‘TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE FIRST DAY:
THE CREATION OF A FLAT WORLD
THE SECOND DAY:
PILLARS CRUMBLE, THE SKIES TUMBLE DOWN
THE THIRD DAY:
WHEN EVERYTHING BECAME FLUID
THE FOURTH DAY:
AND THEN THE PIRATES CAME
‘THE FIFTH DAY:
MORALISM OF THE MASS MEDIA
THE SIXTH DAY:
‘THE BIRTH OF THE CREATIVIST
THE SEVENTH DAY:
‘THE BAN ON WORK IS LIFTED
THE EIGHTH DAY
THANKS
BIBLIOGRAPHYPROLOGUE
The magic word these days is ‘creativity’. And not just
for artists: managers and policymakers alike demand
creativity. Even family therapists and mediators urge
Us to find more creative solutions. Nowadays, crea.
tivity is all about positive morality. We expect nothing
but good from it. But what remains of the meaning
of the word when just about everybody 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?
This essay primarily concerns itself with the
Social context of creativity. The reader will find few,
if any, references to trendy literature from either the
world of management or that of popularized cognitive
Psychology. Rather, the focal point is the economic,
Political and social context in which this type of litera-
ture operates and therefore ideological matters es well
as labour sociology issues will be reviewed. The micro
level (individuals), meso level (organizations) anc
macro level (society in general) will all be properly
represented, as befits sociology traditionally by now.
The interaction between these levels will receive
special attention. How, for instance, do macro socio-
logical phenomena such as globalization and neo-
liberalization intervene in classic institutions on a
‘meso level such as museums and art academies?
Or, how do the global flows of money, goods and
People affect creative workers and their creative
labour on a micro level?
will relate the story of the process of the social
(relereation of creativity by taking you on an eight-day
journey. The concept of creativity started to mutate in
the 1970s. From a social point of view, however,the turnabout that has taken place since the end of the
1980s with the sweeping rise of the cultural economy
and creative industry is especially interesting, and
therefore the focus will be on the past two decades.
All the same, we will be jumping back and forth
through history and also treat periods from before the
1980s. For instance, it would be rather ill-mannered to
say anything at all about the creative industry without
referring at some point to the notion of ‘cultural
industry’ introduced by Adorno and Horkheimer in
the 1940s. Still, | do not pretend to present a careful
historical genesis here, nor an etymological or
semantic analysis. As mentioned earlier, the focus
will be on the social narrative.
In telling that story, however, very few classic
sociological insights will be applied, although results
from scientific research — including my own — will
occasionally figure in the background. In accordance
with the form of an essay, | will instead use metaphors
from literature and especially philosophy to interpret
and understand our social reality. In doing so, | will
lean upon quite a few authors, some of whom | will use
and others | will perhaps abuse in order to construct
my own argument. Although their numbers run rather
high in this regard, there are actually only three books
that define the primary colour of this story. Two of
these do so explicitly, whereas the ideas of the third
book are more like a current in the background.
However, as is often the case with figures behind
the scenes, this last one may very well be the most,
powerful actor. In hindsight anyway, book number
‘three has defined the global framework of this essay.
The authors of the first two works are called
Slavoj Zizek and Peter Sloterdijk, respectively.
Although their ideological and intellectual positions
are perhaps difficult to reconcile, they will meet each
other quite frequently over the next eight days without
crossing swords. Rather, an independent third stery
‘emerges from mixing First As Tragedy, Then As Farce
(Zizek, 2009) and You Must Change Your Life
(Sloterdijk, 2009). The reader absolutely does not need
to be intimately acquainted with the wisdom of these
gentlemen to be able to understand what follows,
however. | should probably confess right away that
| will also manipulate their work freely in order to
‘support my argument, the intention of which is
Sawin mated. iseeainaeine read:
For this manipulation | will use al of the weapons
at my disposal, whether relevant or not.
itis perhaps useful, though, to know a little bit
about the protagonists in this story beforehand.
Whereas the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek
advocates an explicit neo-Marxist vision with a dose
of Lacan, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijkis.
sometimes accused of ‘elitism’ However, itis hard to
discern a clear political colour in his book You Must
Ghange Your Life. By contrast, in First As Tragedy,
Then As Farce, Zitek unremittingly advocates @ new
communism. Inline with Marx's ideas about the course
of history, he sees the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US
as a tragedy, followed not even ten years later by a
farce, i.e. the collapse of the financial markets. The
political-economic landslide described by Zizek will be
‘the macro sociological context that frames the trans-
formation of ereativity over the next eight days. In You
Must Change Your Life, Sloterdijk in turn defends thethesis that people do not content themselves with life.
as it is given. Frequent learning and obsessive prac-
ticing offers them a way of rising above themselves.
Itis no coincidence that Sloterdijk casts an admiring
eye at the circus acrobat risking his life high on a rope.
Creation requires specific and continuous practising
within ‘vertical tensions’, according to the German
philosopher.
And this brings us to the third book, which
has, as mentioned earlier, determined the plot of
the following story of creation to a large degree,
Alessandro Baricco also discusses verticality in
| barbari (The Barbarians, 2008), contrasting it with the
horizontality in which we are increasingly living today.
Whether it is wine, football or the Internet, according
to the Italian author, they all suffer from a loss of depth,
stratification and expertise, but also of height and
‘grandeur’. The world has become flat, and it is hard
to maintain an upright position. That is the central,
thesis that | will defend in this essay. If creation once
stood for standing upright and rising above oneself
and others, what can creativity then still mean ina
flat world?
Although the main sources of inspiration for
this essay sometimes wield rather abstract metaphors,
every effort will be taken to make them concrete. In
that sense, the signature remains sociological, always
looking for empirical data or realities that are lived and
experienced. There will be constant references, there-
fore, to concrete examples and recognizable situations.
Itis, however, inevitable that we must start at the only
place there is to start. As we know, all creation is born
in moments of complete chaos. Times and events that
do not belong together, and even are at odds with each
other, converge anyway. This generates confusion and
perhaps fear, but certainly almost always irritation.
As with every first day, this story too will throw the
reader into the deep end unprepared. Its either sink
‘or swim. Only moments before the break of the second
day will things start to clear up,
Well then, hopefully you have now been
sufficiently informed. To do more than that would
be beyond a prologue's task,
Pascal Gielen, Antwerp, May 2012.‘THE FIRST DAY:
THE CREATION OF A FLAT WORLD
The historical facts are well-known by now. 1989: In
Berlin a wall was torn down, while in Beijing a crowd,
of students was struck down in and around Tienanmen
‘Square. The world would never be the same. Twelve
years later, that fact was driven home once more.
This time by an image that transcended all art in its
sublimating aesthetics. Fear, tragedy and beauty are
sublimely fused in a media image that is forever etched
in our memories. When those two planes crashed into
the towers of the World Trade Center, it looked as if Art
had lost the battle for good. We felt ashamed to think
that we could discern so much beauty in such @
degrading act of destruction,
Or are we just as unscrupulous as the mass
‘media, who have desecrated the image by turning it into
the ultimate commodity? It has been announced many
times over the last century, but this time it is happening
again and even more convincingly: Since 9/11, entertain-
‘ment has taken over art's monopoly on sublime images
by way of ingenious choreography and a disgusting
feeling for realism. Or, as Lawrence Lessig, the man
behind Creative Commons, rather cynically states:
The genius of this awful act of terrorism was
that the delayed second attack was perfectly
timed to assure that the whole world would be
watching. These retellings had an increasingly
familiar feel. There was music scored for the
intermissions, and fancy graphics that flashed
across the screen. There was a formula to
interviews. There was ‘balance’, and serious-
ness. This was news choreographed in the
way we have increasingly come to expectit,‘news as entertainment’, even if the entertain-
ment is tragedy. (Lessig, 2004: 40)
No artist can compete with media images anymore.
