Arts and Creative Work in the Era of the Digital Factory

Arts and Creative Work in the Era of the Digital Factory

researchers:

Letizia Chiappini (UvA)

Within the post Sharing Economy phase, what is the role of the creative workers, such as artists and designers?

 

This project focuses on the next stage of urban implications and side effects of the concepts Sharing Economy and Creative Industries. The aim is to go beyond the hype and the mere critique of neoliberal policies discourses. The state of affairs in urban development is still mainly focused on the funding of local pilots projects and the celebration of best practices. However, what we observe is a local economy that scales up much faster than expected, which gives experts the possibility to surf on the length of this economic wave. There is now a real existing ‘digital factory’ out there, with thousand of networked creative precarious workers connected to larger corporate entities (such as booking.com in the Amsterdam case). This present socio-economic reality is clashing with the ruling ‘intellectual elite’, in which ‘best practices’ are replaced by ‘best people’. Highly educated expats are sucked up by a so-called ‘grant machine’ in which the EU is the ‘new leviathan’. This creates a growing tension between a highly mobile consultancy class and the real existing digital factory. Given this tension, what is the role of the creative workers, such as artists and designers?

 

Partners: Institute of Network Cultures (HvA); Centre of Urban Studies (UvA), Universiteit van Amsterdam (Geographies of Globalization Research Group) & Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (UrbEur – Urban Studies Programme)

Supervisors: Prof. Robert Kloosterman (UvA) & Prof. Serena Vicari (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca)

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Fondazione Feltrinelli, Book Store Milano, March 2018. Artwork by Alfredo Jaar (2012)