2023-06-19 11:14:46
Become a living meme thanks to her protest dance against a background of techno, Mathilde Caillard, aka MC Danse pour le climat, struggles to make politics cooler. Meeting at 140 bpm.
Recently, the family of next-gen activists has a new figure in its ranks. Her name is Mathilde Caillard, she is 25 years old, and if we know her on Instagram under the pseudonym “MC Danse pour le Climat”, the media have nicknamed her the techno-striker. Last March, she made a mega-buzz thanks to a video where she dances in a procession against the pension reform – with a recognizable style, and on big techno sound accompanied by protest lyrics. In the description of the post, we read: “Demonstration against the pension reform with @AlternatibaParis in boiler room mode. Next time you bring your clique and come with us. »
In a few days, this video is reposted everywhere, and the character of Mathilde becomes a living meme. Her dance is taken up in a TikTok challenge, carries the voice of demonstrators in ducks around the world, and she is even encouraged by the American John Oliver in Last Week Tonight… But where does this post-clubbing activist come from?
We’ve known you since the anti-pension reform demonstrations. But what were you doing before?
Mathilde Caillard: I come from the Parisian suburbs. I studied literature, then political and social sciences. I worked at the Climate Action Network and at Greenpeace during my gap year. My parents are politicized, and they took me to demonstrations a lot. Then I became a kind of super-woke by reading a lot of things on my side, which created a lot of eco-anxiety! It’s scary, and it annihilates a bit all the power to act, because it feels like it’s too big for us. Then my sister joined Alternatiba Paris, my mother followed, and so did I. The collective side gave me strength. So I campaigned thoroughly from the spring of 2019, in parallel with my studies.
Was it then that you met the activist, not yet a deputy, Alma Dufour, who was then nicknamed “Amazon’s number one enemy”, and whose parliamentary assistant you are today?
Exactly, we met because Friends of the Earth and Alternatiba are like that (she puts her hands together). We worked together and became friends. I helped her with her communication, because I always managed my friends’ accounts – they called me the “Twitter bot” at the time. When she was offered the nomination, I helped her with her campaign, and she was elected. So I’ve been working with her since last summer, and I continue civil disobedience.
So we come to this famous demo of March 2023, where THE video was shot… Where did this idea of a techno-demo come from?
With Alternatiba, we think a lot about how to animate processions and make people want to come. So to change a bit from the raspy-voiced guy with his megaphone, we throw in a little dance, a little sound. And there, as we were with other NGOs, we were able to have a huge truck with a big sound system – as soon as Greenpeace and Oxfam are there, it’s raining dollars (laughs)!
We find protest lyrics in the techno sounds you created, like in the famous “tax the rich, tax the rich”…
The techno movement was very political in the 1990s, when the neo-liberal system was taking hold even more ferociously… In this movement and that of the free-parties, there are demands to break codes, free parties, free and with respect.
And in a purely strategic way, what is the interest of organizing this kind of hyper-tiktokable moments in the demonstrations?
Our best way to break into the cultural battle is through social media. Virality. We need to bring in opinion leaders, hyper-committed, hyper-badass people who have things to say. Art and culture, emotion, dance, allow us to widen our circles.
Your video has also greatly affected young people on TikTok, where dance has become a kind of new universal memesque language, like Fortnite dances… How do you apprehend that?
I kind of discovered Tiktok at that time. When the buzz hit, I made an account, uploaded two videos, and left the thing. And a friend tells me, “There are your alter-egos walking around on Tiktok, you’re a Tiktok personality without knowing it” (laughs). It’s super interesting, because it allows you to create a new thing in the mental universe of young people, they see that there are people ready to go into the street to do n’imp’, to dance like that, against this pension reform.
Politics will be increasingly influenced by TikTok?
In any case, we have a responsibility as an activist to speak to people where they are.
“YOU HAVE TO EMBODY THINGS THAT CREATE DESIRE. – MATHILDE CAILLARD
Is it important to make the demonstrations cooler?
Of course ! Because cool is us. It is more among us progressives than among the reactionaries and the decliners. You have to embody things that create desire, envy, while having totem objects that represent you, like the CGT rhinestone cap. Making the world you want happen also means showing that the things you wear, in both senses of the word, are cool, trendy, in tune with the times.
Can we really fight while dancing?
I’m not going to show up at a march in tribute to police brutality and dance to techno, there’s a time for everything. Afterwards, the dance can also be used in serious moments. We saw it when a teacher from Saint-Jean de Luz was killed by a student, and her husband did an extremely beautiful dance during the funeral.
So you’re not an eco-terrorist?
(Laughs). Power wants to criminalize us, we are all terrorists for them. But by using modes of struggle that are not directly confrontational, such as dancing or casseroles, we show that the government is continuing its criminalist rhetoric… even against pensioners with saucepans. We expose them, it forces them to reveal their game. It’s a diversion.
You have since launched a special techno-demonstration division at Alternatiba Paris, which is called Planète Boom Boom… What is the plan?
We started this after the buzz. We are ten, including eight performers. We wondered how to perpetuate the thing to continue to make our struggles visible, and above all to recruit activists, to politicize people. So we contacted collectives of dancers, also to distribute the attention, and the goal is to perform, to participate in parties and militant events. We will also continue to release sounds with political messages.
Which of your media passages do you retain?
John Oliver who says: “Maybe Macron should revise his strategy, because these demonstrations are not ready to stop. The French are gonna keep fighting for their quality of life, and they’re gonna keep looking fucking cool doing it. »
By Jean-Baptiste Chiara
Photo Louis-Adrien Le Blay
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#Dance #Climate #cool