[spectre] New Media Art Organisations in Netherlands lose funding

[Matze Schmidt]

Hi,

>> another
>> neo-liberal attempt at privatization, not only of subsidized culture
>> but all other public goods.

>> Polticians (at least those nowadays) only care about
>> votes.

>> From the international perspective, we need to marshall the
>> connections we have as leaders of festivals, institutions, etc. [...]
>> to write letters to the Dutch parliament [...].

>> The Rise of the Creative Class

>> in the stages of late capitalism
>> and an international neo-liberal uprising in which we are in, none of
>> us can afford to take sides.

I believe some categories are not understood here, not to say
completely misunderstood. Although it seems to be the abstract domain
it's needless to say these categories are related to the concrete.
Since most people call these days the neo-liberal age or late capitalism
(as most Maoist-Leninist writers in Europe, more specifically in Germany
and France after the 1968-'shock' would have done in the 1970s) it is
quite true, that there IS a policy about keeping the capital's profits
up (not juts since the OECD Guidelines in late 1970s after the big
crises of the late 60s and early 70s).

But the term "neo-liberal" is used very often nowadays descriptively
like designation, like an aim, as if it were a campaign or conspiracy,
a way back away from a more progressive economical regime to older bad
days. This plot, this story of telling the neo-liberal continuous form
considering it as an incident or an new/old horizon shows that
capitalism's logic is fully regarded superficial and glitzy. The
reproduction of this story is the story of the 1990's and newer media
theory which was fed by state sponsors and. Its young authors seem to
have turned away from the economical topoi of media to the media media
questions. Now the increased productiveness forces to reclaim the
economical spects of media and they are disclosed as social factors.

For example: according to Florian Cramer (in 2004) Matthew Fuller came
up with the "social software"-term in terms of another social system
initiated by software and other usage than push or pull-only media. At
the moment this dictum turns out to be just the afterburner for the
early zero years of this millennium's businesses _as_ a network
(Castells). Starbucks rules within Web 2.0 and the social is the
consumption. Consequently Cramer supported action against the 2.0
regime.

Matthew Fuller though himself refers to the general intellect as
the intellect as productive force and pushes the commodity
production beside, see his article "Softness: interrogability;
general intellect; art methodologies in software"
(http://darc.imv.au.dk/wp-content/files/13.pdf [30.06.2009]). This
focus on the intellect is in fact the illness of the arts updated to be
arts and technologies (social media), which is _the_ creativity factor
in western economies and their national boundaries; their global
perspective of course is to design and to let assemble somewhere else.
This creativity factor has to be centralized and gathered of course
within each nation -- as it once was the case in the 90s: The ZKM in
Karslruhe is a pretty good example for such centering.
Even pharmaceutical industry (Shering) can learn a thing from artists
(even NASA did from Laurie Anderson -- who else? -- some years ago). The
result here is productivity as productivity for the (private -- what
else?) industries, not against.

For instance, Fukushima is Germany's last chance to get a new world
market with green industries. Designers are welcome, even those
'designers' who address criticisms to the hand that feeds them. So why
wondering? Why asking for funds for critical media practices?
The official political game is simply proportional representation and
the status quo in a parliamentary democracy. But votes are driven not
only by promises made by politicians but at beforehand driven by private
profit. Funny that, despite the proportional representation, within this
"Rise of the Creative Class" ('free'lancers & 'independent' workers for
better wages) it is still the state people are calling for. But states
are half bankrupt today.

And what uprising of these states of neo-liberalism? The policies of
states as a function of the capital are quite clear and not at all an
uprising since it's their task to save banks and cash flow (event
against banks, as it was the case in USA in 2008). Otherwise credit
systems would fall over the bones of the payment defaults due to a hyper
number of commodities no one can buy. Thesis is, that there is a
superior number of media art/tech works which has to be canalized like
numbers of products have to be canalized in other sectors as well. This
depends on the structure of national capitals, true. But nonproductive
fields in sectors have to leave the spot. So there's a need to fight for
ones own field in the sector (distribution battle).

But what states and state banks can not end is the deeper crisis of the
nonmarketable coming from exactly this overproduction of goods/wares.
However the obvious and bigger problem now is the government loans which
have to payed back to money lenders on the credit markets (Goodbye
Greece). This is the situation NL is in (as far as I know The
Netherlands is still better than Canada in state debts), that's all. So
why not go and widen the understanding of creative industries? What
about the low wages sector people, isn't it creative to wash the dishes
of programmers? Don't get me wrong, the creative class is no class, it
is a stratum of society which takes itself for a separate and detached
one.

Matze Schmidt