The Belgian painter Luc Tuymans understood this
powerlessness very well when, after these shocking
‘events, he submitted a monumentally large still life
to Documenta XI. By harking back in an almost reactio-
nary gesture to an icon of bourgeois contentment,
he demonstrated the desperation of all makers of artistic
images. The very size of the painting — too large to
even fit in a bourgeois living room — seemed to predict
the uncomfortable feelings of a class in utter decay.
After 9/11, the art world is forced, once again, to think
hard and long about its possibilities to still make a
forceful impression; in short, to still be ‘performative’.
Especially if that art still wishes to use classic images.
The fall of the Wall, the Chinese students and the
‘Twin Towers were to have a less visible but all the
more tangible successor in the financial meltdown
of 2008. In contrast to the occurrences mentioned
before, this particular event has not as yet ended. Its
permanent character makes this event a paradoxical
‘one. Itis still generating a chronic ‘eventialization’
of both the economy and entire societies and their
prevailing cultures. To refresh our memories:
According to the classic American sociologist Erving
Goffman, an event is an occurrence that replaces a
familiar frame of reference and meaning with another
one (Goffman, 1974). Itis a radical occurrence that
changes reality as we know it. Something that has
been there unnoticed for a long time suddenly crashes
through the floor of reality, making everything that
was real suddenly unreal, and everything that seemed
fiction into a harsh reality. It can indeed take the
wind out of us. An event generates new vectors of
movement and points of orientation, and it can do
this so thoroughly that it seems as if river's water
suddenly becomes the riverbed and the riverbed
becomes the current in the river. In 2008, this reversal
didn’t take place just once, as is customary with
events, but evolved into a permanent process, leaving
not a single certainty from before intact. Even worse,
each new certainty or rule has a high risk of being
different again tomorrow, which makes it impossible
to anticipate the consequences of one’s own choices.
The World is Spinning (out of control) is an
aptly named Dutch television show, but it could also
serve as a euphemism for permanent crisis. The 9/11
tragedy is repeating itselt in the financial apocalypse,
according to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek,
this time as a farce (Zizek, 2009: 7-10). The Karl Marx-
inspired choice of the word ‘farce’ is remarkably apt.
After all, the financial crisis is based on a strong
jonalization’ in which money became detached
from matter (gold) and especially from labour and real
economic production. This disconnection makes
currencies and economic trends highly virtual, as they
come to depend on abstract mathematical formulas.
When monetary transactions become a form of
abstract mathematics that hardly anyone understands
anymore, this generates a high level of speculation or
fiction. Investing becomes an artistic activity in which
the collective faith upholds a highly virtual world,since markets are effectively based on beliefs
(even beliefs about other people's beliefs), so
when the media worry about ‘how the markets
will react to the bail-out’, itis a question not
only about its real consequences, but about
the belief of the markets in the plan's efficacy.
This is why the bail-out may work even if itis
economically wrong-headed. (Zizek, 2009)
It’s a story that is very reminiscent of an essay on
the production of faith in the art world, in which the
French cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has pain-
stakingly described how an artistic artefact is only
created in the commentary on the commentary on
the commentary on the work of art (Bourdieu, 1977)
Whether the art world was the avant-garde in this field
00 is therefore an interesting question. Which was
first: art or the financial markets? There is a remarkable
likeness between the art world and the stock market
anyway. They have something in common, especially
when we look at both phenomena from the perspective
of ‘faith’. What's more, the parallel tells us that the
so-called ‘hard’ financial world is in effect founded on
‘soft’ cultural interpretations. Investing has always
been a creative activity. However, as long as we are not
convinced that investing belongs to the realm of fiction,
itis capable of generating disastrous effects in reality;
worse effects, anyway, than the belief or faith in art,
Whereas in the art world the emphasis is shifting
from production to exhibitions, the investment hysteria
is guided by exhibitionism in the mass media. The
painful part is that this hysteria is unrelated to real
economic developments based on effective production
processes and labour capacity, but that precisely
because of this negation it does profoundly affect those.
developments. And that is the other aspect of the farce
Although even many neoliberals are beginning to
severely doubt the viability of this late-capitalist system
and are calling again for a stricter regulation of the
market, the majority of them keep on trading asif in an
irrational whirl of excitement. The fetish of balancing
national budgets; the fight within the European Union
over, or against, now Greece and later perhaps another
country; the macho heroics of ratings; the appointment
of troikas and what have yout it all serves to keea the
financial world afloat like some global police-like force.
At the same time, electorates are still happily
Putting neoliberal and neo-national governments in
Power, in the hope (or despair) of a reactionary restora-
tion of better (or worse) capitalist times. Neoliberalism:
the rule of the free market. Neo-nationalism: the nation
state as the ultimate proprietor, the Republic of
Property. Ironically, our reality is today determined by
a highly virtual game controlled by the psychological
whims of investors and an abstract carnival of banks.
The irony is that reality, to a high degree, is determined
by fiction. It is even beyond Jean Baudrillard’s dreams.
Creative man has gone daringly far in creating a ficti-
tious world to first believe in and then lose faith in,
while continuing to act as if it’s real. This is hyper-
reality dipped in deep cynicism: to go on acting
according to the rules of the game while knowing
that those rules are a far cry from reality.
Today, it looks as if we need creativity again to
step out of the imaginary cloud and regain some sense
of reality. Characteristic of a cloud is that it mixes light
19and darkness in such a way that is very hard to see
‘one’s way out of the cloud. Itis all misty, everything is
neither white nor black; it’s all bluish grey. The distinc-
tion between night and day has been removed and we
seem to enter a phantasmatic world, like that of the
Belgian artist Jan Fabre. We are permanently in a tran-
sitional stage between night and day, in what Fabre.
calls the ‘blue hour’, without knowing whether it will
ever become light again. In other words, we don’t know
anymore whether we are in the transition of night into
day or day into night. It will take an enormous effort
of the imagination to find the light switch and step out
of this farce. And the effort required will have to be
immeasurably strong, because the cloud in which
we find ourselves is itself the very product of the most
ingenious creativity. Bill Gates’ term ‘creative capi-
talism’ doesn’t come out of the blue: he knows the
tricks of the trade or the rules of the game like no other.
With slogans about ‘authenticity’, imagination’,
“(social) innovation’ and ‘flexibility’, kindred spirits such
as Richard Florida encourage the creative industry to
cough up even more fiction, to spray even more mist,
because immaterial labour, symbolism and design are
also easily taken into account economically. The imagi:
nary world of creation and the virtual world of capital
understand each other only too well. After all, both
are nowadays residing on that same continent called
fiction. What creativity do we need to be able to step
out of that much creativity?
The fall of the Berlin Wall, of the students in Beijing,
of the Twin Towers in New York and the meltdown
of the worldwide financial markets all have many and
varied causes. The hunger for democracy, but perhaps
even more for prosperity, in the formally divided
Germany cannot be simply equated with the ast
convulsions of authoritarian communism in China. And
a terrorist attack in the United States is fundamentally
different from the global financial crisis. But while these
events are hardly comparable in terms of content, their
formal likeness is remarkable and arouses curiosity. In
all of these events, the central notion is ‘taking down’
The deliberate taking down of walls, people, towers
and statues in recent history can perhaps metaphori-
cally be regarded as a symptom of a similar shared
fear: the fear of verticality. Both neoliberals and fossil
communists are fearful of too ambitious heights and
unfathomable depths. And although their ideologies
are miles apart, they both believe in the economy as
the foundation of society,
However, those who pin themselves dewn on the
economy understand nothing of cultural heights and
other hierarchies, which is something we can hardly
say about Muslims. Such a reproach would a‘ter all
severely neglect their love of transcendence. What they
are distrustful of, though, is secularised verticality or
human ‘grandeur’, which they believe to be nothing but,
shameless and inappropriate pretentiousness in the
eyes of Allah or God. For the record, and before people
start bashing each other's heads in, this is a worldview
that Muslims share with all other monotheistic religions.
