Thursday November 16 – opening night at Damrak 16
Friday November 17 – MyCreativity day 1 at PostCS11
Saturday November 18 – MyCreativity day 2 at PostCS11
Thursday November 16
Opening night at
Doors open: 19:30
Start program: 20:00, ends at 23:00.
Venue: Chequepoint, Damrak 16, Amsterdam. http://squat.net/chequepoint
20:00 – 21:30: Screenings
Imbattibili (2006, 06’00″)
by Chainworkers www.imbattibili.org
Talent Community: IO Design Office (2005, 19’00″)
by Lars Nilsson www.larsnilsson.net
Talent Community is an ongoing documentary project about cultural entrepreneurs and freelance collectives in Gothenburg, Sweden. It’s about creativity and flow, about economic pressure and flexibility, about small town pride, about beautiful images, fun and the good life.
On Blood and Wings – A Study on the Dark Side of Cooperation (2006, 37’00″)
by Yeti Films, Jörg Windszus and Christoph Spehr
On Blood and Wings is about the multitude battling capitalism. Giving a vampire twist to Marx in unveiling the crucial mechanism of capitalism (“to make more and more blood out of blood”), it shows the problems of the Multitude fighting the vampires to conquer capitalism towards a free and just society. The video is put together from found footage out of a dozen different vampire movies. A voice over reads the policital text. The video is published under the GNU public license.
Hosts: Sabine Niederer and Shirley Niemans
21:30 Music by My Little Soundsystem and Neef Rave
Friday November 17, PostCS 11, Amsterdam
9:30 Doors Open, coffee/tea
10:00 – 10:30 Welcome & Introduction by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter
10:30-12:30 1: Critique of Creative Industries
In this opening session we look at the main critical concepts for research into the creative industries. There is little empirical correspondence between the topography of “mapping documents” and “value-chains”. The actual social networks and cultural flows that comprise the business activities and movement of finance capital, information and labour-power within creative economies remain under-researched. Too often the attempts to register the mutual production of economic and creative value are inherently reductive. 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.
Presenters:
Brian Holmes (Paris, France)
Matteo Pasquinelli (London, United Kingdom)
Rosalind Gill (London, United Kingdom) and Danielle van Diemen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Chair: Geert Lovink (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
12:30 Book Presentation Ned Rossiter
Organized Networks
Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions
Ned Rossiter
Paperback, sewn, 250 pages, Size: 16 X 23 cm
ISBN 90-5662-526-8 / 978-90-5662-526-9, € 23.50
Cover design: Leon Kranenburg & Loes Sikkes www.leon-loes.nl
Design: Studio Tint, Huug Schipper
First publication in the series ‘Studies in Network Cultures,’ published by NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Order online: http://www.naibooksellers.nl
12.45-13:30 LUNCH
13:30-15:00 2: Creative China
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 other experiences of the 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?
Presenters:
Michael Keane (Brisbane, Australia)
Chaos Chen (Beijing, China)
Su Tong (Beijing, China)
Justin O’Connor (Manchester, United Kingdom)
Chair: Ned Rossiter (Ulster, Northern Ireland)
15:00-15:15 Tea/Coffee Break
15:15-16:30 3: Economy of Design
One could speak of an equivalent “Clash of Civilisations” between the social and urban engineering desires of policy-makers and the actually existing practice of design. 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 designers 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?
Presenters:
Rogerio Lira (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Annelys de Vet (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Teun Castelein and Mieke Gerritzen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Chair: Hendrik-Jan Grievink (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
16:30-18:00 4: Alternative Business and Organisational 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?
Presenters:
Joost Smiers (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Christoph Spehr (Bremen, Germany)
Danny Butt (Aotearoa, New Zealand)
Paul Keller (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Valery Alzaga (Hamburg, Germany)
Chair: Ned Rossiter (Ulster, Northern Ireland)
Saturday November 18, PostCS 11, Amsterdam
10:00 Doors Open, Coffee/Tea
10:15-10:30 Welcome & Introduction by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter
10:30-12:00 5: Creative Labour and Precarious Creativity
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.
Presenters:
Marion von Osten (Vienna, Austria)
David Hesmondhalgh (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)
Merijn Oudenampsen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Chair: Brian Holmes (Paris, France)
12:00 – 12:30 Discussion Donna Ghelfi (Geneva, Switzerland) and Joost Smiers (Utrecht, Netherlands)
12:30-13:30 LUNCH
13:30-15:30 6: Made in Europe Part I: Dispatches from the City
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?
Presenters:
Monika Mokre and Elisabeth Mayerhofer (Vienna, Austria)
Aphra Kerr (Maynooth, Ireland)
Barbara Strebel (Basel, Switzerland)
Matteo Pasquinelli (London, United Kingdom)
Chair: Geert Lovink (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
15:30-16:00 Tea/Coffee Break
16:00-18:00 7: Made in Europe Part II: Dispatches from the City
Presenters:
Anthony Davies (London, United Kingdom)
Minna Tarkka (Helsinki, Finland)
Sebastian Luetgert (Berlin, Germany)
BAVO (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Chair: Geert Lovink (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
18:00-19:00 Drinks at PostCS 11