Project: Collective Creation
The culture industry is often subject to shifting political priorities as well as how the public writ large views their work. This situation can result in a dramatic shift in public funding that can threaten the livelihood of an institution. While many cultural producers are wary of engaging in political debate–often because it does not align with their artistic vision and medium of choice, or simply because they don’t want to engage in what they see as a toxic sphere–the effects of the political cannot be ignored. At the same time, we shouldn’t simply accept traditional means of arts patronage as given and remain accustomed to relying on government support. In this sense, the goal should not be to lobby politicians to see the value of cultural work and instead to look for a more balanced relationship between the cultural and political.
This balanced relationship would be made possible through a product that supports collective creation across media–still and moving images, sculpture, painting, dance, architecture, and urbanism. Such balance would hold greater input from both sides of the equation while also balancing risks and rewards that each takes. It would allow for true partnership that perhaps would mitigate the volatility in financial support by essentially asking if we can build consensus through building a world together. At the same time, it would lay the groundwork for participation in creation beyond cultural producers and politicians. In doing so, it might remove the necessity of politics in culture altogether by allowing for a direct connection to the public. Doing so would alter the role that representational politics plays and effectively disintermediate the current framework for supporting the arts in the United States.
Product Documentation
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The essence of the product is a platform–either physical or digital–that supports collective creation of cultural products. In many ways, it is inspired by a traditional creative studio or atelier, but instead of organizing this space around a design principal and singular artistic vision, the space is open ended, not confined to a single medium or vision, and scalable to a wide range of participants. The first step in building such a product would involve addressing the need for a common language across participants as well as how goals emerge. In this sense, the origin would lie in negotiating what might be seen as contested territory and forming a commons. This could occur in many ways around a range of points of interest and projects that a community wants to work on–which could range from entirely new cultural products to existing products and spaces that might need to evolve, expand, find new content, or build new audiences.
From this origin, we could then add a means by which different individuals and groups could form blocks taking on different positions in the process of negotiating the act of creation. The next step would then be to negotiate the specific mode of product that holds the various narratives that we have been researching. This would be accompanied by a means of translating between these standpoints. It would culminate in a web of products–likely across media–that hold the different viewpoints that existed during the process. It would likely remain a constellation that may look different based on who is viewing it and from where they are doing so. At the same time, these diverse views would always refer to the core content generated through the process of collective creation.
Ultimately, such a process would represent a radical departure from the romantic conception of the artist genius whose singular vision alone is capable of shedding new light on the world around us. In its place it would see creation as an emergent act driven by collective conscience and myriad related viewpoints that come together to form a more nuanced and reflective cultural product that more accurately represents the world. And, in this act of collective creation, would lie a new type of agency and capacity for consensus that would resonate and perhaps inspire the political sphere more broadly.
The first deliverable in developing this product will be a representation of what this process looks like: Collective Creation Platform Concept Design.
Call to Action
We are actively looking for collaborators to build this product as well as for cultural producers, leaders of institutions, politicians, and the general public. We hope to bring these diverse perspectives together to continue the design, development, and construction of what we hope will be a powerful tool for the culture industry to both create new work and to build new communities.