Only the Protestants have ever seen a sign of God in
worldly gains, which paradoxically forced them to
exhibit more modesty, less pretentiousness, more
mercantilism and more mediocrity. Whether religiously
motivated or not, falling down and taking down make
aup the visualized heart of the latest wave of globaliza-
tion. Every worldly verticality — whether reaching for
sublime heights or the darkest depths — is marked for
destruction, In the current worldwide poker game in
the global casino, everything and everyone is sucked
onto the horizontal plane of the average. While sociolo-
gists and other social scientists thought that the
welfare state and its construction of the middle-class
would lead to the necessary averaging, it is only now,
with the run-down of the welfare system and the
dismantling of the social centre, that we see the
sanctity of the middle ground awaken. The economic
‘mean is now no longer linked to the cultural mean.
r, rather: the dismantling of the economic mean in
‘the form of unheard-of financial wealth and excessive
poverty does not generate a similar division in a
cultural and intellectual sense. There, the average
rules. With political-economic globalization (neo-
liberalization) and technological globalization (the
Internet), the greatest common denominator becomes
the cultural standard. Flows of virtual money have the
Power to reconcile different cultures in an increasingly
easy way, relating them to each other and, in doing so,
bringing them into perspective, sucking them onto the
middle ground. Zizek argues that John Maynard
Koynes was already aware of this in 1936 when he
compared the stock market to @ beauty contest:
Itis not a case of choosing those [faces] that,
to the best of one’s judgment, are really the
prettiest, nor even those that average opinion
genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have
reached the third degree where we devote
our intelligences to anticipating what average
opinion expects the average opinion to be.
(Zizek, 2008)
Let's stay with this notion of ‘anticipating’ for awhile,
as it characterizes what is perhaps one of the most
important activities in the flat world of networks.
Individuals need to constantly anticipate the actions of
other individuals and, in order to survive, organizations
are obliged to constantly anticipate the movements in
their alleged (market) environment. Strategy hes been
replaced by tactics, and performativity by ‘adaptivity’.
Anticipating, in other words, is the predominant action
that pulls everything towards the middle.
Over the past twenty years, the world has
become increasingly flat. In a ‘networking’ world,
depth — let alone historical depth — is hard to come
by. And looking up will quickly lead to neck pain or
inspire envy and jealousy sooner than admiration or
respect. Networks, and especially financial configura-
tions, naturally gravitate towards the horizontal level
of the cultural middle. In spite of all the analyses of
‘global cities’, megapolises or metropolises, since the
fall of New York itis the hinterland that now sets the
tone. Since then, provincialism dictates the height
of cultural ambition and we have entered the eta of
mediocrity.
Ever since we have been living there, we have
all been given the same passport, issued by
the United States of Normalcy.
(Sloterdijk, 2011: 453)‘THE SECOND DAY:
PILLARS CRUMBLE, THE SKIES TUMBLE DOWN
First Days are always slightly chaotic. Everything is,
still so new. No routines have been established yet.
Besides, all the events seem so contradictory that any
attempt to bring them together may look grotesque,
perhaps even implausible. Like most creations, that
of the flat world also involves a lot of cracking and
rumbling. The Second Day makes things a little bit
clearer. Especially now that we can review what
happened on the First Day from some distance. The
story also becomes more concrete, now that we have
dealt with the biggest macro-sociological events and
metaphors. We can now leave that level behind and
continue on the meso level, where the world no longer
takes centre stage end we will be scrutinizing concrete
actors. In the transition from a sphere-like world to a
flat one, several actors come under pressure. They
have to break their vertical suspension, transmute,
or emigrate. As with every transition, itis no wonder
that people panic and organizations are in crisis with
this upheaval. One of the most remarkable actors to
experience such an awkward predicament is the
classic institution.
To sociologists, institutions are always at least
two things. On the one hand they are concrete build-
ings, people and organizations, while on the other hand
they represent a complex set of values, standards and
customs that are upheld by a specific culture, Their
social function indeed includes ‘holding up’, seeing as
they were responsible for maintaining verticality in the
pre-flat world, Institutions are the pillars that support
the skies. Classic institutions such as the family, the
church and the state, but museums and academies as
well, all provide their own value regime in their own way.When the world was still round, they promised the
inhabitants of various continents some measure of
certainty and grip. As we know, they did this in a
strictly hierarchical, sometimes very authoritarian
but always vertical manner. A concrete example:
The classic 18th-century museums provided depth by
Presenting history, offered a stepladder by way of an
exemplary canon and provided ‘grandeur’ to anyone
exhibiting there, and even to those wandering around
in them, The consecration of the actual work of art
could only take place in relation to the deep wells of
history.
In art education, there was a similar hierarchical
relationship between those who knew and those who
did not (yet) know. The classic relationship between
aster and pupil was a vertical one in which the place
of law and authority was clear. The pupil had to climb
the proverbial ladder and try to become the equal of
his or her master. Only then did the ritual patricide
become possible. But what is important here is that
learning was climbing. Climbing the ladder of a rather
self-assured wisdom. And aspiring students were only
willing to do so if teachers had some ‘grandeur’ that
earned them respect (even if this ‘grandeur’ was
sometimes artificially upheld by the institutions that
embedded them). At the same time, museums and art
academies offered a yardstick for measuring creativity.
‘Teachers who felt that they discerned talent in a pupil
not only relied on vast experience but also on @ healthy
dose of intuition and subjectivity ~ especially when
dealing with a modern artist. In other words, in the
relationship between master and pupil there was also
always an element of ‘not-knowing’ (Laermans, 2012).
Pupils, on their part, had the necessary trust in
everything the teacher did, wrote, drew and said,
What is important here is that institutions
such as museums and academies, in spite of thei:
subjectivity and ‘not-knowing’, did erect a relatively
objectifiable hierarchy of values. This hierarchy had
little to do with the quantitative hierarchy of visitor
numbers, number of competencies, output data and
other evidence-based measurement material of the flat
world. Creation and the potential for creativity simply
do not lend themselves to being calculated or recorded
in such a logic of numbers. On the contrary, having
@ lot of money or public acclaim has in the past net
always proven to be the best guarantee of creation
and innovation. To create something means to place
oneself outside of the measurable measure. Creative
individuals must withdraw themselves from the flat
plane and, by much trial and error, make themselves
Stand upright. Classic institutions came in handy here
because they, with their experience of depth, could
somehow point the way up. All this navigating of
Course carried no absolute guarantees for a successful
result, but it did offer an adequate view of the horizon.
‘And perhaps it was precisely this concurrence of
rigidity, history, ignorance and faith within the institu:
tion that offered creativity its chances in the past,
Without trying to romanticize their function
— the history that institutions carry with them can also
be crushing and the bureaucracy they embrace can be
{00 rigid to allow for any rebellion or literal ‘uprising’ —
one can safely say that classic institutions at least s:00d
for a hierarchy of values that assessed and measured
creativity differently from the way it is done in the.
