Abstract

In Québec (Canada), a growing number of cultural workers and artists are adopting the term “cultural mediation.” The notion has gradually imposed itself on decision makers at the municipal scale and has become one of the preferred intervention approaches by local cultural civil servants. The lack of definition of cultural mediation makes it an ambiguous concept. This uncertainty about its boundaries or its meaning, makes its key promoters, the municipal cultural workers, essential to its existence. Drawing on interviews with cultural workers and artists, this article looks at the role that cultural workers play to make the notion circulate, to instigate new projects and to affect others. In other words, despite their relative invisibility, these administrative workers participate in cultural mediation projects on an unsuspected scale and challenge the “arm’s length” principle generally used in Québec’s cultural domain.

摘要

在魁北克（加拿大），越来越多的文化工作者和艺术家正在采用“文化调解”一词。这一观念逐渐强加于市政层面的决策者身上，并成为当地文化公务员的首选干预方式之一。文化中介定义的缺乏使其成为一个模糊的概念。这种对其边界或意义的不确定性，使得它的主要推动者——市政文化工作者，对它的存在至关重要。本文通过对文化工作者和艺术家的采访，探讨文化工作者在传播这一观念、发起新项目和影响他人方面所发挥的作用。换句话说，尽管它们相对隐身，