Anonymous movement in decline?
To add to Florian's suggestion that Anonymous has moved offline- I would also ask whether Anonymous are (as the article suggests) truly as counter-public ? I would argue that the heart of Anonymous together with the Guy Faukes masked army are a repudiation of the concept of a counter-publics, defined as "articulating alternatives to a wider public". In its place we have, perhaps, what has been called the 'majoritarian turn' in activism signified by the iconic slogan -We Art the 99%- which proudly re-assumes the old mantel of the BIG WE or a wider public. This is in marked contrast to an earlier phase of the anti-globalisation movement which projected an image of a mass convergence of the great variety of tribal identities and a celebration of difference. Has the concept of 'counter publics' as a multiplicity of exceptional entities and identities given way to something more closely reflected in the 'Indignatio' manifesto which began by a declaring that "we are ordinary people" thus marking the beginning of a possible phase shift in the culture of radical protest movements in which to be radical no longer necessarily to be controversial ? d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Books as "a gateway drug"- Interview with marcel Mars
Books as "a gateway drug"- In discussion with with Marcel Mars http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/1012/ -- At the culminating event of the Post Media Lab at Leuphana University, L?neburg "Taking Care of Things- I got to know and work with artist/hacker Marcel Mars who introduced me to his ambitious project ?Public Library-Memory of the World? http://www.memoryoftheworld.org/public-library/ I will be joining Marcel and others in March for an intensive phase of development on a number of fronts. The following discussion is the first of a number of conversations That will cover questions as they arise in the development process. I began by seeing (don?t be offended Marcel) Public Library seen as a kind of anti-capitalist equivalent Amazon. In that for Amazon ?Books are Amazon?s version of ?a gateway drug.? ? For Bezos a bookstore was a means to world domination ??.. ?It wasn?t a love of books that led him [Bezos] to start an online bookstore. ?It was totally based on the property of books as a product,? Shel Kaphan, Bezos?s former deputy, says. ?Books are easy to ship and hard to break?? (New Yorker - Cheap Words, 17th Feb 2014) Marcel Mars may love books more than Bezos but what they share is the notion of the book as a means to a higher stakes game. The substance of his ?Public Library? project lies not primarily in books themselves but in the ways in which he creatively exploits their character to play for higher stakes. He takes the broad consensus (across the political spectrum) that public libraries are an essential component of any democratic, habitable society. He then proceeds to extrapolate from this consensus to wider a wider set of arguments on the moral poverty of wider Intellectual property regimes and thus the heart of 21st century informational capitalism itself. Moreover (although he is an artist) his intervention is not restricted to the symbolic realm or the gallery but through the provocation of direct action by developing a functioning peer2-peer ?public library? application. The project raises many questions particularly at a point of crisis for independent publishing, small book stores and decent news media. If Marcel and his associates (I count myself among them) were to be successful could they wind up being as bad for books as Amazon has been for small publishers and independent book shops? (and maybe even physical libraries that perform many important functions in the street life of many local communities). In fact as we speak Dee Dee Halleck alerted uus to the Thursday demos against Mayor de Blasio to stop the Central Library Plan and the sale of New York City?s branch libraries. David Garcia: This hacker beliefe in the possibility of creating a universal spaces of free exchange can have the unintended consequences of eroding the specificties of community. I see this as the rise of technological formalism akin to the Greenberg?s authoritarian cold-war formalism of late 20th century abstraction in the visual arts. Marcel Mars: I absolutely agree on that one. That?s why i insist on people being librarians. Software should always build on top of communication need, or need of particular community. That?s how software becomes social. Designing sociality by designing desires by developing software is not the (social) way software should go. It just fails in both worlds (techno + social). Even if it gets some venture capital on its way. DG: The independent publishing sector has been decimated and I think World Memory should be careful that its efforts is seen to be addressing rather than hastening this process. MM: I spent a lot of time in the past thinking about sustainable business models in art & culture production. A long time ago (in 2000) together with others I started GNU GPL (later CC Share-A-Like) music & video label - EGOBOO.bits. In its very narrow market niche it was quite successful (e.g. getting #1 hit by ?Zvuk broda? at Croatian national TV). That discussion only brings false hopes from all around. Operating in the world where scarcity is moved into attention time is not about business. It?s about something else. Wasting our time on that false hope just gives time to ones who are building network infrastructures based on wet dreams of venture capitalists. I don?t want to get (again) into these talks with people running their small ((rather not) sustainable) business. When I can see that?s what coming in discussion I prefer to revert the whole argument into good old communist one. A working class should be empowered. We, workers, should rule our own destiny. Small/indie businesses are not the keywords, or goals, which will lead us there. Solidarity should become essential part of our culture. I don?t see that any legal protection will solve the problem of the time of scarce attention. Not the one based on intellectual property metaphor. There we need serious reboot. A reboo
Re: Post-digital
Felix Wrote > Where the terms makes no sense, in my view (and also in Florian's), > is sociologically. The most powerful forces that transform globalized > societies, are all dependent on, and amplified by, digital > technologies. If anything, we are in the middle of the historical > run of this development rather than at the end. The idea that the > digital is just one dimension of society and that we can abandon it, > is ludicrous. Along with Sociology might it also be a worth including "psychology" in the mix. Particularly in those spaces where digital management tools such as gantt charts and other popular workflow apps along with their digital jargon have shaped influential forms of pop psychology, such as the Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) (whose very name is self incriminating) In turn these 'instruments' insinuate themselves in to the working day of most organisations becoming the default argot of neo-manegerial audit culture with its positivistic lexicon of 'solutions' . This landscape is described in rich and entertaining detail in Evil Media by Mathew Fuller and Andrew Jofey who have done us a great service of mapping and describing this domain of what they have dubbed 'grey media'. A range of connections linking computing, and digital management and business applications with NLP type psychology and management self help books. Collectively this digitally inspired constellation has metastasised into a weirdly seductive language (seductive because it suggests the possibility of controling our events) that is all the more powerful BECAUSE it is unspectacular. As the term 'grey media' suggests it fades into background becoming the social and psychological infrastructure of the grey media age. In a weird inversion of the Debord, Grey Media deploys digital culture to bring us the 'society of the unspectacular' David d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Post-digital- Cyberclasm of the 1960s