2Present dominant system of measuring investment
and output. The latter reduces quality to quantity and
irases the former in the process. Any numerical caley-
lation makes differences in quality relative, after sl
I" generates quantitative comparability and the inter:
changeability of qualities by making an abstract
fistinction in grades. Once the abstraction is made,
"erally anything can be related to anything elee, and
relationships therefore become relative and intey-
changeable too. By contrast, rising up, or creating
something, requires absolute faith and blind intuition,
but also needs a solid cultural ground to stand on, Ard
‘hat is exactly what the classic institutions provided,
Itis therefore rather bewildering that whereas
the call for creativity has never been 0 loud as today,
the ones making that appeal” are at the same time
hastily draining dry an important layer of fertile coil
that nourishes that creativity. For instance, after the
1989 Bologna Agreement, not only did the educational
strane in Europe become highly uniform and rational,
it was also redefined as a market space where educa:
tional institutes fiercely compete for students, eutbide
ding each other in offering easily interchangeable
Tee potencies. Within this system, students are treated
lke litle entrepreneurs, while the relationship between
jeacher and pupil takes the form of a contract. Much
has already been said elsewhere about the transmuta-
tion of education (see, for instance, Masschelein and
01 Whetis remarkable is that this corps of authors includes
ety Faw actual entrepraneurs but mowty meen
aecountants, auditors, palcymaters anes
Simons, 2006, and Gielen and De Bruyne, 2012).
What matters here is that under the neoliberal
hegemony, the institution is being eroded, One of the
causes is that itis losing its own cultural hierarchy in
the shadow of market logic. What was once regarded
as highly functional for educating articulate citizens,
creating ‘cultivated’ people, now fades into dysfunc.
tionality under the dogma of profitability, And, as,
Sloterdijk argues:
because schools over the last few decades
could no longer muster the courage to be
dysfunctional — a courage they had continu-
ally demonstrated ever since the seventeenth
century ~ they became empty selfish
systems, focused exclusively on the norms
of their own operational management. They
now produce teachers that are only reminis-
cent of teachers, subjects that are only remi-
niscent of subjects, students that are only
reminiscent of students. At the same time,
schools become ‘anti-authoritarian’ in an
inferior way, without ceasing to exercise
formal authority. (Sloterdijk, 2011: 447)
The implementation of an anti-authoritarian educa-
tional model does indeed run remarkably parallel
to the introduction of a formal authoritarian neo-
management model, which, as in other institutions,
deconstructs the traditional cultural hierarchy of
verticality by submitting it to the law of numerical
measurability. According to Sloterdijk, the overturning
of verticality into horizontality, and of book culture into
2net culture, also generates a kind of controlled
‘jungle pedagogies’ within education whereby
‘interdisciplinarity’ is the buzzword that eradicates.
all disciplines (and thus depth - ‘time to dig deep’,
as Richard Sennett [2008] would say).
We should not be fooled by these loud calls for
professionalization. After all, in art schools these calls
are often answered by inserting some marketing and
management subjects, which inevitably leaves less
time for teaching the proper creative subjects. As a
result, students rapidly switch from one specific skill to
@ completely different area of knowledge. Such jungle
Pedagogies thus often have the opposite result of what
was intended and result in the de-professionalization
of the creative profession. The aim of all this is to
deliver ‘broadly employable’ or ‘polyvalent’ students,
multi-purpose individuals who follow just one impor-
tant imperative: that of adaptation or — indeed —
anticipation. ‘Adaptivity’ and ‘flexibility’ are after all
the highest goods in a flat network world. The main
thing is that such an educational model loses all
Performativity. Educational institutes become organi-
zations that no longer deliver a surplus of autonomous
Personalities and idiosyncratic skills, for which society
{and the economy) needs to generate new space.
On the contrary, schools obligingly follow the demands
of the market ‘to be more closely linked to the profes-
sional practice’. However, as schools are always
lagging behind in following these economic trends,
and as it is also impossible to guess what the demands
of a fluctuating labour market may be in five years’
time, education covers itself against such fluctuations
by delivering multi-purpose subjects. Whether they are
as characterless as traditional multi-purpose venues is
best left an open question. The point is that by tuning
into’ the market, schools lose all performativity (and
authority} to make their own mark and therefore no
longer provide a spine to those who wish to stand up
straight and undertake some daring creative act
‘And what about museums, then? That is a more
familiar story. Beginning in the 1970s, the function of
the museum has slowly but surely been eroded by the
rapid succession of temporary exhibitions and bien-
nials, introducing @ structural amnesia in the field of
art, causing it to suffer from a loss of depth (Gielen,
2009). Over the past few decades, the museum
‘unlearned its ability to hook up with the artistically
most ambitious level of the previous generations’,
again according to Sloterdijk (2011: 449). Paradoxically,
the ideology of creativity has consistently fought the
institution of the museum. If artists and other protago-
nists of the institutional critique had been aware thirty
years ago that they were undermining their own foun-
dation for creativity, then perhaps they would have
changed their tune completely. Or at least they would
have chosen a better strategy. Still, such an analysis is
Not altogether fair and correct. On the road of thair
slow criticism (slow, as they were always starting from
a very ambivalent attitude towards the museum they
were afterall overtaken at high velocity by a speeding
neoliberalization. It quickly found ways to profit rom
the work done by the institutional critique by taking
Over its jargon of ‘creativity’ (which would squash
the museum), ‘innovation’ (which would slow the
museum down) and ‘flexibility’ (which would make
athe museum rigid). This takeover by neoliberalism
took place ina rather ‘unseemly’ manner, and the ‘anti-
institutionalists’ from before hardly even recognized it
‘anymore. Only the converts to neoliberalism — and
there was no shortage of them in the 1990s — still saw
some similarity between the creativity from before and
the opportunism that now ruled.
Mostly, however, the neoliberal engine has set a
new operational framework in motion in the art world.
Or rather, it deftly hitches a ride, even enhancing oper-
ations that were initiated in the art world with the best
intentions and much idealism. This of course refers to
the hegemonial shift from the museum to the biennial
and the symbolic displacement of the artist by the
so-called ‘independent’ curator. Artists who still aim
for immortality and who take up a position as bohe-
mians outside of society, hoping for recognition in the
hereafter, are today ridiculed for their conviction. Itis
only the here and now that counts. Or rather, not the
here and now, but the very near future on this flat,
foundation. The artist can no longer stand outside of or
above the world. Because many contemporary artists
still regard creation as ‘standing upright’, rising above
everyday things, they are summarily dismissed in the
flat world. The creative worker of today is not so much
a trapeze artist but more of a (social) networker. In the
world of visual art, the latter coincides wonderfully
well with the ‘independent’ curator mentioned earlier.
He mingles with the audience, wanting both to show
and be seen, Sloterdijk calls it the shift from ‘art as
production power (including the ballast of the “great
masters") to art as exhibition power’ (2011: 449). Its all
less and less about creating and more about exhibiting
In this exhibitionistic turn, it should hardly come
as a surprise that the workshop or the atelier is lesing
importance or that studios cease to exist (Davidts et al,
2009). In the flat world, this space of digging deep,
of reflexivity and ‘slowness’ or verticality, but also of
isolation and dealing with materiality, is predictaoly
exchanged for an immaterial discourse that is all about
mobility, and the institution dissolves in a network
structure. ‘Mobilism’, ‘nomadism’, ‘travel’, ‘planetary
drift, ‘exodus’, ‘transport, ‘links’, ‘chains’, ‘loops’,
‘neurons’, ‘in touch’, ‘relational’, ‘connection’,
‘communication’, ‘distribution’, ‘redistribution’ are but
@ handful of notions used by curators and a growing
horde of creative workers to describe and sell their
activities. While curators — both in their exhibiticns
and in general — pour out criticism of the perverse
excrescences of late capitalism by the bucket load,
the majority of people in the art world dance perfectly
in time to the tune of the neoliberal climate. This
lack of self reflexivity — at least publicly — is quite
remarkable. The same goes for the notion of the
rhizome or that of the network. Itis usually embraced,
and endowed with a romantic touch. The hero of
network thinking is of course the nomad, which again
emphasizes the rosy side of mobile man. This nomad,
however, is not a strider but a swimmer - and one
with gills, if we are to believe the Italian author
Allessandro Barrico (201).‘THE THIRD DAY:
WHEN EVERYTHING BECAME FLUID
Mobility and networking are today pert of the art
world’s doctrine, and in fact that of the entire world of
professionals. Artists who stay at home in their studios
are morally reprehended and accused of localism.
