I’m pleased to say that the report Axel Bruns and I wrote for the Social Media project in the Smart Services CRC a few months back has now been released. It should be available on the CRC website soon, but in the meantime is accessible at Snurb [link to pdf]. You can read the executive summary at Axel’s blog, and we would welcome comments. We’re at the stage of finalising our second report now, which focuses on user motivations in social media – perhaps, surprisingly, a largely unexplored terrain in the academic literature.
Tag Archive for 'creative industries'
Part of the whole “death of the newspaper” narrative arc (though not the current focus on Google as a supposedly evil aggregator, driven by the commercial interests of news corporations) is the purported death of the critic. Like so many other apocalyptic predictions, this one is no doubt premature, if not altogether wrong – although contemporary cost cutting in print does mean less film criticism and less well remunerated critics. But there’s no doubt that something has changed with the rise of the user review.
In a way, as with so many other developments in new media, the user review replicates an underlying social pattern which is re-emerging as the closed media circuits of modernity fracture. The economics of film, like that of publishing and music, is typical of a certain enduring characteristic of the culture industries – the uncertainty of demand. While the quantum of production is closely tied to the number of screens, the art of predicting which films will make money is a most uncertain one. As a rule of thumb, one film has to make enough to subsidise a larger number which will lose money – what John Howkins calls the nobody knows principle. Producers can try to minimise risk by churning out sequels or franchise films, but the basic rule holds – it’s much harder to say which movie will find an audience than how many red cars will be sold.
So “word of mouth” has always been something that film marketers rely on, and indeed try to foster. Continue reading ‘Critical (film) cultures’
Karl Marx’ concept of ‘fictitious capital’ has enjoyed something of a revival recently – in the context of explaining the Global Financial Crisis. It’s interesting to observe [h/t Richard Metzger at Boing Boing] that Marx doesn’t appear to have invented the term – the phrase was used by Thomas Jefferson and the concept goes back to Ricardo and Adam Smith, and beyond them to earlier writers in the Eighteenth Century. There’s a bit of a message in that. Observers such as David Harvey argued quite some time ago – contrary to all the hype that was around in the 90s about the ‘new economy’ – that the increased and increasingly ubiquitous role of financial capital was what was distinctive about globalisation. More broadly, following the French historian Fernand Braudel and some of his epigones in world systems theory, we can conclude that markets predate capitalism. In tracing the history of capitalism, Giovanni Arrighi argues that particular accumulation regimes tend to emphasise financialisation as an accumulation strategy towards the end of their life cycle, as the limits of ‘material expansion’ are reached. There’s a recombination effect where the production of tangibles is eclipsed by the circulation of intangibles – each time opening up a new cycle of innovation across an ever larger geographical space and constructing a new ’spirit of capitalism’ which brings in its wake newly reassembled subjectivities, new political divisions and new forms of inequality.
The ‘age of neo-liberalism’, then, saw a shift of power towards finance capital and a harnessing of immaterial labour to the creation of intangible value. It saw a new logic of personality where constant change and the ability to network trumped security and the old bourgeois virtues. What’s also new about the era of globalisation is the world wide scope and reach of one economic system, and the geographical dispersion of networks of value creation – where, for instance, value can be added by design in the metropoles to products manufactured in the developing world. Within the developed world, we’ve had a bifurcated services economy – with Robert Reich’s “symbolic analysts” at the top of the tree forming a highly mobile elite and personal services provided by low skilled and often immigrant labour (mobile in a somewhat different way) or younger workers whose mobility into high end occupations is temporal. It’s been the less skilled and relatively immobile workforce in the declining ‘productive’ sectors who’ve largely been the losers in this conjuncture – a fact which explains a lot about the politics of the last couple of decades.
One way of looking at the current financial crisis is that it’s the first major recession to hit the developed world since the value creation switch was flicked from the production of things to the creation of intangibles. If one takes a Schumpeterian view, the “creative destruction” now occurring should lead to the emergence of a new frontier of value creation. Continue reading ‘Fictitious capital and the first recession of the services economy’
Judging by some conversations I was having this morning, and some buzz on FB over the weekend, a lot of folk are starting to focus on the reality of what Queensland will be if the LNP wins government. No doubt there’s not much mileage in it for Anna Bligh, but there is truth in the perception that the absence of an authoritarian regime and a much freer climate more supportive of creative endeavour has made a real difference to both a lot of Queenslanders who might otherwise have done the well worn trek to Melbourne, Sydney or elsewhere and also to the diversification of our state’s economy into knowledge industries of all kinds. There’s some real apprehension around about the clock being wound back.
