[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[James Leach]

Johannes is right - I am in the field, or rather, this morning about to get on a small dinghy to cross the sea between here and the coast where Reite village is. I have not been able to respond in the interim travelleing to this poiint, and now will have no internet for a few weeks, but just saw this on the way through town - thank you Johannes - I will respond properly once I am back if I may - that will be after the 'month' is over - but maybe the list will indulge me then anyway.
james

On 26 Jul 2010, at 04:15, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> Hi all;
> 
> 
> thanks for the response you just sent, Magnus, and the thoughts you added about figuring out how to discuss or evaluate (and learn from ) mobile, temporary aggregates, networks, projects, and platforms etc.  Although this week's posts, introducing different types of "organizations"  and models of creative engagement/exchange, were very helpful, and although we may indeed not be able to answer questions clearly about the qualitative impact - and their long term sustainability -  of (more rather than less) independent arts organizations like the Chateaus, Furtherfields and NODES mentioned, perhaps this week's discussion needs to return to the opening proposal, which, if I am not mistaken, imagined a different "model" for collective creativity (= not the "property" of any one).
> 
>>>> In his book Creative Land, anthropologist James Leach (one of this month's
> guests) describes cultural practices where the creation of new things, and
> the ritualised forms of exchange (the performative) enacted around them,
> function to "create" individuals and their social relations, "creating" the
> community they inhabit. Leach's argument suggests it is possible to conceive
> of creativity as emergent from and innate to the interactions of people.
> Such an understanding functions to combat instrumentalist views of
> creativity that demand it have social (e.g.: "economic") value. Creativity
> need not be valued as satisfying a perceived need nor need it be
> romantically situated as a supply-side "blue skies" ideal. An alternate
> model can be proposed where creativity is considered an emergent property of
> community; an ontology.
> 
> Does the internet, the networks of people it facilitates and the communities
> that emerge through it, render these processes more explicit than they might
> otherwise appear? Does the internet facilitate the creation of communities
> where new modalities of creativity, authorship and exchange emerge? Do
> online communities, such as Furtherfield, 7-11, Nettime and empyre, present
> models and insights for novel social relations and creativity?
>>>> 
> 
> 
> After rereading the discussion   (and Simon does include this empyre  list in the question), it seems that James Leach's
> presence as an anthropologist was a wonderful provocation;  he has undertaken long term field research in Papua New Guinea (and published the book "Creative Land: Place And Procreation On The Rai Coast Of Papua New Guinea") and has written on kinship relations and the question of how  people are connected to places (not lists or "social networks" --unless anyone here would claim the latter constitute a "place"). James has answered his questions, I gather,  by examining the making of people and the emergence of places in a particular context., developing his thesis that the formulation of "creativity" might be an ongoing and integral part of kinship as environmental engagement.
> 
> Now this appears to be a rather site-specific and culture-specific investigation, and I can see how tempting it might have been to re-locate such a study towards an "ethnography" of assumed communities emerging from social networks or, say, media arts/hybrid arts organizations like Furtherfield or Chateau et al.  But rarely did i see anyone address "place" or kinship or procreation (and performative rituals constituting a communal cultural capital) in regard to the "novel social relations" presumed to emerge from networks or lists.
> 
> And yet there were interesting suggestions made about "kinship" in sofar as shared creative passions or needs or interests (in regard to knowledge, mediating activities and communications, shareware, open source, local or otherwise connected activist or artistic projects) were mentioned and a mobile, ad hoc sense of creative partnership presumed, as emergent of something larger than individual onwership or authorship.
> 
> The discussion about the fragility of interest groups banding and disbanding, or of independent platforms (arts organizations, labs and workshops, grassroots  ensembles) forced to struggle for survival (economic and psychic) in western industralized terrains impacted by globalized capitalism and its technological, labor-market, social and educational imperatives ["perform, or else!"], seemed to run up against various problems,  and perhaps this list could be examined as a testbed for evaluating "novel social relations."
> 
> what collectively emerges?  what shared (owned?) property?  to what extent would you measure it as creative rather than something else, and how would you call the something else?  discursive relations were mentioned, but they are neither novel nor constitutive of the kind of ritual affirmation of the social as non social (non intrumentalized and proffering economic value, following Simon).
> Is property the wrong term or are we not always involved in properties?  and who owns what is not to be owned (if authorship is not accountable, then how is creativity with project outcomes measured and understood, rather than, let's say, played out in the field, for some gain, the further field of project proposals for EU funding available to cultural program partnershps with at least 4 differently located participating organizations with a annual budget, a project director, and defined task forces  and signatures and budgets  and assurances needed, etc )?
> 
> I'd be interested in the replenishment question Magnus mentioned, and i agree that temporary alliances shift, and re-form, and continue. The seeds grow.  In terms of the educational spectrum, we also see it, clearly, each year:  new pupils, new students might join the social networks or look for platforms and find the workshops and labs and interest groups that provide knowledge, tools, opportunities to experiment with creatitivies.
> 
> Currently I'm also reading Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook's book on "Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media"  - puzzled as i was about the subtitle and curious of course to learn about "embedded", "adjunct" and (more or less) "independent" curating.   Curating is not collective either, is it?  group shows? group labs, group workshops and activities surely happen, as do grouped activisisms and love parades (horrible what happened in Duisburg yesterday, I am afraid).  But the book, i think, is largely discussing the roles of curators (persons) in relation to institutions that display and distribute outcomes of creativity.  Curators will be held accountable or won't get invited anymore.
> 
> how then do you situate curating, and education, in regard to the imagined model of social interaction?
> do our schools promise any new model, or do they operate according to the older models?  universities?
> museums?  theatres?  dance studios?
> 
> Lastly, I wanted to mention that i was perplexed realising that James Leach now participates in a project I am little bit aware of:  "Choreographic Objects: traces and artifacts of physical intelligence"  (funded by the AHRC).   I had asked James here about this, but he seemed to have already left us to return to the field.
> 
> "Choreograohic Objects" is described as a series of workshops focused on choreographic initiatives in the same investigative context  - namely  engaging theories of knowledge production and knowledge transfer (from the social sciences) to ascertain how  knowledge (in dance?) comes to be embodied in transactable forms (objects) and how these objects participate in the creation of further cultural value.
> 
> I assume that the "objects" in question here are dance works or choreographic methods that can be analysed, observed and experienced (through the "physical journals," as Olu Taiwo has called bodily cultural knowledge),  but how do James and his colleagues formulate cultural value (in the producers of the dance or the receivers and participants - the audiences?).
> 
> Does the notion of "creativity as social ontology" imply that there are no more audiences?
> But can there be a culture, and a history of cultural values, without audience recognizing value or feeling valued by the art?
> 
> 
> regards
> Johannes Birringer
> http://interaktionslabor.de
> <ATT00001..txt>