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Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms
The magic word these days is 'creativity,' and not just for business managers and policymakers alike demand it. Even family therapists and mediators urge us to find more creative solutions. At present, creativity is all about positive morality. But what remains of the meaning of the word when just about everyone is using it to death? And where does this hunger for creativity come from? Isn't it instead a sign of a creeping loss of true creativity? Author Pascal Gielen, the director of the research center Arts in Society at Groningen University and a specialist on art and Post-Fordism, relates the story of the process of the social (re)creation of creativity by taking readers on a fictive eight-day journey. The second in a series issued by the Mondriaan Fund to promote thinking about visual art and artisthood.
120 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 4, 2025
основні правила нашого часу - постійний рух заради руху, "гнучкість" та "адаптивність" не дають шансу на рефлексію, унеможливлюють природний шлях викристалізації креативних ідей та процесів їх генерації.
"...творчість передбачає тимчасове зречення культури й означає водночас тимчасову соціальну ізоляцію..."
липкі і довгі тентаклі неолібералізму (привіт Фукуяма) прагнуть все звести до чисел, надати кожному примітивну економічно-ринкову форму та під страхом творчої деструкції плекають стриманість і посередність.
"...число стає єдиною базою суспільного життя..."
"...творчість передбачає тимчасове зречення культури й означає водночас тимчасову соціальну ізоляцію..."
липкі і довгі тентаклі неолібералізму (привіт Фукуяма) прагнуть все звести до чисел, надати кожному примітивну економічно-ринкову форму та під страхом творчої деструкції плекають стриманість і посередність.
"...число стає єдиною базою суспільного життя..."
March 10, 2024
Креативність із елітарного прояву і суспільного рушія перетворилась в обязаловку і прислужника менеджерів та бухгалтерів. І це сталося геть не випадково, але як частина перетворення світу із вертикально орієнтованого (в якому існують ієрархії та інституції на які світ може спиратися) в горизонтальний і плаский, в якому все що можуть жителі - плавати в хаотичних напрямках, сподіваючись визначити хоч якийсь напрям і передбачити наслідки своїх дій (що неможливо апріорі через повний хаос що відбувається в світі).
А про#оби більше не розглядаються як системні - лише як прояви персональних помилок індивидів, що заважає усвідомити весь масштаб проблеми і якось її виправити, замість цього винних вилучають і маргіналізують.
Втрата вертикальних ієрархій - це втрата коренів і памʼяті, втрата еліти і контркультури, втрата можливості бути креативним - тобто новатором, який міняє світ. Натомість світ вимагає від художника бути менеджером.
Коротше, ще одне есе на тему «нам всім п#здець»
Книга отримала би від мене 5, якби не довелось крізь неї продиратися перечитуючи кожну сторінку двічі, а то і тричі.
А про#оби більше не розглядаються як системні - лише як прояви персональних помилок індивидів, що заважає усвідомити весь масштаб проблеми і якось її виправити, замість цього винних вилучають і маргіналізують.
Втрата вертикальних ієрархій - це втрата коренів і памʼяті, втрата еліти і контркультури, втрата можливості бути креативним - тобто новатором, який міняє світ. Натомість світ вимагає від художника бути менеджером.
Коротше, ще одне есе на тему «нам всім п#здець»
Книга отримала би від мене 5, якби не довелось крізь неї продиратися перечитуючи кожну сторінку двічі, а то і тричі.
January 23, 2016
There was a time in the not too distant past when discussions of creativity were held quietly in tutorial rooms or were perhaps sequestered in books about art practice or shelved quietly in the ‘self-help’ (before it became ‘mind body spirit’) section of a book store. Somewhere along the line this changed (in my battered grey cells is was after the December 1987 stock market dive, and neo-liberalism 2.0 moved from greed being good to more inventive ways to make money out of nothing, and look where that got us in 2008) and we began to be expected to apply our skills of creativity to problem solving (when surely problem solving is entirely what creativity is about – if we didn’t need to find some kind of new solution, there wouldn’t be a problem). Happily, some of the clichéd excesses of the initial stages of this form of creativity have been relegated to their dusty corner of history’s closet (we’re more likely to ‘think outside the box’ in ‘bullshit bingo cards’ in managerial meetings than actually use the phrase ourselves – although it is alarming in some meetings how easy it is to tick off).