They nourish false illusions on an island where they
still have solid ground beneath their feet. But nowadays
artists are either international or they are nobodies.
Curators are connected or they are nobodies. These
may sound like the ground rules of the contemporary
art world, but they are also the adages of global late
capitalism, which has, over the past few decades,
effortlessly invaded the artistic realm through cultural
and creative industrialization. This late capitalism, by
the way, has a lot to gain from us seeing ourselves as
mobile actors in a fluid networked world. Individuals
28s well as organizations feel that their true selves are
‘corporate identities on the open sea’, as Sloterdijk
says in his writings about globalization (2006: 90).
Time, labour, and even love become liquid if we are
to believe Zygmunt Bauman (2009).
So, those who imagined that they still had
solid ground beneath their feet when the flat world was
created were very much mistaken. The flat world is a
wet one. It is one big pool of H20 in which we paddle
around as if on water bikes. Or, to put it more patheti-
cally, we are floating in a swimming pool, treading
water in an airless, liquid, late-modern age, hoping
to find some sort of direction (or meaning). Whereas
collective institutions — the welfare state prominent
among them — used to guarantee the stability of the
cruise ship on the open ocean, today our living and
working environment is made up mainly of rubber
rings floating about with the occasional small lifeboat
8and a limited number of luxury yachts thrown in.
This is especially true of creative working envi-
ronments. Creative workers have been thrown into
deep existential waters with treacherous currents.
‘Therapists, personal coaches and other social-psycho-
logical workers are supposed to help us get used to our
new living environment. This mental support force is
entrusted with the noble task of relieving entrepre-
neurial creative people from their fear of drowning,
‘Those who still think that they can rely on the tradi-
tional ground that institutions used to offer are merely
delusional. With no clear idea of the future, creative
individuals are bouncing from one wave to the other
and have no choice but to practice freestyle swimming.
Occasionally they may find a precarious rubber ring to
keep their head just above water, but the crestive entre-
preneurs have to inflate it themselves and the slightest
puncture will burst it wide open. Hopefully, the double
wall of the insurance policy will then keep them afloat,
for a little while longer. In a flat world with neither God
nor secular collective solidarity structures, these entre-
preneurs are indeed very much left to their own devices.
This ‘immanism’ of liberal representative democ-
racy, as the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy calls
it (1991), regards society as the sum of independent
individuals, who are finding it increasingly difficult to
forge relational ties. A flat, wet world that looks upon
itself as a network presupposes quite specific charac-
teristics and makes certain demands of the people
who are floating about in it. In a neutral definition,
a network consists of interconnected points. It can only
exist because there are connections, as we know from
the actor-network theory. When those connections are
broken, the rhizome evaporates with them. The word
‘evaporate’ clearly indicates the weakness of a network
configuration within a wet playing field and evokes the
volatile or at least temporary nature of such social
‘connections. What's more, within a liberal netwcrk
economy these temporary collaborations are
controlled by competition. This is why project-like
thinking is so dominant in the current order. People
only temporarily drift together, to then float collectively
while realizing a project, after which their swimming
lanes often diverge again. Relationships arise because
there is a collective goal for a short while. This is why
sociologists call this goal-instrumental action. This
thinking in terms of networks and projects is not
limited to the field of creative labour but has become
part of society in general. Nowadays, for instance,
project developers determine to a large extent the look
of our cities and living environments, and even the
nuclear family is seen as a temporary educational
project for children, at the conclusion of which parents
can go swim their separate ways again.
The best functioning units within wet networks
are not collectives or large, unwieldy cruise ships.
It is not unions, social classes, groups, political parties,
institutions or families that set the course, but entre-
preneurial individuals - even in their rubber rings.
The maximum collective unit that matters is the team,
precisely because in a team all members can be called
to account for their individual responsibility and effort.
Individuals are more flexible, more mobile, slicker,
wetter and more ‘adaptive’ than rigid collective struc-
tures on dry land, and that makes them very suitable
for the water society. Itis also why ‘independent”curators have a better market position in today’s
industrialized art world than do collective museum
structures with their local artistic, political, social and
economic embedding and historical and art-historical
obligations. One of the reasons is that the ‘independent’
curator can provide the manoeuvrability of a speed-
boat, whereas institutions are as unwieldy as.
mammoth tankers. Just like an entrepreneur, this
player stays dynamic by constantly keeping a watchful
eye on the potential competition from other curators
and fluently anticipating it. The curating boom with its
worldwide culture of selection and contests fuels this
competitive mood even more. Just like independent
entrepreneurs, curators who wish to keep their heads
above water take their destiny into their own hands,
never give up and respond with a problem-solving
attitude to every new challenge that the surrounding
oceans throw at them. Indeed, in the flat wet world,
creativity is often equated with ‘problem-solving’,
which is something else entirely than causing
problems or, rather, problematizing issues, a task that
was until recently reserved for the artist or dabbler,
The new protagonists, by contrast, see them-
selves as entrepreneurs. This is something entirely
different from seeing oneself as a critical citizen of a
nation or as a public servant with an institution. The
former, after all, is a liberal-economic entity, while the
latter is a liberal-political identity. This means, among
other things, that citizens and public servants simply
have rights and obligations (given to them because
they were born in a certain country or occupy a certain
position with an institution.) Entrepreneurs, on the
other hand, are obliged to constantly obtain and
defend those rights and obligations time and again
within the organization, city, region or nation where
they find themselves. Coldwater fish adapt their
temperature to that of the waters in which they swim.
This requires, among other things, flexible, dynamic,
active, communicative and performative networking
In short, in a sea of opportunities, the independent
entrepreneur is permanently forced to prevail over
his connections.
Over the past two decades, the art world has inereas-
ingly come to define itself as part of the network
society outlined above. It should be no wonder,
therefore, that a lot of the jargon mentioned here can
be found in today’s exhibition catalogues. The word
‘network’ is ubiquitous and the careers of curators
and artists are treated like a succession of temporary
projects. Museums and biennials, as well as the
cultural cities in which they operate and produce,
also define themselves as enterprises competing with
each other for artistic, political and economic prestige.
Their symbolic weight is reflected in visitor numbers,
audits and other measurements, and their potential
for creativity is expressed in this quantifying logic
2s well. In other words, creativity is transmuted into
‘tu-creativity’
A view of society that is based on enterprising
individuals, organizations and cities or regions on a
flat level stresses certain qualities or values, such as
individual freedom and self-reliance. Other qualities
or values, though, are hopelessly neglected. The enter-
prising individual has little use for solidarity, for one
thing. Or, as Sennett states in his line of thinking:
2‘Networks and teams weaken character... character
a8 a connection to the world, as being necessary for
others’ (1998: 146). Within the network society, soli-
darity is only temporarily functional, usually only for
‘the duration of a project. In other words, in the network
economy this value, too, is seen as goal instrumental.
{tis only valid as long as it benefits enterprising indi-
viduals and fits within their trajectory. One of the
consequences is that these individuals find themselves
in 2 very weak position when something happens to
them, as it becomes increasingly harder to fall back on
collective structures of solidarity. That is also true for
the art world and by extension for the entire creative
industry. Take for instance the fact that there is remark-
ably litle social security in this sector, Trade unions are
greeted with howls of derision, which partly explains
their lack of clout. Worldwide, the creative sector,
including the art world, seems to be cultivating a
labour ethics these days that plays right into the
hands of the neoliberals.
