[artinfo] [transform] Critique of Creative Industries

[eipcp]

CRITIQUE OF CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
A seminar and workshop in Helsinki from August 31st to September 2nd, 2006

A cooperation of FRAME Finnish Fund for Art 
Exchange and eipcp European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies.

The Critique of Creative Industries seminar and 
workshop will assemble different national and 
urban case studies, put up a general critique of 
creative industries and theorize from different 
angles of Europe how the paradigm of creativity 
contributes to constituting cognitive capitalism. 
Seminar will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki.

When Adorno and Horkheimer wrote their famous 
Dialectics of Enlightenment in 1944 they also 
coined the concept of "cultural industry". In a 
chapter titled "The Cultural Industry: 
Enlightenment as Mass Deception" they laid the 
ground for their fundamental critique of culture 
as a component of a new form of totalitarian 
oppression. Around 1968 the concept was again put 
to the foreground to criticize the repressive 
functions of mass media especially, but in the 
course of the following decades it slowly voided 
of its critical content. During those years it 
was adopted as just another principle of 
neoliberal cultural politics: In a completely 
transformed manner the concept of the Frankfurt 
School was (mis-)used as a key concept of 
Blairist cultural politics and made its way back 
to the continent at the end of the 1990s. With 
the help of blockbusters like Richard Florida's 
"Creative Class" it became a feature of urban and 
economic development plans in many European 
cities, and finally arrived on the agenda of the 
cultural politics of the European Union.

Speakers include: Branka Curcic, media 
researcher, kuda.org (Novi Sad); Esther 
Leslie,  reader in political aesthetics, Birkbeck 
(London); Maurizio Lazzaratto, philosopher, 
sociologist (Paris); Maria Lind, director, 
IASPIS, (Stockholm); Raimund Minichbauer, 
researcher, eipcp (Vienna); Monika Mokre, deputy 
director, Institute for European Integration 
Research (Vienna); Matteo Pasquinelli, media 
theorist (Barcelona/London); Gerald Raunig, 
philosopher, art theoretician, eipcp (Vienna); 
Tere Vadén, philosopher, professor in 
Hypermedialab, University of Tampere; Ulf 
Wuggenig, sociologist, Institute for Cultural Theory, University of Lüneburg.

As outcomes and forms of distribution both an 
issue of FRAME's magazine Framework 
www.framework.fi and eipcp's multilingual 
webjournal transversal http://transversal.eipcp.net will be published.

Started in 2005 with the book  European Cultural Policies 2015
http://eipcp.net/publications/ecp2015 and a 
workshop at IASPIS (Stockholm), the workshop 
series is organised by the eipcp in cooperation 
with different partners over Europe. In the 
second half of 2006 three workshops will take 
place in Helsinki, Pristine and Vienna/Linz.

The seminar language is English. Registration by August 11th:
Laura Karhu, e-mail: laura.karhu at frame-fund.fi, tel. + 358-(0)9-6126 4225
There is no fee for participation.

For further information please contact:
Marita Muukkonen
FRAME - Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, Helsinki
Tel.+ 358 9 6126 4221, mobile: + 358 400 965 193
E-mail: marita.muukkonen at frame-fund.fi
Website: www.frame-fund.fi, www.framework.fi

Raimund Minichbauer
eipcp - european institute for progressive cultural policies, Vienna
Tel. +43 1 585 64 78
E-mail: minichbauer at eipcp.net
Website: http://eipcp.net