This issue sets out to re-imagine culture beyond individualised consumerism and personal preferences indexed to the ability to pay. Kirsten Ross recovered the idea of Communal Luxury from the shattered remains of the Paris Commune. It evoked not just collective consumption (of services or infrastructures) but the possibility of a social fabric charged with aesthetic experience, with art and beauty for the many, not for the few. Demonised and ridiculed after 1990, when creative entrepreneurship and startup culture triumphed over the supposedly grey conformity of the public sector, what happened to collective popular culture? If we are to establish art and culture as something essential to democratic citizenship and human flourishing, then we have to take the risk of re-imagining the possibilities of collective culture.
With contributions by Mark Fisher, Kate Oakley, Gregory Sholette, Emma Webb, Collettivo Sentiero Futuro Autoproduzioni, The Radical Film Network, Letizia Chiappini, Andreas Krüger and Dan Hill.
‘Our research group investigates the role artists, designers and cultural producers in general can play in developing the aesthetics and poetics of a desirable future.’
Sebastian Olma is professor Cultural and Creative Industries. He works for the Expertise Centre Art, Design and Technology.
The research group Cultural and Creative Industries investigates the role of artists and designers as creative innovators and drivers of social and economic change. Affiliated researchers analyse the cultural and creative industries from a critical point of view and examine the conditions under which timely forms of aesthetic expression and social connectedness can actually take place within the precarious reality of this field. What economic models are required by artists and designers to create a meaningful practice within the aesthetic, social, and economic intentions of the cultural and creative industries? What skills sets are required for those artists and designers who don’t just want to follow movements, but actually shape novel social and economic models of the future?
Read more
Thank you for your subscription! Please check your email inbox to confirm.