[Nettime-nl] MyCreativity -- eerste aankondiging

[Institute of Network Cultures <info@networkcultures.org>]

MyCreativity
Convention of International Creative Industries Researchers
First Announcement

Date: 17-18 November, 2006
Venue: Club 11, Post CS Building, Amsterdam
Organisation: Institute of Network Cultures, HvA and Centre for Media 
Research, University of Ulster
Concept: Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter
More information: info@networkcultures.org, Sabine Niederer.
www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity

Introduction
Emerging out of Blair's Britain in the late 90s as an antidote to 
post-industrial unemployment, early creative industries discourse was 
notable for a promotional hype characteristic of the dot.com era in the 
US. Over the past 3-5 years creative industries has undergone a process 
of internationalisation and become a permanent fixture in the 
short-term interests that define government policy packages across the 
world. At the policy level, creative industries have managed to 
transcend the North-South divide that preoccupied research on the 
information economies and communication technologies for two decades.

Today, one finds countries as diverse as Austria, Brazil, Singapore and 
New Zealand eagerly promoting the promise of exceptional economic 
growth rates of "culture" in its "immaterial" form. Governments in Hong 
Kong, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands have initiated creative 
industries policy platforms with remarkably similar assumptions and 
expectations given their very different cultural and political 
environments.

Despite the proliferation of the creative industries model, it remains 
hard to point to stories of actual "creative innovation", or to be even 
sure what this might mean. What is clear – if largely unacknowledged – 
is that investment in "creative clusters" effectively functions to 
encourage a corresponding boom in adjacent real estate markets. Here 
lies perhaps the core truth of the creative industries: the creative 
industries are a service industry, one in which state investment in 
"high culture" shifts to a form of welfarism for property developers. 
This smoke and mirrors trick is cleverly performed through a language 
of populist democracy that appeals to a range of political and business 
agents. What is more surprising is the extent to which this hype is 
seemingly embraced by those most vulnerable: namely, the content 
producers (designers, software inventors, artists, filmmakers, etc.) of 
creative information (brands, patents, copyrights).

Much research in the creative industries is highly speculative, 
interpretive and economistic, concerned with large-scale industry data 
rather than the network of formal and informal relations that make 
possible creative production. It is also usually produced quickly, with 
little detailed qualitative analysis of the structure of economic 
relationships creative industries firms operate in. In many cases, the 
policy discourses travel and are taken up without critical appraisal of 
distinctly local conditions.

In contrast to the homogeneity of creative industries at the policy 
level, there is much localised variation to be found in terms of the 
material factors that shape the development of creative industries 
projects. For example, a recent UNCTAD (2004) policy report on creative 
industries and development makes note of the “‘precarious”’ nature of 
employment for many within the creative industries. Such attention to 
the uneven and variable empirics of creative industries marks a 
departure from much of the hype that characterised earlier creative 
industries discourse, and also reflects the spread of this discourse 
out of highly developed market economies to ones where the private 
sector has a very different role.

This conference wishes to bring these trends and tendencies into 
critical question. It seeks to address the local, intra-regional and 
trans-national variations that constitute international creative 
industries as an uneven field of actors, interests and conditions. The 
conference explores a range of key topics that, in the majority of 
cases, remain invisible to both academic research and policy-making in 
the creative industries.

Overall, the conference adopts a comparative focus in order to 
illuminate the variability of international creative industries. Such 
an approach enables new questions to be asked about the mutually 
constitutive tensions between the forces, practices, histories and 
policies that define creative production, distribution and organisation 
within an era of information economies and network cultures.

Themes and Sessions
=Critique of Creative Industries=
There is little empirical correspondence between the topography of 
"mapping documents" and "value-chains" and the actual social networks 
and cultural flows that comprise the business activities and movement 
of finance capital, information and labour-power within creative 
economies. Such attempts to register the mutual production of economic 
and creative value are inherently reductive systems. Much creative 
industries discourse in recent years places an emphasis on the 
potential for creative clusters, hubs and precincts to develop cultural 
economies. The limits and political problematic of existing 
methodologies such as these are considerable.

Complexity is not something that is easily accommodated in the genre of 
policy and the activities of what remain vertically integrated 
institutional settings.  In undertaking a critique of the simplicity 
characteristic of much creative industries policy, this session 
explores the ways in which the experiences of workers, businesses and 
government and the structural formations of the creative industries can 
be better understood in terms of the complexity of information 
economies and network societies.

=Creative Labour and Precarity=
Since the initial policy reports by the Blair government’s Department 
of Communications, Media, and Sport (1998/2001), governments around the 
world have reproduced the key definition of creative industries as 
consisting of ‘the generation and exploitation of intellectual 
property’ (DCMS, 1998/2001). Key to this definition is the invisible 
subject of exploitation: namely, those engaged in the production of 
creative commodities and services. Such work is largely undertaken by 
young people, who have no experience or identification with traditional 
labour organisations, such as the trade union. The reasons for this are 
historical, generational and structural: young people do not have 
formal or cultural associations with vertically organised institutional 
settings in the way that workers did during the modern era of 
industrial capitalism. This session investigates the precarious 
conditions of labour and life within the creative industries.