Browsing through the files of Amsterdam?s Institute for Social History (as you do) I found Tjebbe van Tijan?s excellent essay written in 1998. Below is a short taster. Full essay to be found: http://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/digitial-ways-forgetting.pdf Digital ways of Forgetting: Smashing Computers and new forms of cybeclasm The recent phenomena of "cyberclasm" started with radical student actions in North America against university and military administration facilities. One of the earliest examples was in 1969 at Sir George William University in Montreal where, during a conflict about racism on the campus, students stormed the computer center of the university, threw out thousands of punch cards from the windows and smashed the computer equipment. At that time computers were mostly stand alone machines with limited storage capacity and data was either stored in punch cards, that needed to be processed mechanically, or on reels of magnetic tape. A year before a little book with the title The Beast of Business: A Record of Computer Atrocities was published in London, containing "a guerrilla warfare manual for striking back" at computers that, according to its author Harvey Matusow, were on their way to "grab power": "from now on it is them or us" Read on d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
The rise of the 'clamourati'
The rise of the ?clamourati? Today?s media in England are in full throated ?clamour? mode. The status of whether something constitutes a genuine political scandal can be determined by whether (and to what degree) it is accompanied by the editorial clich? a ?clamour?. Oh we brits love a juicy word ! But for full effect the 'c' word must be accompanied by the addition of the word 'resignation' or better yet 'sacking' as the outcome they/we are supposed to be clamouring for. Clamouring is much in evidence today with the controversy swirling around the government?s culture minister?s the unfortunate Maria Miller and what was deemed her *too* perfunctory apology (the nuances of English apology culture?how and when to say sorry -particularly if you don't mean it - is Arcane indeed). But the spectacle of today's 'clamour culture' in full cry has all the fascination of a particularly nasty traffic accident. Each politician on live news media (whatever they have they have been invited to talk about) is ritually asked when and how Ms Miller should fall on her sword. Their reply is rarely candid and never illuminating but one thing is clear, we now need a new collective noun for all the participants: how about ?the clamourati? ? d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
In Art we Trust
In Art We Trust The Kunst Reserve Bank was one of a number of projects presented at MoneyLab a conference held last month in Amsterdam that launched the latest research thread from the Institute of Network Cultures. which is addressing "digital experiments with revenue models, payment systems and currencies..." But not everyone who presented was on (digital) message among those who took a defiantly tangible approach to the money question was Ron Peperkamp, artist and CEO and brain-lord behind the Kunst Reserve Bank. As so often Warhol paved the way long ago for a knowingly cynical take on the special status attributed to art when he declared that "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art." In the 1962 Warhol took the art of making money, literally, with the Dollar Bill series of silk screes prints on canvas entitled 200 One Dollar Bills. Forty-seven years later, in November 2009, the same piece was expected to fetch between $8 million and $12 million, in the event it reached a record $43.8 million Not many artists have been able to trump Warhol's position of uber-capitalist and cynical realist of contemporary art though many have tried. Just maybe Kunst Reserve Bank might be an unwitting contender for the crown. One of the real achievements of this art Bank is that it is not immediately obvious whether it is a genuinely radical experiment, a brilliantly conceived Ponzi scheme or an interesting but conceptually flawed piece of conceptual art. Even if it is (as I suspect the last of the three) it is still a remarkable achievement in part because unlike most artistic experiments the artists have created the possibility of failure (bankruptcy) as the core of the project. It is thus a genuine experiment. It benefits from its fatal flaw and thus has the qualities of its defects. To begin with the bank actually exists as a physical entity with the three basic components required for some of the economic first principles of primitive accumulation or hoarding of value. They have a teller, a safe, and a mint. With this mint they create the coins. It is a fairly basic but well thought through and rigerous process. Every month an artist, some well known others less Every month an artist, are selected to design 4 coins. and every coin is issued for one week only in exactly one hundred copies. The offer is only available for one week. The Art Reserve bank thus creates coins which have an artistic value and are issued in a limited amount. As this is not legal tender (in other words its not really money) how does the purchaser trust the value of these coins ? Because, and this is what gives the project momentum, you can go back to the bank and you can exchange your coins at any point for the original cost with an annual rate of 10% a year non-compound interest. One would have thought that this would make the incentive to return the coins is very high after all the 10% rate of interest outstrips and actual retail bank. But Peperkamp and his associates reason the incentive to keep the coins is also very high because they may reason that as a piece of art its value may appreciate at an even faster rate. So far very few coins were returned. Though the coins are showing up on e-bay with an asking price of 150 euro. When the artists observed this they decided to integrate this into the project. So if you visit the site you will find their 'dealing room' where the coins are traded among the public. >From this process they estimate the daily fluctuating market value of the >coins. Every morning, like the Libor exchange rate, they cut of the top and bottom bids to arrive at an estimate of the actuall trade value of the currency. This means that as good little capitalists the exchange rate of the art currency is set by the market. So what security is there against a large number of holders of the currency arriving to demand their money back? The answer is that for every 100 euros that people pay for the coins 10 euros is put in the safe. This represents their reserve capital. 90% of the income goes into maintaining project (the costs of minting the coins and other elements of the infrastructure are quite high). So it’s a gamble that the "intrinsic value" of the coins will outweigh the impulse to make a quick profit and convert the value of the coins back into “real money”. If there were to be an actual 2088 style Northern Rock run on the bank they would go bankrupt. There would be no bail out. Real banks have only a capital reserve of 3% which makes the Kunst Reserve Bank triple A rated and ensures, Peperkamp jokingly declared, "it conforms to the Basel norms to at least 2040 ". In many ways this is one of the most interesting aspects of the project as a mirror of the fractional banking system as it currently exists. A reminder that the bank doesn't store our money in their safe. The final dimension of cunning that accompa
Re: In Art we Trust
