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.
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.
Sunday September 3, 2006
Start | 20.30 hrs.
Admission | free
Language | English
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