-Notes on Critique Creative Industries 1-

NOTES ON ICW – IMMATERIAL CIVIL WAR - Prototypes of conflict within cognitive capitalism

A REVIVAL OF THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES 2006, term ‘creative industries’ gets into the European common lexicon, related with discussions regarding other cultural keywords and pos-structures(?!) like ‘network economy’, ‘knowledge economy’, ‘immaterial labor’, ‘general intellect’, ‘course free software’, ‘creative commons’ (…) original definition 1998 stated by Tony Blair: ‘those industries that have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’ (note the fact that ‘social creativity’ stills is out of this definition) 1944: ‘cultural industry’ as form of ‘mass deception’ 1990 introduction of term ‘cognitive capitalism’ (Negri, Lazzarato, Virno, Marazzi,Berardi) Introduction of term ‘Collective intelligence’ (Levy) 2001 euro may day and connection among precarious workers and cognitive workers (…) creation of the ‘creative commons’ 2002 the trendy concept of ‘creative economy’. A new consciousness is emerging around the ‘creation of meaning’ understood as the creation of value and (consequently) as the creation of conflict

THE MAJORITY OF THE VALUE (AND OF THE CONFLICT) (…) this is an investigation of the social processes behind creativity, the creative power of collective desire and the political nature of any cognitive product (…) what or who produces value? The social factory produces the greatest portion of value (…) political space of cognitive competition (…) public life of immaterial objects (…) the grey zone created by the ‘massification of the creative attitude ‘everyone is creative’ (…) creative industries face the entropy of meaning and producers (…) (…) political agenda for creative industries (…) creative commons (…) guarantee minimum income (…) Renzo Rullani (‘cognitive capitalism’) suggests that we focus on the autonomous power of producers, rather than on the dimension of dependent labor. Plea for a ‘disambiguation’ of political views around creative industries; this essay aims to focus on the collective production of value and the strong competition cognitive producers face in the ‘immaterial domain’

LAZZARATO READING TRADE: THE PUBLIC DIMENSION OF VALUE Contemporary criticism dominated by metaphors without any notion of value and valorization (…) I want to introduce (…) a more dynamic scenario (…) on how value is produced by an accumulation of social desire and collective imitation. Tarde’s philosophy challenging the premises of the issue: dissolves the opposition of material and immaterial labor (brain collaboration as traditional main force); innovation as driving force of capitalism (not money accumulation); value based on a multitude of types: use value, truth value, beauty value (…) Lazzarato on Tarde’s philosophy: an invention that is not imitated is not socially existent: to be imitated an invention needs to draw attention, to produce a force of mental attraction on other brains, to mobilize their desires and beliefs through a process of social communication (…) immaterial objects (…) imitation and innovation – darwinistic environment.

ENZO RULLANI ANDTHE ‘LAW OF DIFFUSION’ Cognitive valorization, more than knowledge sharing (…) how much value knowledge produces (…) the value of knowledge is multiplied by its diffusion (…) we have to learn how to manage this kind of circulation (…) knowledge produces value if its adopted and the adoption creates interdependency (proprietary logic is no longer based on object and space, but speed and time (…) management of knowledge value: control on diffusion, speed, control on contextual characteristics, control on network alliances (idea, value in a dynamic environment where it gets to be constantly challenged (…) when everything can be duplicated everywhere, time becomes more important than space (…) release part of work as teaser an leave the rest private (…) collective accumulation of value is tangible and visible, as oppose to the individual one

DAVID HARVEY AND COLLECTIVE SYMBOLIC CAPITAL Harvey: tracking the parasitic exploitation of the immaterial domain by the material one (…) Barcelona, international brand, real estate speculation, culture, tradition, location, cultural, educational and artistic offer, architecture (…) capitalism is always looking for marks of distinction (…) the limits of dissemination to gather value in three parts: 1-control of dissemination, excessive dissemination turns out a distinction mark into a mass product; 2-setting up of monopolies, blocking the flow, appears to be the only way to guarantee rent over inflated value; 3-global capital actually feeds local resistance to promote a mark of distinction (…) “the most avid globalisers will support local developments that have the potential to yield monopoly rents even if the effect of such support is to produce a local political climate antagonistic to globalization” Concept of collective symbolic capital (Pierre Bourdieu) to explain how culture is exploited by capitalism; the layer of cultural production attached to a specific territory produces a fertile habitat for monopoly rents and the better terrain for that is a “field of historically constituted cultural artefacts and practices and special environment characteristics (…) obvious example contemporary tourism (…) “the brand of Barcelona is a consensual hallucination produced by many but exploited by few (…) the creative workers produce symbolic value for the real estate economy that perpetually squeezes them (…) the so called creative class is nothing but a simulacrum of collective symbolic capital to raise the marks of distinction of a given city (…) it is an anthropomorphic brand (…) the creative class is a parasitic simulacrum of social creativity detached from the precariat and attached to the elite class (…) why let the monopoly rent attached to that symbolic capital be captured only by the multinationals or by a small powerful segment of the local bourgeoisie (…) how can these cultural interventions themselves become a weapon of class struggle? How to develop a resistance that cannot be exploited as another mark of distinction?

ICW – IMMATERIAL CIVIL WAR Immaterial civil-war: conflicts within cognitive capitalism have no clear class and composition and share the same media space (…) cooperation is structurally difficult among creative workers, where a prestige economy operates the same way as ant star system and where new idea have to confront each other (…)

FACING THE PARASITE (…) a good form of resistance could be an assault on the myth of creative city rather than a “want-to-be-radical” reactions that will just make it more exclusive (…) people should find ways to reclaim the economical surplus exploited by few speculators = renegotiation of collective symbolic capital (…) creative workers should start to recognize he surplus value of imagery they produce beyond their immaterial objects and all the remote political repercussions of any sign (…) we are waiting for a generation of cognitive workers able to mobilize out of the imagery