Many thanks Saul, I have a real admiration for Kunst Reserve Bank project but despite your spirited and thought provoking defence I still can't shake of my sense of there being a serious flaw. Saul wrote "Thats true however my argument with the Peperkamp's presentation is that in the context of a project with such radical potential it is unfortunate that he depends on a mystical narrative of traditional connoisseurship (i.e. artistic quality "I know it when I see it!). Am I right that you're pointing out the weakness of the currency component without the conceptual framing of the KRB project? That the intrinsic value, like a gold-backed-currency, depends on antiquated but persistent value attributions? Yes thats my objection. artist-object / conceptual author-discourse dichotomy of the project and the somewhat exploitative/naive relationship between them implied in the way you quote Peperkamp's capricious selection criteria - taken together - seem consistent enough with the trick they're pulling off to make Warhol proud." My Reply The persistence of this unproblematised 'quality' narrative lies at the heart of the overuse of the word 'creative' these days and particularly the way it being deployed in today's employment landscape to legitimise of soften the varieties of exploitation and self exploitation. Warhol (though he was himself a ruthless and notoriously stingy exploiter of the affective labor of his "super stars") was radical in the ways in which he saw right though this narrative and consistently subverted it. Take his interview with Gene Swenson, in the 1963 edition of Art News where he famously declared that the reason he was painting in this way is because "I want to be a machine,? At the time people took it as a Warhol ?put on?. as they used to say in the 60s. But I would argue that he was deadly serious. In the same interview he goes on to lament how "Everybody's always being creative. And it's so funny when you say things aren't, like the shoe I would draw for an advertisement was called a ?creation?...Everybody is too good now, really. Like, how many actors are there? There are millions of actors. They're all pretty good. And how many painters are there? Millions of painters and all pretty good. How can you say one style is better than another?" Its weird hearing this interview now at the height of the creative industries hype when everyone (sorry Beuys) are required to be artists. It was his marvelous literal mindedness that 50 years ago enabled Warhol to repudiate these expectations emphasising machine like repetition and to cutting to the chase by screen printing dollar bills and then watch from the sidelines as the appreciated in fiduciary value. Laughing (or rather smiling Cheshire Cat like) all the way to a real bank! Unlike Peperkamp he never made the error of claiming the works were either 'good or bad art'. They were commodities that operating like cattle prods "talking back to the media".without recourse to conoirseurship or special pleading for arts special status as a super commodity. So my admiration for KRB notwithstanding I still feel its a pity that the project did not like Warhol find a way to go beyond its dependence on an unreconstructed humanist anthropology. Saul What would this project do/be if it were going to do/be more than 'just art'? Reply Well hmm not sure.. Possibly the source of the project should have been anonymous like bitcoin or (excuse the very bad pun) banksy. The individual releases of the coins could have been unattributed and aspired to a drier more neutral less arty form of charisma. All a bit vague I know.. As I said I admire this work it is thought provoking so the fact that I have some issues does not mean that I have any answers. I may even want it to exist in its present form and continue to provoke questions Best David On 26 Apr 2014, at 10:34, Saul Albert wrote: Hi David, On 25 April 2014 16:01, d.garcia wrote: In Art We Trust The trick KRB seem to be pulling off (whether Peperkamp knows it or not) is to subordinate the ostensible artistic value of the coins as artwork/commodities to the conceptual artistic value of the KRB enterprise. As you point out, the success of that enterprise is premised on (and in some ways subordinate to) its successful relationship with a broader art market. Warhol would have been into that. <...> d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
tensions within the bay area elites
> To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to > understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around > them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing? > Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my > humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? > Have we changed? Which company is currently in the spotlight and today's designated Dr. Evil is less important than the legitimate hostility and generalised anger at the winner takes all economy of info capitalism that these companies collectively represent. Its a political economy which has even departed from Adam Smith, as the creation of monopolies is increasingly seen as a necessary condition for survival in a world where transaction costs are near zero. In fact the imposition of 'temporary' monopolies was even proposed by dreadful Larry Summers as a last ditch policy to save capitalism in 2001 after the first dotcom bubble burst. In the event he needn't have bothered it happened anyway. The older heavy industries (even IBM) had to borrow heavily and issue equity to invest in ways that drove productivity and relatively secure employment. Today a company like Whatsapp (to take just one example) employs around 50 people and has a market value that is said to exceed Sony Corporation.. Once they reach critical mass the new info-companies do not need to borrow to invest. On the contrary, Smauglike, they sit on infinite piles of gold. The money is just not circulating. The hoarding vast piles of capital, the avoidance of tax, the employment tiny numbers, whilst simultaneously disrupting (and shrinking) established industries across the board is not an obvious recipe for winning any popularity contests. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: More Crisis in the Information Society
I'd like to engage with the last paragraph of Florian's post- And ask whether the generally low pay and insecure conditions for practitioners of what have become known as the creative economy really is such a new phenomenon? Are the average earnings enjoyed/endured by commercial photographers (and designers/illustrators/animators/writers) that Florian identifies as $20,000/year really that much worse than average earnings for these sectors during other historical periods? Although I don't have data to back this up, I don't think so. When I left college way back before the digital revolution, one might also on average also be lucky to match the income of most factory workers or those in the building trade. Then as now those who entered the creative domains were not attracted by the expectation of big pay packets but instead the lure (sometimes delusion) were the pleasures of creative engagement and the dream of being one of the few to defy the odds and make it big. There was a decade when tech savvy creatives (dread term) defied -for a few short years the usual logic of capitalist supply and demand in this area. But this moment has long since passed and I would argue that we have returned to a longstanding norm. Volatility in the creative sector is cyclicle. For instance, in the often overlooked discipline of illustration a large class of well paid illustrators (engravers) who produced illustrations for popular Victorian news journals (on an industrial scale) became surplus to requirements with the introduction of half tone photography to news print. However illustration did not disappear it re-invented itself as a more expressive and interpretive craft. And carved a large new niche for itself as publishers and art directors re-discovered the fact that images sell! They sell arguments, ideology and they sell units. Today the same domain is undergoing a similar trauma as cheap stock images (among many factors) are undermining the lively-hoods of commercial editorial illustrators. And forcing adaptation as some seek to embrace the possibilities of digitally native platforms with thumbnail animations, live data feeds etc. I guess what I am saying is that the arts (including the commercial sector) have always been riskier than most and the rewards of a life of expressive creative engagement has always had to be balanced against greater risk and sacrifice. We may aspire to change this reality but is it really a new set of conditions ? David Garcia > In the media and information sector, the business model for the new players > (Google, Apple, Facebook) has not only been centralization, but also the > fact that they are media companies that no longer employ "content" > creators. This conversely means that thee economic exchange value of media > creation, in the classic sense of editorial or artistic/audiovisual/design > work, is sinking to unforeseen lows. For regional commercial video > producers in Europe, to take an example with which I'm familiar, hourly > rates are the same as for repairman only in the best case; in most cases, > they are lower, and don't reflect investment into equipment. Another > example: according to market research, the average pre-tax income of > commercial photographers in the Netherlands is about $20,000/year. If this > is indicative of any larger trend in media jobs, then it means that nothing > is more obsolete than the notion of the "creative class", but that the bulk > of "information society" and media jobs have become working class > employment or worse. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: More Crisis in the Information Society