This might, of course, be dismissed as a set of metropolitan concerns. I doubt that’s true. Cities such as Toowoomba, Ipswich, Townsville, Rockhampton and others are increasingly promoting themselves as university towns, as creative and educational hubs. Some of the Brisbane v. the regions and elite v. populist stereotypes beloved of just about everyone on either side of the purported dividing line may be false, or at least much blurrier than usually conceived.
Still, the geographical and cultural spread of Queensland makes elections here hard to read – or rather, for those sitting in Brisbane, harder to read as the crow flies further. There are real gaps between social and cultural and economic interests in this big state which are difficult to bridge. Whether we end up with an LNP government holding fewer metropolitan seats than Labor, or a Labor government with a much diminished regional representation (or a minority government whose complexion is determined by rural and regional independents), the next state administration is going to find it more challenging to govern in the interests of all Queenslanders.
That’s particularly because – on both sides – the vision has been so barren.
Continue reading ‘Bridging the gap: What does it mean to be a Queenslander?’
Cross-posted from Marcus’ blog.
From my small air conditioned bubble in a sweltering Melbourne the abstract economic gloom of stock shocks and far away corporate collapses is getting less and less abstract with each passing day. Anecdotal reports of jobs drying up, businesses closing, incomes evaporating and people fast becoming un or underemployed are mounting around me.
It is probably a good time to remind myself just how much of the culture that I find interesting is the product not of the big budget top end of town but of the unique possibilities of the down side of the economic cycle. It seems obvious to me that in cultural policy – as with almost everything else – changing times call for changing approaches.
Yet the impending new realities have not gained much traction in our cultural debates. Over the last few months, I’ve been travelling up and down the east coast and dealing with arts agencies and organisations at various levels. I’ve been a little surprised at how little recognition there is that cultural policy – like most forms of government policy – can and must adapt and respond to economic conditions.
Each phase in the economic cycle creates a different set of cultural possibilites and problems.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Marcus Westbury: The culture of hard times’
As a bit of a sequel to Helen’s post on Radio National’s travails, I wanted to draw attention to the public consultation initiated by DBCDE on the government’s inquiry into the future of the ABC and SBS. For those who missed it, the discussion paper is here, and as Margaret Simons observes at Content Makers, the public submissions have now been published – and there are 2400 of them, which certainly suggests a lively interest in the direction of public broadcasting.
I was also interested to note that Derek Barry has written a post at Woolly Days on the submission from my QUT Creative Industries Faculty colleagues Terry Flew, Stuart Cunningham, Axel Bruns and Jason Wilson (now at Wollongong Uni). Drawing on some lessons from an ARC Linkage Project on citizen journalism (and folks might recall the YouDecide2007 site which was a centrepiece of the research), they argue that public broadcasting needs to be reframed as public service media.
Continue reading ‘Public broadcasting as public service media’
I wrote in an earlier post about the “summer of culture” feature at New Matilda. Ben Eltham has now wrapped up “the state of the cultural nation” with a thoughtful essay integrating the various pieces with some broader thoughts on cultural policy and culture and creativity in Australia.
As Eltham notes, mine has been one of the voices seeking to reframe the cultural policy debate. Although he and I wouldn’t agree on everything, we’re certainly coming from the same space. It’s very difficult to judge whether what is now becoming quite a well known critique is having much impact on government – in the funding bodies, and in Peter Garrett’s office.
Incidentally, I wonder what happened to the promise that the government would respond to the 2020 summit by the end of last year? If anything was going to indicate whether or not the Rudd government actually had some sort of integrated stance on cultural policy, it would have been the response to the Creative Australia stream report. But, intriguingly, the website seems to have rewritten history – a response is now promised “in the New Year”. There’s also not much sign of the webpage being used to facilitate further “submission of new ideas”. While I was among the (guarded) cynics at the time the 2020 summit was held, I nevertheless think it’s essential to continue to highlight the fact that it really will have been a stunt if its deliberations and recommendations are allowed to disappear. Something more definite in terms of a date by which the government would respond, and an opportunity to make submissions on the report might be starters. We’ll see.
Continue reading ‘Australian cultural policy; and whatever happened to the 2020 summit?’
