed possible to begin with. For the glimpses we have had of such possibilities, we are not to thank the crises themselves, but all the artists who, in spite of crisis management, strive to make new visions exist already within our current reality.

Published in Finnish in Kompositio 2/2025

Photos: Toni Härkönen (Aleksi Barrière), Jean-Louis Fernandez (Innocence)