Florian wrote, Aside from anecdotal evidence, my colleague Paul Rutten has compiled hard figures and statistics for the creative industries in the Netherlands that clearly show shrinkage [https://hro.app.box.com/s/gz6vf5hkn99ndsta2psz] along with the rest of the economy since 2008. (For the U.S., the Salon.com article "The Creative Class is a Lie" drew similar conclusions in 2011: "The dream of a laptop-powered 'knowledge class' is dead. The media is melting. Blame the economy - and the Web", http://www.salon.com/2011/10/01/creative_class_is_a_lie/.) Intuitively, this makes sense, but it sharply contradicts the run-of-the-mill rhetoric that the creative industries are the area of biggest growth within the overall economy. What seems to have changed is the fully commercial sector of the arts. Large parts of it have economically collapsed and therefore no longer provide alternative income opportunities. In other words, wedding photography no longer pays the bills for experimental photographers, copywriting no longer the bills of starving writers, etc.etc. - Hi Florian, My argument is not that most of those working within the "creative economy" has not suffered (along with all other casualised labor) from a radical shrinkage of income and agency due to all the factors that you allude to, but rather that the comparative data refers back to an unusual high point of the 80s and 90s when the combination of digital skills with creative talent took earnings and expectations for this sector way beyond the historical norm. So although I recognise that every era has its distinctive conditions I would argue that rather than being the exception we have actually been returned to (low earnings high risk) business as usual for those working in this sector if we take a longer historical view. Thats why I sought to lengthen the historical perspective to comparisons with the Victorian Creative industries (which was fully commercial) and equally vulnerable. I am suggesting we are witnessing a familiar cycle of technological change combined with ruthless application of the markets destroying well established forms of practice whilst creating new ones. What has changed is that the conditions long endured in the arts have now been extended to the economy as a whole where employees of an increasingly freelance, largely non-unionised economy are all required to be entrepreneurs in the creative economy of organised optimism. Best David d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Disobedient Objects: Folk Politics: Diabolical Math
Disobedient Objects: Folk Politics: Diabolical Math One of the few shows to address the highly contentious relationship between art and activism, in a way that takes us into new and more generative territory, is the exhibition -Disobedient Objects- currently to be seen at London?s Victoria and Albert Museum. Disobedient Objects is a history of late 20th and 21st century protest movements told through ?objects?, the tools of direct action, communication and resistance. In the words of the curators it opens up the question of material culture the previously under examined area of the art and design of object making within social movements. In the introduction of the show?s excellent catalogue, the two curators (Catherine Flood and Gavin ) use the term Movement Cultures rather than activist art, leaving deliberately ambiguous the status of the objects presented in the show. Indeed the conceptual integrity of the exhibition is critically dependant in maintaining a wide gulf between itself and the current industry of politically engaged art, whilst simultaneously drawing on the rhetorical tropes and subterranean energies that have been released by the engagement of art with social movements. The show manages to hover tantalizingly on the threshold separating these two domains, describing disobedient objects as the zero-point of political art.. to be alternatively ignored or problematically recuperated by art and design institutions. The contradiction of exhibiting such work in a place called Victoria & Albert Museum did not escaped the attention of the curators and their texts show they were aware of the risk of a Faustian Pact into which they had entered and how they could not themselves escape being problematically recuperated. But they clearly decided it was a risk worth taking. And they were right! Against all the odds, they have managed to pull off an unlikely success, a popular success, as it is crowded with visitors whilst also garnering near universal critical acclaim and thoughtful commentary. The show has also been successful in the less obvious terms. The V&A is not a primarily a Fine Art museum (its emphasis is on the decorative and applied arts) so the curators could, to a degree, avoid the well rehearsed art games of legitimization required to transform objects into the appropriate forms of conceptual commodities. Another less visible layer of achievement has been the organizer?s willingness to engage in complex deliberations with activist participants and to make these discussions (in part) available for scrutiny in the catalogue. Making this effort allows us to reflect on the fault-line dividing militant activist desire and the communicative and the institutional imperatives of a major public museum. The Only Failing The only clear failure to my mind is the price of the catalogue/reader which at ?20 (or even more annoyingly ?19.99) is far too pricey and likely to exclude those who have the most at stake in a show like this. Its not a question of bad faith on the part of the organizers. The publication is beautifully made and must have been costly to produce. Its just too expensive. This fault not withstanding, the publication is really is a great piece of work, achieving everything an exhibition catalogue of this sort should. It illuminates the conceptual and design logic helping the visitor navigate a complex and crowded show. It is unusual in revealing some of the contentious discussions with different constituencies leading up to the show. And its full of sharply written, well illustrated, there are essays by highly respected scholar/activists who are not afraid to journey into weirdly idiosyncratic lines of inquiry. One of my favorites being to pose the question ?why do cops hate giant puppets??. A Raucous Jamboree The overarching design of the show remains true to the ad hoc spirit of protest and civil disobedience, making no concessions to expectations that museum spaces should be for quiet reflection, it is a defiantly raucous jamboree in which the objects jostle alongside one another against the noisy backdrop of a video montaged history of protest and campaigns from the early 20th century until today. Most of the objects on display are disobedient in the obvious sense of having been forged in the expectation or actual heat of violent confrontation and civil disobedience and so carry visible traces of a rough-hewn character. What could have been a chaotic and disorientating experience mitigated by a guiding structure shaping the space into four sections reflecting four different strategies for social change: Direct Action, Speaking Out, Making Words and Solidarity. These categories do not come across as prescriptive but as act as anchors around which the objects gravitate, guiding encouraging visitors to make their own connections. The overwhelming aesthetic is one of ad hoc improvisation visible through devices such
Observing the Travels of Paul Mason