It’s a bit of a hard ask to keep up with all the policy reviews the Rudd government has initiated. And they appear to be in the habit of releasing the results or closing deadlines for submissions well into the Christmas blah season – though whether that’s deliberate or not is another kettle of fish. Anyway, the response to the review of public broadcasting was by all accounts quite overwhelming. Some colleagues and friends of mine at QUT put in a submission – which you can read about here at Terry Flew’s blog.
The points made in Terry’s post might be enough to riff off, but I’d be interested in any case in opening a discussion on where public broadcasting should go. Continue reading ‘Future of public broadcasting’
[Cross-posted at GreensBlog]
So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?
Tim Hollo – Advisor to Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne
Yesterday, after a whirlwind six week campaign, Melbourne Uni and the National Academy of Music put out a statement the upshot of which is that the full 2009 program that the Academy had planned to run will now be run, with Brett Dean as Artistic Director, staying in its existing location, key staff remaining the same, and places to be offered to existing students. A new independent board will be appointed with a view to determining the Academy’s long-term programming.
Sounds an awful lot like a complete reversal of Peter Garrett’s decision to close the Academy on October 22. So how come the Minister’s spokesperson told AAP last night that
The Greens have got this entirely wrong… The government’s objectives have always been the continuation of elite classical music training into 2009 and beyond but with substantial changes to the way that is governed and administered, including new management and board. The intention was never that ANAM would close, but rather that the government would redirect its $2.5 million commitment to a new organisation from 2009. That will still happen.
It’s worth going through this story step by step to highlight the slow-motion backflip for what it is. Apologies for length, but I think it’s worth setting out the full story.
There’s been a bit of discussion about Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s defunding of the Australian National Academy of Music on another thread, so I think it probably warrants a post of its own.
Long time observers of arts and cultural policy in Australia won’t be surprised at various aspects of the debacle that constitutes the ANAM defunding. Several trends – all negative – are operating, and in effect what we have is bad policy by inertia, exacerbated by weak Ministerial decision making.
There’s the tension between excellence and equity, and Garrett arguably tried to defend his decision to close ANAM by a bit of dog whistling in his choice of words – “elite musical training”. Of course, given that little is known about what Melbourne University will actually offer through the Australian Institute of Music Performance, or what qualifications will be required of potential students, there’s not much to explicitly defend here, even if one were to accept the implicit premise. In his press conference, Garrett embarrassingly could give little or no information about the proposed replacement for ANAM, which is ironic given that ANAM’s supposed sin was one of ommission in reporting and planning. That takes us to the second default policy setting which has influenced this decision – the endless bureaucratic hurdles any institution has to jump in order to receive and retain federal funding. To put it in a nutshell, ANAM’s failure to meet the requirements set by the funding body appears to be more a matter of poor communication than anything else. What we have here is a case of bureaucrats mercilessly enforcing the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit – the decision actually acts to frustrate the aims of the policy.
Those of us whose hopes for a reinvigorated cultural policy from Labor have already proved to be in vain won’t be surprised by yet another disappointment. Continue reading ‘Peter Garrett and the ANAM defunding debacle’
I’m no climatologist, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen storms with as much force as we’ve now experienced in Brisbane and South East Queensland three times in four days, most recently about an hour ago, and with another one also accompanied by severe hail and dangerous winds apparently on the way yet again later on tonight.
Here are some images licenced under Creative Commons from flickr. Two aren’t actually of the most recent storms, but for those who aren’t used to a classic Brisbane storm, they might provide a bit of a lightning flash of illumination. Over at Circulating Library, there are also some contemporary photos to look at. Taking photos might be a tad risky, actually, as one of the two deaths from the storms has been a young man who unwisely tried to photograph a stormwater drain at Chermside on Sunday night. Via Stilgherrian, you can also have a squizzy at archived radar images of last night’s storms here. When I checked at around 5pm it was impossible to get on to the BOM site to check tonight’s storms on their way, and the site also couldn’t cope with the traffic just after the ABC weather at the end of the news.
courtesy of Garry’
courtesy of supernicko
courtesy of Michael Henderson
Republished from yesterday’s Crikey with permission.
The Australia Council, an organisation in almost constant flux, has again spun the bingo barrel and pulled out a new round of surprises in its funding announcements — this time in the theatre sector. Eleven new companies have been granted triennial funding by the Council’s Theatre Board, while the same number have had their funding axed.
The announcement continues a recent history of wrenching change in the Commonwealth’s arts funding agency. In 2005, then-CEO Jeniffer Bott pushed through an organisation-wide restructure (labelled a “refocussing”) that led to two of the Australia Council’s funding boards being abolished. Out went specific Boards to support new media and digital arts, and community arts. In came some impressive-sounding “community partnerships” and a special department called the “Inter-Arts Agency”.