=Creative Industries--Made in Europe=
Europe has long prided itself as the origin of (state funded and 
guided) creativity, but the romanticism that underpins this arrogance 
and institutional power is no longer viable in the context of economic 
globalisation. With its system of protectionist policies and welfare 
states still relatively intact, albeit considerably battered, countries 
across Europe have been comparatively slow to incorporate the UK-model 
of creative industries in their policy agendas. This is gradually 
changing and will no doubt continue to do so as the EU forces resistant 
states to conform to international policy trends and trade agreements. 
On the one hand, this session is interested in the distinctive cultural 
variations that define creative work across European countries. And 
then, on the other hand, the session is interested in the kinds of 
connections being made at social and economic levels between European 
countries. Is it still possible, beyond tourism, to speak of "Europe" 
in a global economy of trade and services?

=Creative Industries and the Arts=
It is not difficult to understand why the hype around creative 
industries has been perceived as a threat in traditional visual arts 
circles. Are “contemporary arts” and “creative industries” ordinary 
competitors that compete over scarce resources, or is there more to 
this tension? The creative industries discourse can easily be read as a 
declaration of war against closed and elitist art systems, and much of 
that critique might be justified. But there are also millions of good 
reasons to defend the “senseless acts of beauty” against cold and 
instrumentalised market thinking. The autonomy of the arts may as well 
be read as a right, built up through struggles against the grip of the 
church and the aristocratic class on the arts. But what remains in the 
ruins of the Arts as a source of renewal and mobilisation within a 
paradigm of info-economies?

=Creative Industries in China and the Asia-Pacific=
One is hard pressed to find comparative research that examines the 
inter-relations between geo-politics (regional trade agreements, 
national and multi-lateral policies on labour mobility, security and 
migration, etc.) and the peculiarities of intra-regional, trans-local 
and global cultural flows. For many, the creative industries are an 
exclusively Anglo-American and now European phenomenon. This session is 
interested in the Asia-Pacific experiences of creative industries.

Of particular interest is the case of China, which is rapidly emerging 
as the dominant player in the global economy. How is “culture” being 
understood as an economic resource in China? Who are the key players 
and what sort of cross-sectoral relations are emerging? How are artists 
positioning themselves in political and economic senses? To what extent 
are external influences and architectures (e.g. WTO and IPRs) shaping 
the creative industries formation in China and the Asia-Pacific region?

=Complementary and Alternative Business Models=
For all the talk about culture as a generator of economic capital, the 
relation between the two continues to be neglected in much research and 
is difficult for many to understand. The economic models applied to 
cultural production in an era of broadcast media have proven to be 
inadequate to this period of networked media. And the follies of the 
dot.com boom were all too clear – though this is still ignored by many 
creative industries policy-makers and advocates. The search for 
alternative business models for the creative industries is currently at 
a fairly experimental stage, and there’s little scope for 
transferability due to national and cultural contingencies (though this 
too is often ignored). How can creative work become sustainable, beyond 
state subsidies and hyped markets? Do we necessarily have to buy into 
intellectual property regimes? What is the economic reality of Creative 
Commons?

=Conclusion: Subterranean Creativity=
There is without doubt a discord between the “mapping documents” 
produced by government departments and academics across the world and 
the on-the-ground experiences of creative workers. These empirical 
exercises function as an abstract expression to be circulated amongst 
like-minded institutions seeking self-produced validation. But how are 
young creative producers making sense – if at all – of the policy 
directives being set out for them by government departments? What sort 
of languages, expressions, connections are made and circulated here? 
And what, if any, mobilising capacity do such relations enable with 
regard to a different form of organisational power?

Format/Logistics
This event will be run in collaboration with All Media Foundation and 
The Sandberg Institute, who will present the latest installment that 
engages the topic of "organised creativity". The opening evening will 
present a show in Paradiso (16 November, 2006), titled Paradise by the 
Laptop Light, a concept of Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort. 
Leading up this event, post-graduate design students from the Sandberg 
Institute will be undertaking a study of creative industries 
topographies and typologies in the Netherlands. These activities 
include a free newspaper and will feature in the conference session on 
Subterrainean Creativity.

This international conference will be used as a preliminary meeting of 
an emerging network of researchers that critically engage with the 
creative industries field. The event also introduces the novel format 
of the conference "package tour", with a follow-up conference – A 
Network of Networks – held in Belfast, 19-21 November. This event will 
be also be organised by the Institute of Network Cultures and the 
Centre for Media Research, along with other partners.

Mailing list
If you are interested to join the network mailing list, you can 
subscribe by going to the following: 
http://idash.org/mailman/listinfo/ci-l

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