[ecrea] The labour of the multitude? the political economy of social creativity

*THE LABOUR OF THE MULTITUDE? THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIAL CREATIVITY 
*// 20-22.10.2011
Warsaw

*INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE FREE/SLOW UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW *//in 
collaboration with *University** of Warsaw DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND 
PHILOSOPHY** *OPEN CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS*

list of confirmed speakers:* Luc Boltanski, Neil Cummings, Diedrich 
Diederichsen, Matteo Pasquinelli, John Roberts, Gigi Roggero, Martha 
Rosler, Hito Steyerl

*curatorial team of the conference: *Michał Kozłowski, Agnieszka Kurant, 
Jan Sowa, Krystian Szadkowski, Kuba Szreder*

*forms of contribution:** a paper delivered in 15-20 minutes during the 
conference's sessions. The language of conference is English. We're 
planning to publish a peer-reviewed, bi-lingual (PL-ENG) summary of the 
conference with selected papers.

*deadline for submissions: *15th of September 2011

*fees/ scholarships:* The conference is free of charge. FSUW is capable 
of providing a limited number of travel (up to 200 Euros) and 
accommodation grants to free lancers, independent artists and 
theoreticians who are not affiliated with Academies or other 
Institutions. If you are interested in receiving a FSUW scholarship, 
please indicate so in your proposal and estimate your travel costs to 
Warsaw.

*contact:* please send a short proposal (up to 300 words) with bio to 
Szymon Żydek: szymon[at]funbec.eu, who will also respond to all other 
inquiries.

Addressing the issue of social economy of creativity we seek to enlarge 
the spectrum of creativity's political economy. Creativity refers to 
many things: it is both a means of production and a fetish of 
consumption, a sheer ideology of the capitalism which calls itself 
post-industrial and an efficient device of social and industrial 
management, it reflects the elitist privilege of the ruling elite as 
well as the aspirations of the underprivileged rabble. If it is true 
that contemporary capitalism has made an decisive shift in its modes of 
producing value then creativity and in particular collective creativity 
becomes a central category for the society as a whole. And artistic and 
cultural modes of production (along with scientific ones) are no longer 
merely supplementary fields of capitalistic social infrastructure. They 
become central sectors of production to which other fields of social 
labour remain subordinated in economical as well as in symbolic way. 
They not only accumulate most of the value but also are laboratories for 
social innovation. Consequently they should also provide a playground 
and battlefield for new social struggles, reemerging capitalistic 
contradictions and new forms of appropriation and exploitation. Or maybe 
the new paradigm is just a humbug that covers up the overall crisis of 
the existing one. Maybe we still linger under the rule of the old law of 
value based rather on living labour then creative networking. In this 
case the new social economy of the creativity would be a powerful 
symptom of a present crisis and it could be analyzed as such. Either of 
the approaches are welcome.

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