Another problem of this flat wet world is sustain-
ability. The demolition of the institution not only leads
to cultural amnesia but also generates social insta-
bility. Individuals and organizations that are perma-
ently open to change and to constantly new connec-
tions and constantly new artistic movements and
creative trends have problems with building durable
relationships. This goes for both the relationships of
individual creative workers and those of organizations.
Constantly changing projects result in at most tempo-
rary commitments. Also, constantly working within the
framework of projects means only temporary labour
Contracts or, as is often the case in the creative field,
No contracts at all. In other words, a network economy
isnot really conducive for durable labour relationships
and labour conditions. In the history of labour, the
job held for life is now definitely a thing of the past,
especially in the creative industry. Creative people,
by the way, often speak derogatively of ‘steady jobs’ or
‘permanent positions’, preferring their own autonomy
to the security of a steady job. The creative work ethic
is against commitment to the rigid demands of an
institution. By contrast, the project-based labour
embraced by the cultural and creative industry
happily welcomes the continually changing contacts
and contracts
Finally, the project-like character of a flat
world makes it very sensitive to fashion or trends.
Information quickly circulates on a global scale and
competition is fierce, leading to quick changes of the
creative guard. As each project has to bring about a
Clear and preferably remarkable creative distinction
in the relatively short term, there is often little space
left for self reflection or for research and development.
This ultimately undermines the sustainability of the
Creative production itself. Creativity often stops at
Superficial creation, mere differentiation with neither
depth nor height. In the wet, flat network world, creative
individuals swim hastily and blindly from one project
to the next. Whether they will be able in the long run
to ‘keep the ball in the air and the game alive’, as,
Nicolas Bourriaud, one of the protagonists of the new
flat art world says (2009), remains very much to be
seen. Unless of course he is talking about an entirely
different baligame.
Itwould be too simplistic to condemn the network
a&
idea as a purely ideological concept. Within the
present-day economy, however, itis increasingly being
appropriated and deployed to serve the neoliberal
hegemony. This is certainly true for labour relations,
but also for the reorganization of education, the media,
politics and relationships in the creative world
Also, the whole network discourse is instrumental
in completely redrawing the lines between the public
domain, the labour sphere and the domestic sphere.
To use the network concept as a purely neutral or
descriptive term, as Bruno Latour does in his ethno-
graphic work, or to flirt with it — often accompanied
by some choice phrases by Gilles Deleuze — as
happens in the art world, is to ignore or suppress the
ideological appropriation of the notion of networking.
It can only lead to sticking one’s head in the sand,
Therefore, we can only understand the labour of the
workers in the present-day cultural world and creative
industry if we have some grasp of the dominating
relationships of production within the current flat,
wet world. Not that this is a very original insight, as it
was already put forward by Walter Benjamin over half
a century ago. In his essay on authorship, he came up
with the unexpected postulation that the author could
only be understood as a producer within the relation-
ships of the fourth estate, or mass media as we would
call it today. And, he concluded
They still belong to capital. On the one hand
the newspaper, on the technical level, repre-
sents the most important literary position,
But this position is on the other hand in the
control of our opponents, so it should not be
surprising that the writer's comprehension of,
his dependent social position, of his technical
possibilities and of his political tasks must
struggle against enormous difficulties.
(Benjamin, 1970: 3)
And is this not also true today of that new protagonist
in the world of visual art, the ‘independent’ curator,
but this time in relation to ‘the art market’ and ‘global
capitalism’? And, in line with Benjamin‘s thinking,
shouldn't we conclude that this curator’s present-day
catalogue activism only remains ‘counterrevolutionary’
if his or her solidarity with the artist, the creative
‘precariat’ and some misery in the world is purely
ideological?
‘As mentioned earlier, the current context of production
by creative entrepreneurs is characterized by a high
degree of individualizetion or de-collectivization
of project work in a fluent network structure. The
ambiance of this production context and the always
youthful enthusiasm with which it is embraced, and
even ‘scientifically legitimized” under the guise of
individual independence, makes the creative industry
especially sensitive to neoliberal value regime. Those
ideas cater to the desire of cultural producers to act
autonomously, in full freedom. Creative capitalism of
course tells its protagonists that they are, or at least
should be, in control of their own lives and working
conditions. It is their moral obligation. in exchange for
this opportunity for self-regulation, the creative indi-
vidual is prepared to offer his virtuosity cheaply, and
mes even for free. The desire for autonomy,fuelled by the neoliberal appeal for realism and
‘personal responsibility’, eventually leads to ‘self-
Precarization’. Creative entrepreneurs take risks and
neglect institutional securities (disability insurance,
Pension funds, etcetera), believing they can take care
of these things themselves, Within these parameters,
work offers the experience of a unique chance for
self-realization, and that is exactly why labour is easily
offered at low rates. In their urge to realization, entre-
preneurs take up a sensible or realistic position in
order to obtain their goals efficiently. In this secular-
ized religion of ‘self-realism’, itis no coincidence that
the root word ‘real’ fits in well with neoliberalism’s call
for more realism and the neo-manager’s watchfulness
over the realizability or feasibility of a proposed
Project. Utopia is out of the question in this ideology
of realism. Worse still, whatever cannot be measured
is soon set aside as impracticable and too utopian.
The urgent call for an awareness of reality obliterates
the breathing space for an awareness of what is
Possible. Entrepreneurs, who are themselves the
employers of their own labour, regard the realization
of their objectives as real, and in the process realize
themselves. However, the belief in ‘self-realism’ often
gets these employers/employees into trouble. Political
scientist Isabell Lorey has outlined the ambivalent
situation into which these cultural and creative
entrepreneurs manoeuvre themselves:
This financing of one's own creative output,
enforced and yet opted for at the same time,
constantly supports and reproduces the very
Conditions in which one suffers and which
one at the same time wants to take part of.
Itis perhaps because of this that creative
workers, these voluntary precarized virtu-
0808, are subjects so easily exploited; they
seem able to tolerate their living and working
conditions with infinite patience because of
the belief in their own freedoms and autono-
mies, and because of the fantasies of self-
realization. In a neoliberal context, they are
80 exploitable that, now, itis no longer just
the state that presents them as role models.
for new modes of living and working.
(Lorey, 2011: 87)
Paradoxically, because of their self-declared autonomy,
creative individuals become highly dependent upon
@ network environment that is always fickle and find
themselves drifting towards a sociologics of competing
entrepreneurs. Just like these protagonists of the
neoliberal network economy, creative individuals
constantly have to rely on self-promotion within an
attention regime in order to stay connected or extend
their network. This generates a production context and
relationships between creative workers that leave their
mark on both their attitudes and their products
To illustrate this within the limited space of this essay,
the focus will be on only one — albeit crucial —
Production aspect in the flat world: project work.
Just as in the rest of society, projects have taken
on a central role in creative production. In the traditional
art world, for instance, temporary exhibitions, biennials
and triennials have won historical ground from the
structural museum sector — which, by the way,
45has been thinking more and more in terms of projects
itself. Especially in a network society, projects are
therefore a cherished method of production and a
temporary binding agent, say the French sociologists
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello.
