Pascal Gielen on Commonism for the Creative City

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9gfcas6UBk&feature=youtu.be

How can artists survive in the neoliberal city ? They need the commons.

Description

"Since the financial crisis started at the end of 2007, many governments have cut budgets in the cultural and artistic fields. Inspired by the critical social theory of Herbert Marcuse (1964), these policy decisions are understood within an ideological framework as “repressive liberalism.” That is, a (cultural) politics that on the one hand proclaims individual freedom, stimulates cultural entrepreneurship, and embraces the creative city, but on the other hand develops a large-scale decentralized control apparatus that strongly restricts individual and artistic freedom. Within this cultural policy, creative labor itself can also be ‘instrumentalized’ as a repressive tool.

Pascal Gielen (1970) is a full professor of sociology of art and politics at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (Antwerp University, Belgium), where he leads the Culture Commons Quest Office. He is editor of the international book series Antennae-Arts in Society.

This lecture is a part of Lithuanian pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2018."