Observing the Travels of Paul Mason -My social networks followed me into the war and collided with others ? a reminder that warfare has become newly alive with information. The basic suite of tools journalists use has only been around six or seven years ? so Gaza is one of the earliest glimpses into how propaganda and truth might intersect in 21st-century warfare.- Paul Mason ? Guardian August 10th 2014 It is not primarily what someone says that determines its effect on the world it is who they are and the position they hold. In the UK Paul Mason is one of the few (perhaps the only) mainstream journalist who has thought and wrote in any depth about the rise and the evolving character of protest movements since 2008 and he is certainly the only mainstream journalist to attempt to analyse the subterranean relationships between today?s media ecologies and the distinctive organizational and communicative structures of these movements. This fact alone makes his choices and career shifts interesting to Keep an eye on. He recently moved from the BBC?s News Night to Channel 4 where his role continues to be Economics Editor for Channel 4 News. Strange therefore that he is currently reporting as a quasi war correspondent from Gaza. There is no info I can find on why he left the BBC?s flag ship news platform. Perhaps it was his own choice, giving him more freedom to work on his own left of centre books. Or maybe he was as seen as too biased and risky by the BBC, which (as always) is buffeted by controversy and political pressure. Certainly anyone who witnessed the unprecedented -on air- ticking off he received from Jeremy Paxman during his coverage of unrest in Athens might have felt that his days at the Beeb were numbered. But whatever the truth of the matter, we can be grateful that he appears to be contributing more frequently to the Guardian. His most recent piece is this richly informative report from Gaza in which we get a rare insight into the range of (truly) tactical media being deployed by the citizen journalists on the ground and as usual he has managed to get up close and personal to these activist/journalists. But the article is also interesting in what it reveals of his own internal dialogue as his struggle (more visible in other articles) to assert the importance of a relatively independent standpoint in the midst of a war zone. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/10/truth-propaganda-foes-g aza-war-independent-journalism d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
World at War? Counter-revolution and Unbalanced Multipolarism
Hello Brian, > What is our answer to multipolar chaos? What is our life project? > > restlessly yours, Brian Rhetorical question alert! Is it far too simplistic to argue, that the 'life project' you ask for remains what it has always been, from the Peasants Revolt till now; something called Socialism - common resources for the common good, a struggle for a world no longer run BY the rich and powerful FOR the rich and powerful ? Are not all struggles (including those on the on-line digital world - the specialism of this list) based on addressing the foundational realities and injustices of our political economy? Even the way the race question is framed in the US can sometimes serve to cloak rather than illuminate this hole in the heart of the 'American Dream'. Despite the bleak global picture presented by Alex (and its hard to dispute its veracity) I would also argue that there is some glimmer of hope in the way that the recent cycle of uprisings alongside the economic crisis has helped to shift the general political weather, propelling inequality and social injustice back on to the mainstream agenda of political discourse in ways I haven't seen for years. he fact that "looming apocalypse" is a longstanding signature tune of the utopian left does not mean that it is not necessary to sound the alarm again and again. But it may also also be quite a dangerous drug with paralysing consequences. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
renewal of democratic politics
After the carnival like excitement around the Scottish referendum the clich? that is echoing around mainstream media discourse is that that politics in the UK can now never be the same again. That new levels of voter and popular participation in a political process has surpassed anything we have seen in recent history. Some of this is true and the achievement must be attributed almost entirely to the Yes campaign. It was a genuinely grassroots popular movement that refused to be cowed by the exclusively financialist neo-liberal arguments of the No campaign whose approach was one of quite astonishing lack of vision, energy and imagination. The final result cannot detract (indeed should be separated) from the new levels of participation that emerged. But we are left with the question of whether anything can be done to keep this participatory spirit alive? Can we go beyond the Yes/No binary. And say thank you Scotland for reminding us what politics should be. Now please help us in build something new together. Lets not kid ourselves. Our Scottish brethren will only accept that proposition if it comes from the grass roots rather than the political establishment. Sadly the only truly energised grass roots political movement south of the boarder is UKIP- this is not the generous civic nationalism but mean spirited little Englanderism. Now the colorful inclusive platform of a referendum has been wheeled away and the political class begins its wrangling, will the popular energy also evaporate? I fear that it will - In part because of a factor that we are yet to find a way to manage and that is the fact that in general -we campaign in inspiring poetry but we govern in boring prose- Are political publics in the end only evanescent entities conjured into existence by particular issues that generate strong desires or fears, only to dissolve as quickly as they arise? What happened to the grass roots movements that brought Obama to power.. so visible in the campaign so absent in the processes of governance ? Without wishing to fetishise technology, in both the Scottish referendum and Obama's election, social media played an important role in mobilising new levels of participation. Are there lessons to be learned from frequently denigrated clicktivist platforms such as MoveOn and Avaz? They have not yet succeeded except in isolated instances but there attempts to generate new publics through building committment slowly through incrementalising small levels of participation into something larger shouldn't be entirely dismissed. The concessions forced upon Westminster (when it finally woke up) mean that in the coming months and years this dis-united kingdom will be struggling to re-imagine its version of the nation state. Lets hope that's Scotland's example of a "civic nationalism" (any Scottish resident had a vote) based on common goods will percolate into the debates to come. It certainly wont happen of its own accord or through the usual party political mechanisms. It will only happen if those who share the aspirations of Scotland's YESers can ignite a similar level of imagination and aspiration South of the boarder. Its not easy to see how but as the arguments begin making common cause with Scotland's progressive Yes campaigners might be a place to start. Any ideas d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
The Language of Politics
Spaces for the Language of Politics It will be well known in these parts that European Commission is involved in an anti-trust struggle/investigation with Google. The threat of a $6 billion fine may hurt, just a bit, but in the end it will be little more than a pinprick given the mountain of cash and power that Google is sitting on. The larger question is how to move to a more generative place than the pleasurable but futile pastime of ritualised google bashing? The more interesting question is whether there is the political will to build new spaces for the social media era, capable of conjuring something like a genuine public sphere. Meaning what? Meaning a place, with critical mass, where we participate as citizens not customers. Its not always an easy distinction to draw- Habermass made a good job of explaining why the distinction can be so tricky -Because private enterprise evoke in their customers the idea that in their consumption decisions they act in their capacity as citizens the state has to address its citizens as consumers- If even the most ardent advocates of a free market would draw the line at the buying and selling of votes then a reasonable corollary would be that public discourse - to be truly public - can not plausibly operate in spaces that are founded on profit optimising filters and algorithms. Even though it feels like history, just a few weeks ago in the Scottish Referendum, British politicians suddenly awoke -briefly- from their neo-liberal slumber, to discover that financial arguments within which they had sought to exclusively couch the debate were not enough. They realised, with a collective jolt, that large numbers of people had re-discovered the language of politics and how, at key historical moments, the language of politics trumps exclusive reliance on the language of money. The terms of the debate were hurriedly reconfigured. The level of participation in that political moment speaks volumes for the importance of rediscovering this language. Developing alluring spaces to rival with the behemoths (with their serendipity engines and happiness experiments) that are secure and ad free will be very very hard. Particularly given the great vaults of data their head- start has given them. Its even more difficult to imagine any crowd funded DIY tactical solution that will make a dent. Maybe its time to admit that sometimes we need an institutional solutions and scale. A properly resourced, public service model, funded through general taxation. Judging by the the level of the discussion taking place in the European Commission this is the least likely outcome but it doesn't make the need any less urgent. Is this a deeply unimaginative narrowly statist approach, quite out of tune with the reality of the technological paradigm of informationalism and networks ? Probably. But if not this then where are the natively internet spaces Wikipedia or Linux? Move On/Avaz. hmmm What else is on the table? slightly longer version at: http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/re-discover-language-politics/ d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: social media & political activism redux
