[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all, dear Ruth


I don't think there should be a need to apologize for 'poorly timed interjections' as i believe this months debate is/has been ongoing and your response to postings that
went out here over the weekend is much appreciated, 

in fact I was interested in your telling us that you were trying to engage in this discussion, after presenting
Furtherfield activities as a case study, while you were also engaged in other organizational discussions (with folks, and with visitors like AOS activists/artists and their interesting
"squatting" methodology) at the same time, and in reflecting on political/economic pressures and budget problems.

thanks for your commentaries, i think you put it quite beautifully, and i of course agree with it. 

>>
.....learning together about tools for conviviality. These went on to be sustained in a diverse number of ways. These ways moved through and between people and places and grew differently in new contexts but the effects are sustained and amplified. Sometimes it is not so important that an identifiable organisation or institution or project survives. What is important is that people are able to apply and redistribute these newly learned values into different contexts.
I think that these projects are understood as creative in social and organisational terms because they generate infrastructures to serve their purposes rather than operating through pre-established models (that would prescribe what they could do). Sustained relations are an important part of this process. >>


I feel close to what you are saying, and it is surely true in my experience that lasting relations (which may also changed and be refreshed and added on) matter and are crucial for a sense of satisfaction or fulfilment gained from creative and artistic networking and all the other aspects of organising that you mention, that Magnus mentioned, and that are now also positited by Scott -- these changing and dynamic "third spaces" that also compose themselves as systems or organizational forms of their own.  


[i was also happy to hear from James, on his journey on some boat?  to the further field.  I hope he comes back to speak a little more about the choreograpjic objects.]

While probably everyone taking part here values reflection and critical discourse as creative expression in dialogue with others,  the abandonment of "the indiviidual" seems a bit premature (?the "author" is a thing of the past? , Scott,, i doubt it very much). this very discouse here is driven by very individual experiences, I should think, even if it is productive and also accurate to argue the way Scott does (quite by Davin):

>>I believe both that creativity is enabled by communities (among other ways, by recognizing
and validating  creative work as "real work") and is in most cases
actually the outcome of a collaborative process .....>>>

(and not to forget audiences or people who walk through the streets to read the graffiti and find pleasure/displeasure in them).

David continues:

>>Circulating around this, is a running discussion of how ideas can
have radical implications for being, for our notions of reality.
Purely individualistic "knowledge" is held up in ethical distinction
to collectively held "knowledge," but certainty is never a luxury for
viewers (or characters).>>

I look forward to hearing more about the examples one could find about collective knowledge, and the effects of , say, ethical distinctions
that place higher value on the "network". 
But, to come back to Ruth, when i asked questions about impact I was actually not so much worried about  goverrment
terminologies or quantification as about the psychic impact the struggles for new or alternatiive social/organizational practices, struggles carried
out by context specific or project specific grass roots and non affilitaed groups, have on the individual.  
How one makes sense of one's field work, how one survives in it, how one can grow and love it, and how groups
feed back, what purposes are served, and how one sustains energy to keep doing it rather than becoming exhausted and disillusioned. 

(Sometimes networks can also produce disservices or reproduce unequal relations).  (Pluriliteracy, hmmm,   not quite here. english spoken only.) 


It is here, i think  – and surely everyone on this list can tell a story or has her or his own experience of working in groups, schools, organizations, parties, teams
ensembles, workshops, etc.  –  that the harsher side of social creativity and dissociation emerges.  

I agree with Scott that "[T]he challenges to developing better environments for creative practice... are not mainly problems of conceptualization, they are problems of articulation and of the logistics of formulating those environments in ways that they are able to compete and coexist with existing institutional structures."    And I would add that these problems of articulation and of the logistics are both exhilarating and very draining.  But I guess you all already know this.


but hey, to end on a lighter note,  i had no idea our discussion this month was actually part of a funded Humanities in the European Research Area project   (elmcip ?). 
wow. amazing  :)       So your ethnographic study is already underway and we here are a small field?


with regards
Johannes 

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