The project is the occasion and reason for the
connection. It temporarily assembles a very
disparate group of people, and presents itself
as a highly activated section of network for
a period of time that is relatively short, but
allows for the construction of more enduring
links that will be put on hold but remain
available... the very nature of this type of
project is to have a beginning and an end,
projects succeed and take over from one
another, reconstructing work groups or
teams in accordance with priorities or need
(Boltanski & Chiapello, 2008: 104-105)
‘As mentioned earlier, project work does generate
goal-instrumental relationships that are dissolved
again when the project is finalized. In the case of
creative workers, they enter into temporary strategic
alliances with artists, designers, art works, sponsors,
creative organizations, etc. Once the creative project
is finished, the relationships are put on hold. They are
ended but can potentially be reactivated. They are sort
of suspended,
Projects have a special economic value because
their temporariness allows them to always succeed
in bringing together a lot of energy, manpower and
working hours. Those who collaborate on a project
tend to give it everything they've got. At the least,
they are willing to invest more time and energy than
initially expected or predicted. Precisely because they
know it will end someday, they are willing to sacrifice
private time, perhaps pull an all-nighter, or at least
work long hours. This is in part because creative
project work is always result oriented labour and the
result is the only thing people are accountable fer.
Always having insufficient means at their disposal,
they are still willing to go to extremes. So, working on
projects does indeed lead to more productivity and
creativity, but at the same time itis a convenient labour
model for mental, social and physical exploitation. In
the excitement of the project, the participants imagine
‘themselves to have found heaven on earth, as thare
seems to be no end to the creativity produced by the
newly found collectiveness, But those who go from.
project to project will learn that this way of working
feeds on intellectual and physical stamina and inthe
long run leads to exhaustion. The project squeezas
you out.
Not that working on projects was necessarily
invented by the cultural and creative industries, Within
the art world it is a way of working with a well estab-
lished tradition. The traditional museum curator would
for instance organize exhibitions that had a beginning
and an end and that also temporarily brought together
artists, art works, critics, collectors and perhaps a few
additional sponsors. The big difference with regard
to present-day individual creative workers is that
their artistic projects are no longer embedded within
the institution in terms of job security. As a result,
acquiring a project and making it successful is directly
alinked to their symbolic status and economic situation.
Just as the project is temporary, their income and
contract — if there is one — are only temporary as
well. And when on top of that their creative labour is
relatively underpaid — which after all is often the case
— they are constantly obliged to look for new projects
while still realizing the current project. In other words,
creative entrepreneurs are mentally always living
in another world than the here and now. They are
swimming outside of the present in an ocean of
potential future projects. The German philosopher
Boris Groys has this to say about it
Each project is above all the declaration of
another, new future that is supposed to come
about once the project has been executed.
Hone has a project — or more precisely, is
living in a project — one always is already in
the future. One is working on something that
(still) cannot be shown to others, that remains
concealed and incommunicable. The project
allows one to emigrate from the present into
a virtual future, thereby causing a temporal
rupture between oneself and everyone else,
for they have not yet arrived in this future and
are still waiting for the future to happen.
(Groys, 2002)
Socially, this often leads to frustration with managers,
project leaders, technicians and other co-workers
involved. While they are perhaps still physically working
together with the creative project worker, he or she has
mentally already sailed out onto the waters of the
future, Symptoms such as bad or no communication,
limited or even faked commitment, but also physical
absence may sometimes be reported by the temporary
allies, but the problems are rarely solved. Like all
project workers, creative entrepreneurs literally lack
routine: they escape the rhythm of the day, the prasent
in which they operate. Consequently, they often con’t
notice the rhythm of the immediate environment and
the people they are working with. This makes creative
entrepreneurs loners, always looking for other waters
ina future elsewhere, scouting out new and perhaps
better and bigger projects.
The project as a temporary junction within a
network leads to curious social configurations. Not so
‘much because the network figuration is goal instru-
‘mental and therefore the social aspect isin itself only
@ means to an end; after all, the realization of a creative
project or concept, not the mutual relationship, is the
main thing. The main reason why project work gener-
ates a curious social configuration is that the goal
that is being realized by a collective of co-workers is
already floating about somewhere else for at least one
of these co-workers: the creative hireling. Because of
this shift, the project's goal is always already situated
outside of the project, that is, in a new project. From
a sociological point of view, this leads to special forms
of social cohesion. This cohesion benefits those who
realize the project (technicians, administrative workers,
PR people, etc.) but rarely benefits the initiator, the
actually creative individual involved in the project.
The latter finds himself outside of his project, whizh
makes him lonesome, as mentioned earlier.For the project's author, namely, everything
in the here and now is of no consequence
since he is already living in the future and
views the present as something that has to
be overcome, abolished or at least changed,
This is why he sees no reason why he should
justify himself to, or communicate with the
present. (Groys, 2002)
Groys is however not talking about the material causes
of this apathy with regard to the present. Ifthe next
Project is not only necessary for creative satisfaction
but also simply to put food on the table, this will only
fuel future-escapism.
In the ocean of projects, commitment will there-
fore always be only temporary and pertial. This is not
only s0 for those who realize a project but also for the
environment ~ the city, the neighbourhood, the insti-
tute, the public, the creative community or migrant
community, the ecosystem — in which it takes place
and even for the idealism, if that plays a part. Nomadic
creative entrepreneurs are not only physically flexible,
but socially and mentally as well. While relying on their
intuition and talent, they are constantly scanning the
world for useful ideas, new artists or creative hotbeds.
Just lke instinctive entrepreneurs, the new creative
workers are always accompanied by disorder, a perma
nent state of being alert and doubtful at the same time.
Within these flowing situations, they accumulate
specialized, creative and highly personalized know-
edge. This personally integrated knowledge has the
advantage of being very mobile and flexibly deploy-
able. Its downside is that itis much harder to embed
historically or institutionalize. After all, network
relationships do not easily build a memory. Any
‘commitment to either local circumstances or history
can only be temporary, as it would otherwise threaten
independence and personal freedom. And that would
be detrimental to the myth of self-realization.
Put in abstract terms, creative entrepreneurs
are thus placed very flexibly in both the time ard space
that might tie them down. The symbolic and economic
benefits of weak and easily exchangeable ties is
however counterbalanced by a lack of faith in, and
loyalty to, the same local circumstances and history.
The individual who is permanently mentally and
physically mobile thereby loses his or her character or
‘sustainable Self’, according to Sennett (1998). In the
romantic embrace of an ocean of bohemians, nomads,
networks and projects, this sacrifice to flexible crea-
tivity is conveniently forgotten. In short, the de-institu-
tionalization of creativity not only cuts away depth and
height, but also durable character building. Putsimply,
creativity becomes disengaged from faith or convic~
tion. Defending a creative idea is relative and only
temporarily relevant. For the duration of the project,
and for as long as the environment wants it, such an
old-fashioned positioning may be productive, but after
that it becomes irritating and something to get rid of.
In other words, the creative worker no longer has to
take up a position. Or rather, he is no longer obliged to
hold a position. Whereas round world ethics, for the
sake of credibility, still demanded some constarcy
(as a sign of authenticity), the flat world demands
pure mobility and flexible anticipation. If they are truly
creative, creative entrepreneurs will after all easilyexchange older ideas for new ones. In other words,
project workers had better be disengaged or alienated
from their own creative products in advance. As a
verb, ‘networking’ always implies some form of self-
effacing. It blocks taking root. Rhizomes are indeed not
roots. In the flat wet world, being ‘grounded’ is equated
with ‘nostalgia’, ‘rigidity’, ‘inflexibility’ and sometimes
even plainly with ‘fundamentalism’. The neoliberal
constitution, in other words, demands creativity for
the sake of creativity, mobility for the sake of mobility,
fluidity for the sake of fluidity, change for the sake
of change.
