Pascal Gielen Livres

The magic word these days is 'creativity,' and not just for business managers and policymakers alike demand it. Even family therapists and mediators urge us to find more creative solutions. At present, creativity is all about positive morality. But what remains of the meaning of the word when just about everyone 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? Author Pascal Gielen, the director of the research center Arts in Society at Groningen University and a specialist on art and Post-Fordism, relates the story of the process of the social (re)creation of creativity by taking readers on a fictive eight-day journey. The second in a series issued by the Mondriaan Fund to promote thinking about visual art and artisthood.

Here, art sociologist Pascal Gielen examines the notion that the global art economy-with its ever-renewable youth quota, its gender imbalance, flexible working hours and short-term contracts (or lack of contracts)-is wholly congruent with the worst aspirations of late capitalism, and is ripe for economic exploitation. Conscious that art also offers real liberties, Gielen also proposes alternative models and argues for a recognition of the values implied by the creative process, rather than by the subtle coercions of post-Fordist production imperatives to which we are all subject

A pacifist is a rare beast in a bomb shelter." The war in Ukraine challenged our idea of pacifism. Should Europe take up arms or not? Can it ease its conscience only with humanitarian aid? Isn?t Europe's attitude towards the war mainly driven by economic motives? In Passivity, Ukrainian art curator Alexandra Tryanova and Belgian sociologist Pascal Gielen engage in a dialogue about this. In doing so, they not only talk about the current political situation, but also look at themselves; at their own fears and privileges. What is passivity in our own daily doings? When does pacifism turn into resignation? How do our surrounding media and culture contribute to such an attitude? Passivity does not provide unifying answers to these questions. Rather, it looks for ways to find peace with our own mixed feelings

Throughout the world, the educational field is being transformed into a marketplace in which institutions must compete for students, and are called on to assess their cultural contributions in terms of finance and management. Is there any room left for art in such a system? Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm investigates the wide-scale reorganization of art education in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, Russia and The Netherlands, and seeks to determine both the current impact and future ramifications of market education on the arts and the artist. Most importantly, it provides prescriptions for a positive direction forward, steering between the cynical big business of the art market and the threatened idealism of classic art education. The thematic chapters, interviews and essays adopt both practical and theoretical approaches, and include such contributors as Richard Sennett, Marco Scotini and Dieter Lesage.