As respected ANU academic Jennifer Craik has argued in her book Re-Visioning Arts and Cultural Policy the Bott restructure was not really about addressing the major issues facing the Australia Council and its client organisations. Instead, “the restructure was more about bureau politics than policy reform.”
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Ben Eltham: Australia Council changes bathwater, loses babies’
Marcus Westbury’s excellent series Not Quite Art returns to ABC1 tonight – @ 10pm, with a replay on ABC2 on Sunday @ 7pm and streamable on iview. Stilgherrian has more.
As no doubt everyone has noticed, there has been a vigorous discussion in comments about the latest Bill Henson brouhouha. I don’t want to comment explicitly on the issues raised by David Marr’s “revelation” that Henson had visited a primary school in St Kilda to scout for subjects for his photographs, because I honestly don’t think the debate’s much advanced over the last round, which was covered very extensively here at LP in a series of posts, and I haven’t shifted my own view. Except to note that I agree that David Marr is probably the person who should be brought to task for dealing unethically with Henson in his rush to find a salacious story to publicise his book, which was released today. I’m sure we’re quite sensitised now to the confection of “news” to help book sales after the unending Peter Costello sales job. As a professional journalist of long standing, Marr knows better than most how to manipulate a story, and perhaps it’s the ethics of his dealing with his subject that should also be questioned.
I did want to talk about one comment which really goes to the heart of the bigger issues around Henson’s art and his professional practice – and which when viewed from a long term perspective, I think explains more of what’s going on than the framing of the previous debate in terms of “freedom of speech”. Alison Croggon, who organised the petition to Kevin Rudd about Bill Henson’s images some time ago when they were seized by police from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Paddington, had this to say:
Alison Croggon, who organised an open letter supporting Henson from cultural delegates to the 2020 Summit, said the controversy also exposed distrust of the arts community.
“The thing that shocked me most of all about the debate was the perception that artists were above the law or were asking for special exemptions, but that was never the case,” she said. “There is a responsibility in the artistic community to address that.”
It has, of course, been addressed to some extent with the development of guidelines for artists working with minors by the Australia Council, after a request from Arts Minister Peter Garrett. But that, of course, is not as salacious a topic for the media than a beatup about putative pervs in schoolyards. Nevertheless, the disjunction between “the arts community” and publics who aren’t necessarily normally aware of its norms and practices is at the centre of all this. I didn’t know, for instance, that all manner of cultural and media industries folk seek permission regularly to utilise schools for casting, which has been the defence of Henson’s actions offered – see for example, this article in The Age by Peter Craven. A while back, my interest piqued by the whole Henson furore, I read American cultural historian Michael Kammen’s Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture.
Continue reading ‘Bill Henson, visual shock and the democratisation of art’
I’m not sure where it came from, but there’s been a bit of praise for the suburbs around the joint lately, and dissing of the dissers of the suburbs.
Age columnist Shaun Carney attracted a bit of ridicule recently in some quarters when he wrote a column making the rather tenuous and certainly debatable claim that the Rudd government faced a delicate balancing act between inner city and suburban voters on climate change.
The article itself was entitled “Leftists who sneer at suburbs betray Labor”.
Carney mentioned that he’d been spending time recently in Carrum Downs “for family reasons”. Writing as if he were an anthropologist in unfamilar territory, he informed his readers:
You cannot get to the suburb by train. There are connecting buses from Frankston that snake their way through the suburbs in between, making it a very long journey. It would be very difficult to get around if you lived in Carrum Downs and did not have a car.
Now, the funny thing about this whole “latte left v. suburban real Australians” thing is that I’ve never met any “leftists who sneer at suburbs” and I’ve met a lot of lefties in my life. Having read a really silly column – whose author I’ve fortunately forgotten – in the SMH earlier this year where the writer really did manage to convey the idea that no Fairfax reader had ever stepped foot west of some imaginary line running through, say, Marrickville, I am willing to believe that there are some very urbane snobs around the shop. But I’m not sure they’re actually lefties in any meaningful sense. Small l liberal toffs who vote Labor, perhaps. It might also be the case that I have a different view on all this because I grew up in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, and though I now live in the “inner city”, there really hasn’t been any such thing in this town in the same sense as in Sydney or Melbourne.
Continue reading ‘Cities and suburbs and transcending the dichotomy – creatively’
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