Maybe one aspect of the -Law of the Meme- (take for example the 1% meme) is that meme's sometimes persist far longer that instances of mass mobilisation. Memes that spring from even brief crystalisations of underlying social movements can be one of the ways in which important shifts in values are propelled into the wider world. Andy Haldane the highly influential Chief Economist of the Bank of England is on record as acknowledging the importance of the Occupy movement in focusing public attention on the malign influence of the financial sector and of extremes of inequality. David On 1 Nov 2014, at 13:34, Geert Lovink wrote: > Thanks a lot, Allan, this is interesting. The question imho is not how > social media relate to the inadequate responses of political parties > but if they will generate sustainable 'new institutional forms' over > time. What if the current social media only produce one-off events? <...> d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
New Space Operas as Ejector Seat
Space Opera as Ejector Seat: JG Ballard's Inner Space We are currently being invited to revisit the heroic era of Science fiction in the classic form of the space opera. The launch of Christopher Nolan?s sci-fi blockbuster, Intergalactic, which gamely reboots a Kubric like fusion of inner and outer space coincides with the extraordinary real-world feat of landing the Philae robot on the comet 67P, half a billion km from earth. And as if that weren?t enough, tragedy and farce combined catastrophically in Branson?s playboy folly, with Virgin Galactic's Icarus like, fall to earth. Whatever the enormous gulf separating these projects, all three are connected by a noteworthy thread, the most addictive dream of the old 20th century; the Concept of Unlimited Possibility. In 1974 the writer JG Ballard proposed an alternative rout for Science Fiction, in his introduction to the French edition of his novel Crash. This potent manifesto repudiates the genre?s traditional themes ? of outer space and the far future. Ballard goes on to compare Kubric?s Space Odyssey to Gone With the Wind, as a nostalgic watershed marking the end of the heroic period of modern science fiction. In place of -outer space- Ballard favored of a terrain which he christened -inner space-.. a zone -where the inner world of the mind and the outer world of reality meet and fuse?? But unlike the surrealists (who Ballard frequently sites as an influence) he felt no need to look inwards as his was the first generation to inhabit the space of total media saturation which he insists is the unconscious, extruded and externalized into a new kind of landscape; the media landscape -ruled by fictions of every kind... soft drink commercials that coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and Pornography-. Importantly he goes on to identify the key fault-line that remains highly relevant and clearly separates Ballard from most of his peers, when he declares that - Despite McLuhan's delight in high-speed information mosaics we are still reminded of Freud's profound pessimism in Civilization and its Discontents. Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our dreams and longings - these diseases of the psyche have now culminated in the most terrifying casualty of the [20th] century: the death of affect-. Only Warhol?s chilly and exploitative post-humanism surpasses Ballard?s forensic examination of the consequences of technology?s collision with celebrity. A generation later the cyberpunks extrapolated from Gibson?s concept of Cyberspace a Ballard like space, where once again -the inner world of the mind and the outer world of reality meet and fuse. But it was Manuel Castells who more accurately theorised that what had occurred was a new kind of spatiality that was no longer dependent on proximity; the space of Flows-. Those scientists leaping for joy last week and the accompanying delirious media coverage, enabled us to re-live (if only for a few moments) the dangerous delusion that we still have limitless alternative futures, a narrative that also dominates Nolan?s movie Interstellar? Its an ethos Ballard described more than four decades ago as exhibiting -the social and sexual philosophy of the ejector seat-. More on this at: http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/space-opera-ejector-seat/ d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: The Creative Question--Nine Theses
In the interest of avoiding the conflict free zone that worries the authors the following > > 1. Goodbye to Creative Industries > > A creepy discourse on creativity has captured cultural and economic policy. > Creativity invokes a certain pharmacological numbness among its spruikers ??? > a special sub-species entirely unaware of how far removed their version of > creativity is from radical invention and social transformation. Their claims > around the science of economy are little more than a shoddy con.. This kind of now familiar rant sounds increasingly elitist, as though creativity can only be sourced on the wild frontiers of radical invention and social transformation. This romantic rhetoric falls straight into the reductavist trap of depicting creativity (the near universal capacity for invention and making of meaning through expression) to a kind of bohemian rhapsody. In which artists/makers and designers are required to be wild and untamed, patrolling the boarders of consciousness and returning with their -blue chip investments for level headed fetishists-. Many of the masterpieces of the 20th century were generated (to take just one example) in the white heat of the Hollywood dream factory- e.g. Some LIke it Hot, Casablanca, Vertigo etc etc. It was definitely creative and it was definitely an industry, operating in factory conditions of exploitation. It was far from being an outpost of bohemia. Today's culture of continuous innovation is also highly exploitative so instead of parodying the attempts of the state to recognise its existence of an industrial creative sector and its economic contribution, why shouldn't the established political class not seek to celebrate that contribution. And, in a better world, be inventing policy to address the insecurity, decrease the exploitation and increase the life chances of the precarious creative workforce. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
The Death of the Artist -- and the Birth of th
