Re: <nettime> The Creative Question--Nine Theses

["Hamilton, Kevin" <kham@illinois.edu>]

What I hear (and value) in the call of these Nine Theses is neither a
bohemian call for more "authentic" creativity as cultural product, nor a
narrow focus on worker conditions that dismisses creativity as mere
exploitation.

Instead, what stirs me about their call is that, unlike many of
creativity's current celebrants, the authors tie creativity first to human
flourishing, not to capital.

Many of the rhetorics the Theses lambast exhort the precarious worker to
"innovate" herself out of her situation. That's exactly an ethos I wish to
shoot down, in the name of both the worker and of creativity, which as a
human capacity defies such economies of death. If there is in fact a
measure of "authentic" creativity out there, its in the stories of
creative workers thriving and becoming more human every day. (There are
far too few stories like that.)

Wish I could be there for MyCreativity 2.0.

Kevin Hamilton



On 11/20/14 9:57 AM, "d.garcia" <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
wrote:

>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-.
 <...>


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