This tendency towards an always moving ground
also explains the increase in change management in
larger institutions. It installs the ideology of change
because change as such is supposed to be a good
thing. In the flat wet world, innovation is morally
Positive by definition. That many organizational
restructurings seem pointless and later turn out to
be so, and that the endless chain of ‘creative’ changes
often results in a status quo on the work floor, is a fact
that many employees are by now wise to. The rank
and file have long since figured out that this neophilia
primarily serves to keep the neo-managers themselves
firmly in the saddle, as every newly announced change
legitimizes their own survival. Whereas creative indi-
viduals come and go, anyone who is good at meas-
uring and counting stays on. After all, creativity must
be flexibly deployable, devoid of any ardent belief,
ideology or conviction. The creative deed must be
depoliticized, in other words. Creation and innovation,
that is the message, and the flat wet world provides the
medium for that message. The message becomes the
massage, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, and the
call for creativity becomes a sedative. Or, as Sloterdijk
puts it with some pathos: ‘the present-day network
society celebrates the human right to unconscicus-
ness’ (2011: 395). However, such statements quickly
tend to sound bombastic in the flat world, where any
form of critical creativity, upright standing or verticality
causes irritation. With an appeal to constructive
collaboration, critical analyses are quickly dismissed
as grotesque blow-ups or extravagant exaggerations.
Preferably, within the current neophilia, they are
shoved aside as ‘obsolete’, ‘has-been’ or even
‘reactionary’.-
‘THE FOURTH DAY:
AND THEN THE PIRATES CAME
In the flat world, creativity has lost its familiar param-
eters. Classic institutions such as educational institutes
‘and museums are providing these parameters less,
and less. Therefore, enterprising individuals must be
increasingly self-reliant, even though they sometimes,
get help from the team of which they are only tempo-
rary members for the duration of a project. The posh
label of ‘entrepreneur’ is however often covering up
a precarious existence in which self-realization and
self-sacrifice become confused. In the Netherlands,
anyway, the so-called ZZP status (for self-employed
workers without employees) often serves as a disguise
for what is in fact an unemployment status. When
collective institutions offer less and less guarantees,
both in terms of social security and in terms of cultural
yardsticks, individuals have to turn to other pleces
that can nourish both them and their creativity.
In the flat wet world, the search for such islands
has therefore begun in earnest. In the recent past, this
expedition has rediscovered a few small stretches of
land that had perhaps disappeared below sea level for
a while. Because of their recent undersea existence,
they still look very squidgy and unstable, Those who
dare stand on these sandbanks still run the risk of
getting their feet wet and of sinking quickly in the mire
of a hopeless individuel tangle. These islands certainly
don't provide a stable foundation, as did the traditional
institutions. What's more, these emerging grounds are
quickly threatened again, as the proponents of cultural
horizontality are very suspicious of them. You never
know, someone might stand up here. They therefore
hope, armed with greenhouse effects and similar
ecological or other weapons, to raise the sea level a
55little more so that preferably nothing can surface
‘anymore. But as long as the hoped-for definite flood
does not occur and this type of danger spot continues
to rise, other pesticides are called for. Whoever dares.
to crawl ashore is thus hastily branded as ‘illegal’
or a ‘pirate’. In light of their self-declared ‘state of
exception’, the horizontals want everyone to stay in
the water (see also Agamben, 2005).
Both the financial police and other number
crunchers hope to keep everything on a flat plane.
Anything that is not measurable or cannot be immedi-
ately economically accounted for simply has no right
to exist and is therefore efficiently placed outside of
the law. Anyone or anything that is not measurable,
is outlawed. In light of the structural nature of the
financial meltdown mentioned earlier, the state of
exception is given a permanent legal statute as well
Rules are suspended and replaced with temporary
‘measures’. These are rules designed to the measure
of constantly occurring crisis situations and they can
also be changed time and again. Measures are first and
foremost intended to enforce the measure, but also
to be able to flexibly adapt the unit of measurement.
And it's not just the prevalent ‘change manage-
ment’; the entire government policy, too, uses less and
less legislation and regulation and more and more
‘measures. For instance, Europe's dictate to Greece
to include the obligation of a balanced budget in its.
Constitution is in fact an intervention that insists on
melting the constitution, the ground law, into a wet,
and fluid mass. It forces the state to make its own
legislation liquid. The constitution is made subservient
to any wild market fluctuations, reducing the law and
Tules to an accounting unit. This is indeed a ‘measure’
that sets the norm, time and again, in the permanent
state of emergency. In the name of that same emer-
gency it becomes permissible to torture people, throw
fugitives into the sea, demolish social security, deny
the sick access to healthcare, turn back democracy in
‘education and do away with subsidies for culture.
All of these fall outside of the measurable ‘measure’ of
neoliberalism, which shifts all responsibility to floating
individuals in order to minimize its own risk. This
system explains why neoliberalism generates a large
carousel in which the buck is for ever passed on.
In spite of this threat-by-measure, a growing
minority is still setting course for the islands. Some
among them even dare to pitch their tents there. Tre
verticality of their tent poles by no means matches that
of the traditional institutional pillars. Still, although
lacking sound foundations, the scarce land is regularly
occupied. Some intellectuals and other verticals have
even named it, if only to establish its existence at l2ast
in the discourse. The philosophers Antonio Negri and
Michael Hardt, for instance, have called these islands
the ‘common’ (2008). In terms of a creative seedbed,
the jurist Lawrence Lessig named them ‘creative
commons’ (2004). Leaning heavily on the idea of,
‘general intellect’ from good old Marx, these verticals
regard the common as a possible substitute for the
institutions of the pre-flat world. Various publishers,
authors, musicians, web designers and other creative
individuals today subscribe to the principle of the
‘creative commons’, which allows users of their cultural
Products to copy, distribute and even transmute them
2a long as it is for non-commercial use.Creative products and forms of expression thus
become, to a certain extent and under certain condi-
tions, a free ‘open source’ that can be used for new
creative productions. Hence the term ‘creative
commons’: cultural and mostly immaterial goods that
are freely available to anyone because copyright and
proprietary rights are pertially lifted.
According to some verticals, including Hardt
and Negri (2008), such a ‘common’ is necessary to
guarantee future creative production. In light of the
Precarious situation of institutions, mentioned earlier,
they may be right. Still, the statute of the common is
Not the same as that of the traditional institutions.
The philosophers described the common as a category
that transcends the classic contradiction between
the public good (usually guaranteed by the state and
other institutions) and private property:
By the common we mean, first of all, the
‘common wealth of the material world — the
air, the water, the fruits of the soil, and all
nature’s bounty — which in classic European
Political texts is often claimed to be the inher-
itance of humanity as a whole, to be shared
together. We consider the common also and
more significantly those results of social
production, such as knowledges, languages,
codes, information, affects, and so forth.
This notion of the common does not position
humanity separate from nature, as either
its exploiter or its custodian, but focuses
rather on the practices of interaction, care,
and cohabitation in a common world,
Promoting the beneficial and limiting the
detrimental forms of the common. In the era
of globalization, issues of the maintenance,
Production, and distribution of the common
in both senses and in both ecological and
socioeconomic frameworks become increas-
ingly central, (Hardt and Negri, 2009: viii)
Both public institutes and private actors contribute
toa. common that can be used as a source for new
e work, social interactions and economic trans-
actions. Hardt and Negri also say that especially cities
are important in creating the conditions for such a
common. The philosophers outline a clear genesis of
the term ‘le commun’ or ‘the common’: according to
‘them, the term ‘common’ was first used in the process
of land consolidation at the start of the capitalist era
(16-17% century) when, first in England and later all
‘across Europe, shared fields where cattle grazed and
forests for collecting wood were converted into private
property. However, there is still only little empirical
knowledge about the social functioning of a possible
common. The island has hardly been explored yet.
Also, the political conditions to arrive at such a
communality are still very unclear. Hardt and Negri
anyway don't expect any good to come from the state,
but favour near direct democracy and self-organization.
|tis however very doubtful whether these islands have
any chance of survival without some sovereign power
taking care of them. Should the ‘common’ be legally
enforced and be able to rely on legal guarantees to
have any chance of survival at all?