Maybe its time to turn to the writings of a true art lover Someone who values in the possibility of radical singularity and autonomous expression. So let me recommend Art critic and theorist Thierry de Duves wonderful little book, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx, as a useful way to engage with the powerful contemporary myth of creativity. Although the books overt subject is the work of four legendary modern artists, Beuys, Warhol, Klein and Duchamp, what gives these essays relevance, is that he examines the work and lives of theses artists through the lens of the political economy. All four essays are of interest but from the perspective of this posting it is the first two chapters (juxtaposing the art and personalities of Beuys and Warhol) which generate the most important insights. From the friction between the two radically differing narratives we can extrapolate the key contradictions and paradoxes that constitute the core propositions of the Creative industries; universal creative participation through user generated content and the perpetual stimulation of desire and thus commerce. In Duve's writing we encounter Beuys, as the last truly great exponent of the romantic movement, an artist for whom creativity was the potential that resided in each and every one of us. It lead to his twin proposition that not only was everyone was an artist but also that art could no longer be seen as a profession. For Beuys capitalism remained the cultural horizon to leave behind...Beuys based his art is based on will and thus on the principal of production, Warhol based art on desire and thus the principle of consumption;This inescapable binary are like the two sides of the creative industries coin, universal creativity (or compulsory innovation) and endless commerce. But Warhol was perhaps more prescient anticipating the core shift in power relations that was taking place where the figure of the consumer takes center stage alongside (or even instead of) the worker, or better where these two figures are merged. Hardt and Negri thus speak of affective labor, Duve claims that Beuys believed in creativity and Warhol did notfor Beuys art was labor while for Warhol it was commerce. But despite the apparent gulf between these two artists something separates these two artists from the Creative Industries and it is not simply capitalism. After all the very essence of Warhol's work is to ignore use value and exclusively instantiate exchange value. What separates Warhol and Beuys from the denizens of the Creative Industries to come was that they both (in radically different ways) inhabited what Duve describes as a 19th century invention, the mythical country of bohemia. Duve describes a country peopled where flaneurs and dandies cross paths with peddlers and rag pickers; and the only one radically denied a visa is the bourgoeois..Dickens and Zola have described this dark fringe of industrialization, these shady interstices of urbanization. ..(also Baudelaire and Hugo) they drew inspiration from this marginal society but also contributed to the fabrication of its image. .. Daumier, Degas, Toulouse Lautrec the Picasso of the Blue and Rose period To this gallery of portraits Beuys adds his own..." And so does Warhol But the inhabitants of Warhols version of bohemia, the inhabitants of the Factory have no access to the 19th centurie's most powerful invention, the weapon of solidarity. encapsulated by Marxs conception of the prolatarian class "as united through their labor power as individuals both belonging to the exploited alienated class and carrying the emancipated destiny of species." Duve points out Warhol's superstars are all isolated individuals. "Their were no social types in Warhols bohemia, no acrobats or ragpickers, but rather proper names: Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Ron Tavel, Brigid Polk, Candy Darling, Viva, Ondine, Billy Name each with his or her quirks, neurosis, sexual speciality, and idiom.". In the end they are victims, victims of Warhol's exploitative regime, and the means by which this was achieved points to the future described. A creative economy based on mass self-exploitation and affective labor. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
“Je ne suis pas Charlie” - “My name is le
The Fearful Demon of Value Pluralism My name is legion: for we are many Negri and Hardt, in their book Multitude, relate an incident from the Bible when Jesus faced with a man possessed by devils and asks him his name (since a name is required for exorcism) the demon inhabiting the man, responds enigmatically My name is legion for we are many. Negri & Hardt go on to describe this as a curious and troubling aspect of this parable with its grammatical confusion between the singular and plural subjects. The demonic is at once both I and we. Radicals of all persuasions have always struggled with a world made up of plural values and their undomesticated (demonic ?) subjects. It may be why liberal pluralism remains (often more than conservatism) the belief system most despised by radicals of all persuasions. One such radical with totalitarian tendencies is Slavoj Zizek, writing in the New Statesman on the Charlie Hebdo killings used the opportunity to (once again) highlight the perceived weakness of liberalism. Here is a short extract: -So what about the core values of liberalism: freedom, equality etc? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not enough to save them against the fundamentalist onslaught. Fundamentalism is a reaction- a false, mystifying, reaction, of course- against the real flaw of liberalism, and this is again and again generated by Liberalism. Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself- So what is this fatal flaw? Zizek was not the only commentator to give minimum attention to the key underlying attribute (or flaw) of a liberal polity that came under a harsh spotlight last week. That attribute is pluralism, and tragic pluralism at that. Pluralism is distinct from the many other words trotted out, (such as Zizeks truncated and typically dismissive list of liberalisms core values: freedom equality etc..). Zizeks argument sees liberalism as leading inevitably to Nietzsches pitiful last man, it is an argument that falsely represents life in a plural polity as the soft option. Nothing could be further from the truth. What last week brought home is that what evolved from the 18th century tussle between the Enlightenment rationalism eg (utilitarianism) and the Counter Enlightenment (eg Romanticism) is a political philosophy based on the accepting (not denying) the predicament of the divided self. When we celebrate diversity we often overlook the ways in which it is a manifestation of human dividedness in which both our individual selves and our societies are continuously torn by competing impulses and the inevitability of conflict that arises. This fact led some of us to refuse be drawn into demonstrations against -compulsory solidarity- and to declare Je ne suis pas Charlie despite, perhaps even because, of the outrage perpetrated. In place of cultural unity ours is an system that allows for the irreducible conflict between competing goods to (usually) coexist without being forced to embrace. For radicals of all colors this is often a matter of regret for pluralists it is the consequence of recognizing that the conflict of values liberty vs equality; justice vs mercy; tolerance vs order; liberty vs social justice; resistance vs prudence; and last week piety vs artistic freedom- is intrinsic to human life. And that every choice may entail irreparable loss. The fact that life in a plural polity may sometimes (and in this case did) lead to tragedy does not mean that it has failed or is doomed. Far from demonstrating failure the continued recognition of human dividedness, both inner and outer remains the best argument and very basis for maintaining a pluralist polity. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Reframing the Creative Question
Notes Towards a Reframing of the Creative Question Full article with links + Images at: http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/ In these notes I will argue that critical thinkers who are usually hostile to "Creative Industries" rhetoric should be prepared to take the risk of contamination by engaging with this discourse on its own terms. As it is my contention is that there is something like a radical revisionist version of this narrative to be uncovered. And I would further argue that the purpose of this act of recuperation is that it offers an important component in answering the most urgent and difficult question of all: how do we make the vital transition to a zero or low growth economy? General Purpose Creativity (GPC) Recently Warwick University published a detailed report; Enriching Britain, Creativity, Culture, Growth, 1. at the same time as the launch of the BBC's extensive -Get Creative Campaign-2. both of these projects coincided with the leader of the UK Labor Party Ed Milliband's introduction of the Creative and Cultural Industries theme into Labor's pre-election campaigning. Taken together these initiatives signify a return of the so called Creative and Cultural industries, if not exactly to centre Stage, then at least, (as Chris Smith one of the architects of the original project declared ) -as a mainstream concern of government- and part of the -Darwinian