Major cultural events such as Eurovision, Cannes and the Venice Biennale are increasingly being pulled into geopolitical disputes over war, national identity and international legitimacy. The Guardian recently described how cultural contests are being overshadowed by global politics in a fractured international environment.
This matters because culture is no longer a soft escape from geopolitics. It has become one of the places where geopolitical legitimacy is performed.
National pavilions, festival selections, boycotts, artistic protests and voting controversies now function as symbolic diplomacy. They allow states, movements and publics to contest narratives without formal diplomatic language.