This excellent, short, challenging book by the sociologist of art, Pascal Gielen, explores neo-liberalism 2.0’s appropriation and recasting of ‘creativity’ to become a tool in its repertoire, not a critical force. He grounds the work in recent analyses by Peter Sloterdijk and by Slavoj Žižek – Sloterdijk on the loss of critique and Žižek on the farcical character of the current crisis (which not to say that Žižek or Gielen are arguing that the current crisis is absurd, but that responses to it are wrongheaded) – without drawing either of these philosophers into too much of his argument: that is, they underpin and intermittently appear in the text. Although they appear much less often (once each by my count) the case is also sustained much more directly by Zigmaut Bauman’s work on liquid society and by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s notion of the current order as being project based (in their language, projective). This idea of the project and with it the network as the basis of contemporary work practices is fundamental to the case Gielen builds.
Sloterdijk’s work helps Gielen construct a case that is premised on the collapse of the moral and cultural power of institutions allowing him to depict the current order as one where an absence of institutional power (in art, his world, consider the shift in emphasis from the gallery/museum to the curator) – this is cultural and educational and similar institutions – means that there is little chance to distance oneself from the constancy of work to survey the scene and do the reflective/reflexive critique that is essential to creativity. The projective world, the network society, then comes into the picture – not only is this new world flat, it is fluid; as workers in it we move from project to project, from team to team (even, often, in the same workplace – in mine for instance I am a member of a small management team, but we all have specialisms and construct project groups from among the 500 or so staff for nearly every task). Gielen is, therefore, exploring what creativity means in this flat, wet world (as he repeatedly calls it) – and it not a pretty picture.
He has a vision of creativity as a space and source of critique, of inventiveness, of challenge to received wisdom and power; this is a vision of creativity we see often. This kind of creativity can be seen in art and intellectual practice as groups and salons emerge – think of the Impressionists, the Bloomsbury Group, Dada and the Surrealists, or of the musicians clustered around Club 54 or CBGB’s and the dynamism that flowed from the reggae-punk interactions in London in the 1976 and 1977. It is less obvious but also present in more mundane areas – the inventiveness with which those developing the postwar welfare state used the processes of capitalism and the state to mitigate the most extreme effects of capitalism on its populations. Here we have creativity of the kind Gielen advocates, where the new is a challenge to the old, to its power régime and order and offer opportunities for change and inventiveness.
Instead, he argues, that in a world shaped by neo-liberalism and neo-nationalism we deal with a common single measure of success or otherwise, financial outcomes; as a single measure, then, this is a form of fundamentalism that further reinforces the flat, wet world. This threat to critical creativity is reinforced by project-based relations where networked workers, moving from one project to the next, are driven as much by a need to secure the next project as they are to compete successfully the current one – that is rather than focus on the current work we are driven to anticipate the next, hence the further undermining of critique. This leads him to suggest that neo-liberal ‘creativity’ is not about outcome and in actively undermining critique it takes on an ideological role as ‘creativism’, not ‘creativity.
The case is potent, clearly argued and well suited to the essay form – here we have an idea for the rest of us to pick up and explore, to try out in practice and to push at the limits of. The essay both pushes critical evaluations of the discourses of creativity (such work by Stefan Nowotny and others) while also building on other work of Gielen’s, especially his opening essay in Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm . In particular, his case for verticality – for depth and distance in critique and evaluation – seems to me to link well with growing concerns about the effects of the increase of private funding in higher education and the use of simplistic metrics to assess quality and performance: amount of research income; teaching evaluations and surveys of student satisfaction for instance.
The essay is a significant contribution to the critique of neo-liberal and neo-managerialist invocation of creativity, challenging also some of the conventional leftish critiques of verticality and hierarchy: horizontalism may be a valuable tool in helping us in prefigurative politics but it is not without its limitations, especially in a fundamentalist world where value/success is measured financially. But it’s not just valuable for those in the art world – there seems to be considerable potential for the development of these ideas and questions in many areas of immaterial labour – but that is up to us as much as it to Gielen and his research networks: just how do we move to more verticality in a flat wet, world and in doing so reclaim creativity as critique from 'creativism'?
