[spectre] Announce: Creative Class Struggles, or: Creative Precarity: On the creatives and their class consciousness

[Eric Kluitenberg]

A  N  N  O  U  N  C  E  M  E  N  T

Creative Class Struggles
or
Creative Precarity: On the creatives and their class consciousness

De Balie, Amsterdam
Sunday September 3, 2006
start: 20.30 hrs.

In recent years the “creative class” is regarded as the avant garde  
of Western economic development. Cities proclaim themselves to be  
‘creative cities’. They roll out the red carpets for creative workers  
with equally creative marketing campaigns. Although the term  
“creative class” appears to refer to the traditional socio-economic  
definition, in fact an unheard of diversity of professions is  
subsumed under this heading: fashion designers, journalists,  
financial consultants, ICT experts, artists, graphic designers, and  
advertising professionals.

The most important characteristic all these groups seem to share is a  
fast and flexible life- and work-style. Work doesn’t stop here at  
office hours, but continues into the ‘late hours’, and one  
continuously has to be up to date with latest developments in the  
field. These mobile, highly educated, and flexibly deployable  
employees - cultural entrepreneurs - are presented by policy makers  
as an ideal for the European labour market, which is transforming  
itself thoroughly to become ‘the most competitive knowledge economy  
of the world’.

Concurrent with the discussion about the creative class another  
discussion has gained momentum, about another and comparably diverse  
class; that of precarious labour. Precarious here means uncertain,  
hazardous - as in the ‘precarious balance’ of a rope-dancer. This new  
class of employee usually operates in serial temporary and flexible  
work arrangements, and has no predictable security about income,  
pensions, or guarantees about the future availability of social  
benefits or chances for self-improvement in a Europe where the  
welfare state has become a thing of the past. A remarkable form of  
social mobilisation has surfaced around the issue of precarity, in  
one of the most unlikely areas where it could have been expected; the  
domain of free and flexible labour.

Both classes, the creative and the precarious, merge to some extent.  
Artists are obviously highly familiar with such precarious living and  
working conditions ever since their professional group was first  
invented. Reasons for some to speak about a “creative under-class” or  
a “creative class-struggle”. Many members of this ‘creative under- 
class’ are involved in voluntary labour; they share information and  
ideas with each other and could become the founders of a new public  
domain (2.0), a “creative common”. The growing identification of the  
cultural and creative sector as an economic domain does raise the  
question however if it is still possible to escape from such stifling  
economic utilitarianism?

As part of this concluding evening of the weekend of public culture  
at De Balie the Creative Workers Manifesto will be presented, a call  
for decent creative labour conditions.
More information about the weekend program can be found in the  
accompanying web dossier:
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=51947

Discussion with; Ned Rossiter, researcher University of Ulster,  
Belfast, kpD / kleines post-fordistisches Drama (Marion von Osten,  
artist and independent theorist, Katja Reichard, independent  
bookstore Pro qm and organiser of autonomous culture events, Berlin),  
Mei Li Vos political scientist and chairwoman of the Alternatief Voor  
Vakbond (Alternative for Labour Union), and contributions by  
Flexmens.org and Greenpepper Magazine.

Master of ceremonies for the evening is Max Bruinsma, design critic.

Language: English

Sunday September 3, 2006
Start 20.30 hrs.
Admission: free

The program can also be followed live on the internet at:
http://www.debalie.nl/live

De Balie
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl