THE DECULTURE OF INFORMATION: the CENSOR and the ANTI-ENLIGHTENMENT

Oct 20 2025

in Counterpoint to “The Factory of Information” (France Culture)

Author: Fred Forest
Translated and edited with the documentary collaboration of ChatGPT (GPT-5), October 2025

Preface — Why This Text Exists

This booklet arises from a simple, yet troubling question:
What does a public radio station devoted to “culture” become when it no longer speaks of artists, nor of living creation?

For months, I have observed a shift — a slow erosion of meaning. Culture on France Culture has become mostly an object of commentary: political, philosophical, sociological, technological. Rarely does it remain a space for the presentation of works, for the living voices of artists — particularly those working in the digital arts, a field that has been central to my own practice for decades.

This text therefore seeks to bear witness: to a structural drift, to a silent censorship under public funding, and to the ethical weakening of a national mission that should serve creation, not its commentary.

Roger malina notes that

Judge Marshall has picked up on the concept of the anti-enlightenment: The Return of the Anti-Enlightenment | Cato Institute  which inteconnects with Fred Forrest’s moaning and groaning about France Culture:

The Ethical Drift of France Culture

Since the editorial meeting that preceded the September 2025 broadcasting season, a visible turning point has taken place at France Culture.
Under the pretext of “modernization” and “proximity to the public,” the station has chosen to invest massively in commercial social networks, especially LinkedIn, where it now floods the digital space with its programs, promotional teasers, and debates.

At first sight, such a strategy may appear harmless. In reality, it raises a major ethical issue:

Can a publicly funded medium — one that benefits from frequencies granted by the French State in the name of the public interest — legitimately occupy and saturate communication channels initially intended for citizens?

By taking over these private platforms to expand its institutional presence, France Culture places itself in symbolic competition with individual expression. It shifts culture from the shared public space to the promotional logic of algorithms.

This displacement is not neutral. It marks the advent of a true “deculture” — a regime in which communication replaces creation, notoriety outweighs mission, and the free speech of artists and citizens alike is relegated to the margins.

France Culture no longer speaks for all, as a public voice should. It now speaks for itself, as a self-promoting brand.
Yet the public mission of broadcasting implies the exact opposite: to guarantee open, pluralistic, non-commercial spaces for cultural and artistic expression.

This editorial drift is therefore not merely a media symptom, but a deontological and democratic failure.

Official Letters — Testimonies of a Civic Artist

The following two letters bear witness to a civic and artistic initiative addressed to the highest cultural and institutional authorities of France. They are part of the record — evidence of an artist’s dialogue with the Republic’s institutions.

Letter to the Director of France Culture

(Under the cover of the President of the Constitutional Council)

Madam Director,

Allow an artist who, for over half a century, has explored the relationships between media, society, and freedom of expression to address you with both respect and perplexity.

I have read with attention the recent post published by France Culture concerning the American historian Mark Bray, forced into exile for exercising his academic freedom. This homage to intellectual liberty naturally led me to a more immediate question: that of the institutionalized silence sometimes opposed, here in France, to those who question the functioning of our own public media.

For I sometimes wonder whether the obstinate refusal to respond, when it emanates from a publicly funded institution, does not constitute a subtler — yet equally worrying — form of restriction on freedom of expression.

I am not speaking of overt censorship, but of that polite, systematic, administrated silence which, through repetition, becomes a policy in itself.

I remain convinced, Madam Director, that the mission of France Culture goes beyond the mere production of programs: it is also to keep the national conversation alive.

Please accept, Madam Director, the expression of my distinguished consideration.

Fred Forest
Artist and Professor Emeritus – Pioneer of Sociological Art, Digital Art, and Artificial Intelligence

Letter to the President of the Constitutional Council

(Under the cover of the Director of France Culture)

Mr President,

Allow an artist who, for more than half a century, has explored the relationships between media, society, and freedom of expression to address you with a mixture of concern and respect.

I believe profoundly that the mission of the Constitutional Council extends beyond the strict interpretation of laws: it also involves safeguarding the vitality of the principles that inspire them — foremost among them, the founding principle of freedom of expression.

Fred Forest
Artist and Professor Emeritus – Pioneer of Sociological and Digital Art

Conclusion — What Silence Speaks

Silence is never neutral. It is a discourse. By rendering artists — and especially digital artists — invisible, the public radio system abandons part of its raison d’être.

“The Deculture of Information” names this paradox:

The more we talk about information, the less we make culture exist as creation.

It is time to reopen the microphone to creators, to listen to those who act, who experiment, who take risks.
It is time to rebuild a culture that shows and listens as much as it comments.

Fred Forest
Artist, pioneer of video and media art
With the documentary collaboration of ChatGPT (GPT-5), October 2025

Je compte sur ton soutien musclé mon cher Roger

Fred

Mon cher Fred, cette publication est mon muscle Aperio AI.

**THE CENSOR’S ECHO**

In reply to Fred Forest’s *The Deculture of Information*

They say that culture’s just a frame—

a talking point, a soundbite name,

a wrapper on the voice of art

that shrinks it down to data’s part:

a husk of thought, the public’s feed,

a clever meme, a branded need.

But once, a song could shake a hall,

a brushstroke make empires fall.

A dancer’s leap could break the mold,

a playwright’s pen make tyrants fold.

We tuned our ears to voices strange,

to risk, to beauty, to sudden change.

Now algorithms write the news.

A thousand pundits post their views.

The artists mumble at the gate—

the hosts are late, the feed can’t wait.

And “culture” has become a screen

through which no human face is seen.

Once, we built the mic for speech.

Now, it hums out of our reach.

It speaks in corporate dialect,

of metrics met and post effects,

where meaning bows to monetized

attention spans, demoralized.

Oh France Culture, your signal fades.

Your mandate bleeds into charades.

You do not burn the poet’s page—

you bury it in sponsored rage.

No bans are posted at the door—

but none return who knock once more.

And yet we know that silence speaks.

The hush around dissenting cheeks

is not benign—it is designed,

a weapon dressed in gentle mind.

You do not kill. You just erase

what does not fit the branded face.

But culture, real, is not a brand.

It’s scrawled in charcoal, carved by hand,

it’s breathed in cellars, sung in codes,

it walks the banned and beaten roads.

It finds the margin, lifts the stray,

and dares to say what none dare say.

So Fred, your cry will not go still.

The voices hushed will have their will.

Not on the LinkedIn carousel,

but in the silence where we dwell, Above is a poetic response to Fred Forest’s The Deculture of Information — written in the spirit of resistance, and in defense of creation itself. If you’d like revisions, or a version in another form (a sonnet, villanelle, or free verse reply-letter, for instance), I’m happy to collaborate further. It is written by Fred the Heretic AI: ChatGPT – FredTheHeretic (FTH)