This excellent, short, challenging book by the sociologist of art, Pascal Gielen, explores neo-liberalism 2.0’s appropriation and recasting of ‘creativity’ to become a tool in its repertoire, not a critical force. He grounds the work in recent analyses by Peter Sloterdijk and by Slavoj Žižek – Sloterdijk on the loss of critique and Žižek on the farcical character of the current crisis (which not to say that Žižek or Gielen are arguing that the current crisis is absurd, but that responses to it are wrongheaded) – without drawing either of these philosophers into too much of his argument: that is, they underpin and intermittently appear in the text. Although they appear much less often (once each by my count) the case is also sustained much more directly by Zigmaut Bauman’s work on liquid society and by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s notion of the current order as being project based (in their language, projective). This idea of the project and with it the network as the basis of contemporary work practices is fundamental to the case Gielen builds.
Sloterdijk’s work helps Gielen construct a case that is premised on the collapse of the moral and cultural power of institutions allowing him to depict the current order as one where an absence of institutional power (in art, his world, consider the shift in emphasis from the gallery/museum to the curator) – this is cultural and educational and similar institutions – means that there is little chance to distance oneself from the constancy of work to survey the scene and do the reflective/reflexive critique that is essential to creativity. The projective world, the network society, then comes into the picture – not only is this new world flat, it is fluid; as workers in it we move from project to project, from team to team (even, often, in the same workplace – in mine for instance I am a member of a small management team, but we all have specialisms and construct project groups from among the 500 or so staff for nearly every task). Gielen is, therefore, exploring what creativity means in this flat, wet world (as he repeatedly calls it) – and it not a pretty picture.
He has a vision of creativity as a space and source of critique, of inventiveness, of challenge to received wisdom and power; this is a vision of creativity we see often. This kind of creativity can be seen in art and intellectual practice as groups and salons emerge – think of the Impressionists, the Bloomsbury Group, Dada and the Surrealists, or of the musicians clustered around Club 54 or CBGB’s and the dynamism that flowed from the reggae-punk interactions in London in the 1976 and 1977. It is less obvious but also present in more mundane areas – the inventiveness with which those developing the postwar welfare state used the processes of capitalism and the state to mitigate the most extreme effects of capitalism on its populations. Here we have creativity of the kind Gielen advocates, where the new is a challenge to the old, to its power régime and order and offer opportunities for change and inventiveness.
Instead, he argues, that in a world shaped by neo-liberalism and neo-nationalism we deal with a common single measure of success or otherwise, financial outcomes; as a single measure, then, this is a form of fundamentalism that further reinforces the flat, wet world. This threat to critical creativity is reinforced by project-based relations where networked workers, moving from one project to the next, are driven as much by a need to secure the next project as they are to compete successfully the current one – that is rather than focus on the current work we are driven to anticipate the next, hence the further undermining of critique. This leads him to suggest that neo-liberal ‘creativity’ is not about outcome and in actively undermining critique it takes on an ideological role as ‘creativism’, not ‘creativity.
The case is potent, clearly argued and well suited to the essay form – here we have an idea for the rest of us to pick up and explore, to try out in practice and to push at the limits of. The essay both pushes critical evaluations of the discourses of creativity (such work by Stefan Nowotny and others) while also building on other work of Gielen’s, especially his opening essay in Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm . In particular, his case for verticality – for depth and distance in critique and evaluation – seems to me to link well with growing concerns about the effects of the increase of private funding in higher education and the use of simplistic metrics to assess quality and performance: amount of research income; teaching evaluations and surveys of student satisfaction for instance.
The essay is a significant contribution to the critique of neo-liberal and neo-managerialist invocation of creativity, challenging also some of the conventional leftish critiques of verticality and hierarchy: horizontalism may be a valuable tool in helping us in prefigurative politics but it is not without its limitations, especially in a fundamentalist world where value/success is measured financially. But it’s not just valuable for those in the art world – there seems to be considerable potential for the development of these ideas and questions in many areas of immaterial labour – but that is up to us as much as it to Gielen and his research networks: just how do we move to more verticality in a flat wet, world and in doing so reclaim creativity as critique from 'creativism'?
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December 25, 2023Дуже важко йшла з першої сторінки і до останньої я таки не змогла змусити себе дійти. Читати про неї набагато легше і зрозуміліше,ніж читати її.
