Today we see the Corporation, through the eyes of the law, as an individual—groups of boardroom office-junkies functioning as primary organs in the artificial life of their citizen-company. They feed it cash and raw materials, develop its protocols, and pour over battle plans for its unlikely survival in the largest and most influential warzone ever created in the history of humankind: the Open Market. If our company grows, the highschool lunchroom is abuzz with desire to devour frozen pizza and mozzarella sticks at the table of champions. However, popularity is unforgiving: there is nowhere to go but down. Our citizen-corporation has not equipped itself to handle banishment from the popular crowd—and the fear is palpable; for if there is even a whisper of decline, a mere suggestion of a curved margin, the ugly wind of abandon blows fierce. Climates of insti-spooked mass-exodus inspire a posture of market grabbing risk diversification, oft-justifying near criminal schemes to preemptively divert a comprehensive, inevitable collapse. Business is business, after all.
Enter "creativity" and "innovation". An age old remnant of the R&D division, these two abstract notions run amuck in the memos of companies who are beginning to overtly reinvest in (someone's) creative capacity to consistently pique growth. At a time of great environmental and economic issue, the landscape of our mandatory, systemic, perpetual growth welcomes the inclusion of this functional re-brand to combat an ever-escalating consumer demand for newness. Yet while recognition of the general value-added by such creative individuals to reveal new methods and products is on the face of it positive, after two weeks of wearing our pajamas to work and a down-payment on that new townhome, those pesky little intuitions start creeping back up the spine... Is this the best use of
our creative talent? Are there no other options for the right-brained?
Richard Florida (author, Flight of the Creative Class, 2007) has been hailing the money-making value of the "creative" in modern business. As a consultant for some of the largest companies the world over, he has helped to raise the position on 'creative capital' to a no-brainer. How could creative people not help businesses think of innovative avenues unexplored? As Florida constructs this new category, it is difficult to ignore the irony of his effectively securing for himself the very same position he's invented. As an author, lecturer, and professor of ideas, the man has become Creative Class citizen number one. Perhaps the (profound) collateral damage of this mind-shift in thinking about artists may have caught our attention, had we forgotten not to care. College tuitions rise and dwindling enclaves for artists' survival thin evermore; the 'creative' individual in our society becomes re-branded right under our noses. As the market-beast begins to wield significant dictation over our cultural producers, we are offered to dodge a double edged sword. As it swings, artists are forced to submit to careers in big business, creating super-spindoctors rather than exposing them. As it swings, a shivering certainty that should they be removed from this new creative MO, hardship for the ro-nin artist will become even greater. The pressures of money-flow homogenization wave to us like red flags of surrender, taunting us to reprove the value of the artist in society. At this late stage, it is alarmingly clear that support for artists who serve no master is imperative if we value the clarity of perspective that they bring to us in the face of globalizing conformity.
What shall become of a society which can find no use for citizens patrolling its boundaries, looking in?
Timothy O'Malley is a career wanderer, artist, writer, and lover of cyclical sociology. He has found home in Philadelphia, Belize, Rochester, and soon to be Portland, OR. He can be reached with any comments at tim@timomalleydesign.com.
