978-90-76936-39-0

Stout / Kramer

120

12.4 x 18.6 cm

Hardcover

Translation and final editing: Leo Reijnen. Editor: Mirjam Beerman, Steven van Teeseling

This is a publication in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fonds (former Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture). 

For more information: Mondriaan Fonds

248 grms 

The magic word these days is 'creativity'. And not just for artists: managers and policymakers alike demand creativity. Even family therapists and mediators urge us to find more creative solutions. Nowadays, creativity is all about positive morality. We expect nothing but good from it. But what remains of the meaning of the word when just about everybody is using it to death? And where does this hunger for creativity come from? Isn't it instead a sign of a creeping loss of true creativity?

This essay primarily concerns itself with the social context of creativity. Pascal Gielen relates the story of the process of the social (re)creation of creativity by taking you on an eight-day journey.

The text is part of a series issued by the Mondriaan Fund to promote thinking about visual art and artisthood.

Pascal Gielen (1970) is director of the research center Arts in Society at the Groningen University where he is associate Professor sociology of art. Gielen leads also the research group and book series 'Arts in Society' (Fontys College for the Arts, Tilburg). He has written several books on contemporary art, cultural heritage and cultural politics.  In 2009 Gielen edited together with Paul De Bruyne the book Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times, and he published his new monograph The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude. Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism. In 2011 De Bruyne en Gielen edited the book Community Art. The Politics of Trespassing and in January 2012 their book Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm. Realism versus Cynicism was launched. At the moment Gielen is composing the reader Institutional Attitudes. Instituting Art in a Flat World.