Важко стежити за думкою автора. Це я неуважно читаю чи концепція рідкого плоского світу, мережовості не була обґрунтована? І як далі читати якщо все на них ґрунтується, а я їх до кінця не розумію? Не буду спихати все на книжку, бо це можливо я як читачка до неї не доросла. Мо повернусь до неї колись, а поки буду чесна з собою і перестаю себе нею мучити
Важко стежити за думкою автора. Це я неуважно читаю чи концепція рідкого плоского світу, мережовості не була обґрунтована? І як далі читати якщо все на них ґрунтується, а я їх до кінця не розумію? Не буду спихати все на книжку, бо це можливо я як читачка до неї не доросла. Мо повернусь до неї колись, а поки буду чесна з собою і перестаю себе нею мучити
November 6, 2024
Хороша книга, особливо для людей, що працюють в креативній індустрії. Для цієї книги мені знадобився час, але коли він пройшов - я прочитала половину за годину.
Гарна книга, схиляє до роздумів. Проте мова та стиль не для кожного)
Гарна книга, схиляє до роздумів. Проте мова та стиль не для кожного)
January 9, 2025
"A criatividade tem o potencial para destruir e recriar não apenas as formas econômicas, mas também sociedades inteiras."
December 22, 2025
Ця книга відгукнеться творчим людям, які задаються питанням, чому їм складно працювати в креативній галузі в сучасних умовах пізнього капіталізму. Мені сподобалась метафора про виживання в рідкому мережевому світі, де терапія допомагає людям не втонути.
Але інформація в цьому творі була занадто генералізована і потребує додаткових знань із інших соціологічних праць для повного розуміння, що саме автор мав на увазі. Автор багато критикує сучасний "креативний капіталізм" який, на відміну від справжньої креативності, аполітичний і регулюється менеджерами або бюрократами. А справжня креативність для нього - це зміна суспільного порядку. Він рекомендує політизувати креативність та ставати рушіями соціальних змін. Тому це таке собі поверхневе окреслення проблеми (проблема не в тобі, проблема в системі) і узагальнювальний заклик до виходу на вулиці наприкінці.
Але інформація в цьому творі була занадто генералізована і потребує додаткових знань із інших соціологічних праць для повного розуміння, що саме автор мав на увазі. Автор багато критикує сучасний "креативний капіталізм" який, на відміну від справжньої креативності, аполітичний і регулюється менеджерами або бюрократами. А справжня креативність для нього - це зміна суспільного порядку. Він рекомендує політизувати креативність та ставати рушіями соціальних змін. Тому це таке собі поверхневе окреслення проблеми (проблема не в тобі, проблема в системі) і узагальнювальний заклик до виходу на вулиці наприкінці.
April 4, 2024
декілька днів відкладаю щось написати про неї, тому що про це важко навіть писати. не памʼятаю, коли востаннє мені було настільки нудно продиратися думками. і ніби такі прості концепти, але описані такими лабіринтами, що втомлюєшся на середині речення.
February 3, 2024
Read most of it. Shelved for now as I have what I needed for several papers.
May 26, 2025
я перечитаю тебе за рік, бо зовсім втратила основну думку 😫
still, окремі речі для себе зрозуміла
still, окремі речі для себе зрозуміла
December 15, 2022
What creativity do we need to be able to step out of that much creativity?
Pascal presents creativity by the institutional turn- underscoring how exhibitionist turn became a pivot for social networking and influenced curatorial practices as he stresses out that the here and now and take it as it is would count more than any enclosed artistry. 'The artist can no longer stand outside of or above' (Gielen 2013, 32) in a wet flat world where horizontality takes over the verticality. Yet I sense it as a science fictional utopia, where in an essential responsibility through founding an existential can neither fundamentally come to exist nor be true. Then, creativity is a product of the neoliberal as an investment; funnily 'investing has always been a creative activity' (Gielen 2013, 18) and hence the 'faith' was the basis for the investment and creativity both.
Pascal presents creativity by the institutional turn- underscoring how exhibitionist turn became a pivot for social networking and influenced curatorial practices as he stresses out that the here and now and take it as it is would count more than any enclosed artistry. 'The artist can no longer stand outside of or above' (Gielen 2013, 32) in a wet flat world where horizontality takes over the verticality. Yet I sense it as a science fictional utopia, where in an essential responsibility through founding an existential can neither fundamentally come to exist nor be true. Then, creativity is a product of the neoliberal as an investment; funnily 'investing has always been a creative activity' (Gielen 2013, 18) and hence the 'faith' was the basis for the investment and creativity both.
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