Within the arts, cultural capital often describes how value, authorship, credit, etc. is distributed within collaborative projects (particularly when there is not actual money exchanged). At a broader scale, although web sites like YouTube and Facebook generate actual revenue for somebody, most of the people who use the sites are giving their labor in exchange for something non-monetary.
I guess this could go with the Pierre Bourdieu class that someone else just proposed, given that he wrote the book on cultural capital, but at the same time I think the class should try to apply these ideas specifically to ostensibly progressive, collaborative cultural (artistic) practices. Why? It seems as though most collective or collaborative projects that fall apart tend to do so when what they've been doing produces capital of some kind and it's been distributed in a way that seems inappropriate to those involved. How is it distributed? You can't count it out like dollars.
Also, collaborative extends beyond simply "I am collaborating with you" activities, but it also refers to a system of activities within a community, which may or may not recognize their codependencies and interrelations. What ethics is required by an acknowledgment of how cultural capital functions? Is anxiety about cultural capital used cynically by careerists to take credit for work they didn't do?
How can cultural capital be mobilized in the arts (which largely functions in this kind of economy) towards more exciting ends than making an individual into a commodity? Perhaps this also intersects with the accreditation class in a weird way, because cultural capital isn't just a narrow art-world concern about dividing up credits and acknowledgments... it refers to the connections someone has/ makes, to the manners they learned by hanging out with the right people, etc. which, in a way, validates certain forms of education over others.
This class is a little messy in its current proposal form, but I would like to teach it with Christina Ulke, with whom I've been occasionally discussing the topic. Things will take shape in the comments -- would love to hear other peoples' ideas, takes on the topic, questions, and so on.
- Dates
- July 12, 2009 at 12:00pm
November 22, 2009 at 12:00pm
December 6, 2009 at 10:00am
December 13, 2009 at 12:00pm - Location
- 951 Chung King Road, The Public School
- Facilitator
- Sean Dockray and Christina Ulke
- Fee
- $15 (or $5 per session)
Comment
This class has been scheduled and will take place over three Sundays in July.
July 12 at 12:00pm
July 19 at 12:00pm
July 26 at 12:00pm
Please register by paying the course fee through google checkout.
4 Jun 2009 1:15AM
readings?
4 Jun 2009 1:42AM
Christina and I just spoke and what we would like to do is schedule one meeting in July during which time we would share/ distribute the (summer) reading and discuss the framework of the class, which will be held in the fall (dates TBD). So, keep an eye on the calendar for the July meeting! - sean
6 Jun 2009 5:04PM
where is the fee info and checkout button?
18 Jun 2009 11:21AM
The first session, a planning meeting for the class in the fall, is FREE. All are encouraged to attend.
(Once the structure of the class is decided upon, we will post a course fee and checkout button)
18 Jun 2009 3:09PM
The first session, a planning meeting for the class in the fall, is FREE. All are encouraged to attend.
(Once the structure of the class is decided upon, we will post a course fee and checkout button)
18 Jun 2009 3:09PM
I missed the first meeting, but can I still join for the rest? Not sure how this works. thanks, elana
5 Oct 2009 3:30PM
hi elana,
the july meeting was mainly to plan the schedule for the proper class, which doesn't begin until november 22 - so you haven't missed anything really. the 4 short readings will be posted to AAAARG. two of them are there already (a bourdieu and a diederichsen) and christina is going to post the other two soon (or send them to me and i'll do it!)
5 Oct 2009 3:48PM
Hi everyone,
This class really begins on this coming Sunday, November 22. As we discussed in our planning meeting in July, the course will have 3 parts/ meetings: reading (laying out some terminologies and ideas); analysis (of several contemporary collective cultural practices, both art and non-art, local and remote, collaborative and participatory); and design (for lack of a better word, of a group, movement, community, system, field that would distribute cultural capital in a different, hopefully more equitable manner).
So, this Sunday at noon, we'll be looking at 3 readings by Bourdieu, Diederichsen, and Analysis Group.
All readings have been posted to AAAARG over the last couple months, but you can find them easily by clicking on the "AAAARG" tab on the class web page (http://la.thepublicschool.org/node/1326/aaaarg). For the Bourdieu, we'll be reading one essay, "The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed" which is the opening chapter of the book, or you can also find it as one of the essays included in the "Pierre Bourdieu Collection 1."
If anyone has any questions, or wants to open up areas of discussion (be it a phrase a question or a provocation) for Sunday here, then go for it!
16 Nov 2009 3:42PM
hi everyone,
happy post-thanksgiving. I posted the readings for the next class on aaarg: Sonja Lavaert and Pascal Gielen, The Dismeasure of Art, Interview with Paolo Virno; Brian Holmes, Artistic Autonomy & the Communication Society; Pascal Gielen, The Art Scene - An Ideal Production Unit for Economic Exploitation; and Temporary Services (Editors), Art Work.
The first 3 articles reflect some of the issues we talked about, the increased valorization (surplus value) of art and culture in the post-fordist economy; autonomy as a condition of the creation of cultural capital, its problematics and its myths, and the question of new (institutional? collective? collaborative? ) forms of cultural production. Temporary Services' recently published newspaper Art Work could be a good transition to the case studies, since it is a collection of essays and project descriptions in relation to art, economics and precarity.
As Sean suggested last Sunday, we could start with the discussion of the readings and then move over to the second part of the class: Analysis (of several contemporary collective cultural practices, both art and non-art, local and remote, collaborative and participatory).
All readings are posted here:
http://a.aaaarg.org/issue/5926/kultural-kapital
-christina
29 Nov 2009 8:59PM
This class really begins on this coming Sunday, November 22. As we discussed in our planning meeting in July, the course will have 3 parts/ meetings: reading (laying out some terminologies and ideas); analysis (of several contemporary collective cultural practices, both art and non-art, local and remote, collaborative and participatory); and design (for lack of a better word, of a group, movement, community, system, field that would distribute cultural capital in a different, hopefully more equitable manner).
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itil certification
15 Feb 2010 4:25AM