struggle for money and influence in Whitehall-. All of which make it an opportune moment for a pragmatic review of the Creative Question. Not only in order to understand what has changed but also to ask whether anything has been learned by the political class in the decades that have elapsed since New Labor introduced the meme into mainstream British party politics. MBAs in Art Schools? An all to familiar error goes largely un-challenged in public discourse on this topic, the tendency to elide the term creativity with the arts as though the two were interchangeable. The facts on the ground tell a very different story, revealing an inflationary expansion of the notion of creativity that goes far beyond mere instrumentalisation of the Arts. Since the 90s the creativity meme has proliferated to become an obligatory component of a political economy in which continuous innovation is an inescapable response to accelerating commodity cycles. To take just one of the many symptoms, something is clearly afoot, when a famous school of art and design Central St Martins in London is proposing to start, of all things, an MBA - an MBA centered on "organisational creativity and innovation".3. The 'Creative' a New Professional Category However audacious the decision to situate an MBA in a college of art and Design appears, it should not be seen as a particularly strange or surprising development. Rather it can be seen as a logical consequence of the continued currency of the creative industries meme in conjunction with the fact that for more than two decades courses of media art and design are no longer locked into single media crafts; e.g. painting, sculpture, film, graphic design, or web design etc. At all levels (and including Fine Art) we have seen the emergence of courses that cater for an employment landscape made up of networks of interdisciplinary General Purpose Creativity companies. Frequently using digital media as a catalyst for cross platform hybridity. The general acceptance of this kind of creative hybridity is reflected in the currency of a term designating a new kind of professional: the -Creative- a term that, these days, frequently displaces -artist or designer-4 Feeding the Creative Economy For a decade or more wave after wave of students are emerging from these digitally inflected hybrid media arts courses which are typically made up of a highly specific constellation of disciplines which is more specific than mere interdisciplinarity, and more widely applicable. "It is a distinct form of collaboration that combines art, technology and communications/marketing with particular emphasis on data mining and development simultaneous relationships between a variety of media and social media platforms". These courses are giving rise to generations of graduates, who, for better or for worse, have been educated to expect a new kind of participatory economy, requiring enhanced levels of mastery, connectivity and personal autonomy. It is generally known as the -creative economy- and is founded, above all, on the principal of continuous renewal and innovation. What is at Stake ? Despite the numerous ways in which these youthful expectations have been betrayed through both ingenious and crude forms of exploitation and self exploitation, not to mention an accumulating rubble of mind numbing management speak. I want to argue that we must be prepared to take the risk of engaging with Creative Industry discourse on its own terms. As It is my contention that there is something like a radical revisionist version of this narrative to b
Re Reframing the Creative Question- The Fusion Hypothesis
A Wrinkle in the Fusion Hypothesis - Or Why Does Fusion Need Firms alternative text at: http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/ In the earlier Reframing... post I mentioned the fact that University of Brighton, University of Sussex, NESTA and Wired Brighton have recently completed a two year research project on the local digital creative industries funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Its called Brighton Fuse. Actually it took more than three years. Although originally scheduled as a two year project but it has only just been completed as the first report omitted anything on the vital free-lance economy. With the publication of the second report this omission has been remedied and we now have a detailed, conscientious and very useful portrait of an media arts ecology outside of London with a sample broad enough to provide a new basis for argument that is less speculative than usual. Alongside the facts and figures Brighton Fuse (as the name suggests) utilised a useful conceptual tool the 'fusion hypothesis'. Fused & Superfused At its simplest Brighton Fuse research demonstrated with facts and figures on the ground that the claims and hype around the digital creative industries is real. That creative, digital and IT companies are factually the fastest growing sector in the local economy and is driving the wider economy. But more interestingly the report identified the fact that growth was not evenly distributed even in the sector under consideration and that that within the cdit cluster there are three distinct sub-groups that when combined constituted what this sector as a whole. To begin with there are the specialists, who are classified in this model as 'unfused', followed by the 'fused' companies that combine technology with creative design and finally there are the 'superfused' companies who are self-identified so strongly with this constellation that the principle of ?fusion? was not simply present but lies at the very heart of their offer. For the sake of clarity "the notion of fusion is more specific than mere interdisciplinarity. It is a very specific form of collaboration that combines art, technology and communications/marketing with particular emphasis on social media and developing simultaneous real-time relationships between these platforms?. A further finding indicated that although the technological component was central, a significant percentage (more than a third) of these superfused companies are led by former arts and humanities graduates. According to the researchers the superfused companies found additional time to spend on a range of diverse activities, such as coding, design and management in addition to engaging in creative and digital communities more than the fused and unfused. Importantly there was a very high correlation between growth with superfused growing at three times the rate as the unfused. This model raises some interesting questions when it came to the second and more surprising report focusing on free-lancers and contrasting the way the fusion worked for them. The Wrinkle In fact there was an interesting anomaly that illuminates some obstacles to collaboration and what has been called the 'sharing economy' in the creative industries and beyond. This anomaly arrises when it came to comparing the growth ratios claimed for individual superfused free-lancers with the performance of equivalent companies. Would freelancers making the journey from unfused to superfused exhibit a comparable degree of growth as that exhibited by the companies? The answer was surprising. Although there was some correlation there were also important divergences. The first step mirrors the growth rates of the company. The fused freelancer enjoys much higher levels of growth than the unfused (10.5% higher) but there is a sudden trailing off when the individual takes the next step. The superfused free-lancers exhibit only modest uptick in growth (4.8%). But in contrast the superfused company continues their exponential rise. It seems that there is a barrier to growth when individual free-lancers reach advanced levels of interdisciplinary combinations and skills. This conclusion leads to an interesting question and its precisely the opposite of the more obvious question of ?why do firms need fusion??. Instead we have the more surprising and generative inversion in which we ask ?why does fusion need firms?? The researchers observed that away from the coordination of projects in firms (and other collectives) practitioners would retreat into distinctive communities and in the bars and other hang outs in which these communities gather and feel at home, it?s a kind of unconscious cultural sundown segregation. "Given the tendency to socialize with ones own community it seemed that fusion did not happen automatically and that people needed some management or coordination to fa
