Towards alternative ecologies of encounter: crafting a vital materialist perspective of cultural entrepreneurship
Type
doctoral thesis
Date Issued
2021-09-20
Author(s)
Abstract
In the wake of an aesthetic capitalism, the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have become a growing and thriving sector of Western and other economies. Cultural entrepreneurial processes propel the CCI and their regime of aesthetic innovation and constitute constantly evolving art worlds. My dissertation focuses on the material-affective dimensions of these art worlds. It explores cultural entrepreneurial processes from a vital materialist perspective in order to understand the role of sociomaterial relations and affective capacities in the production and transformation of these art worlds as well as their critical-political underpinnings. To address these research concerns empirically, my thesis conceptualizes entrepreneurial processes as heterogeneous assemblages that articulate and challenge sociomaterial orders and create dynamic ecologies of encounter between different affective bodies. Empirically, it turns to the case of a Swiss art enterprise and adopts an affective ethnography for the data creation and analysis. In the first analysis, the dissertation focuses on the sociomaterial relations in the entrepreneurial process of the art enterprise and one of its key projects. It theorizes this process as one of experimentation and argues that the cultural entrepreneurial process moves and sustains by articulating a fragile and dynamic experimental system. The analysis then carves out the microdynamics of this process of entrepreneurial experimentation and emphasizes the capacity of experimentation to create new regional ontologies. The vital materialist model of entrepreneurial experimentation contributes to a more material understanding of how cultural entrepreneurial processes navigate agency and constraint and create institutional agency to innovate art worlds. By highlighting how cultural entrepreneurial experimentation re-matters reality and reconfigures the systems of self-others-things that organize our everyday experience, the analysis also points towards the onto-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship. The second analysis focuses on the bodily encounters and affective capacities created by the art projects of the enterprise. It shows how the cultural entrepreneurial process articulates a different ecology of intensities by fostering ecological couplings that subvert dominant modes of ordering. The analysis further elaborates on how the entrepreneurial process draws upon an interplay of four affective tactics to move the affective capacities of bodies towards enacting and sustaining this alternative ecology of encounters. The analysis hence contributes to a more embodied understanding of the relational work which cultural entrepreneurs engage in to create momentum and support for their entrepreneurial initiatives and shift institutional boundaries. Ultimately, it argues that this ecology of encounter as an affective commons produces different collectively shared and fostered affective relations that point towards the ethico-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship.
Abstract (De)
In the wake of an aesthetic capitalism, the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have become a growing and thriving sector of Western and other economies. Cultural entrepreneurial processes propel the CCI and their regime of aesthetic innovation and constitute constantly evolving art worlds. My dissertation focuses on the material-affective dimensions of these art worlds. It explores cultural entrepreneurial processes from a vital materialist perspective in order to understand the role of sociomaterial relations and affective capacities in the production and transformation of these art worlds as well as their critical-political underpinnings. To address these research concerns empirically, my thesis conceptualizes entrepreneurial processes as heterogeneous assemblages that articulate and challenge sociomaterial orders and create dynamic ecologies of encounter between different affective bodies. Empirically, it turns to the case of a Swiss art enterprise and adopts an affective ethnography for the data creation and analysis. In the first analysis, the dissertation focuses on the sociomaterial relations in the entrepreneurial process of the art enterprise and one of its key projects. It theorizes this process as one of experimentation and argues that the cultural entrepreneurial process moves and sustains by articulating a fragile and dynamic experimental system. The analysis then carves out the microdynamics of this process of entrepreneurial experimentation and emphasizes the capacity of experimentation to create new regional ontologies. The vital materialist model of entrepreneurial experimentation contributes to a more material understanding of how cultural entrepreneurial processes navigate agency and constraint and create institutional agency to innovate art worlds. By highlighting how cultural entrepreneurial experimentation re-matters reality and reconfigures the systems of self-others-things that organize our everyday experience, the analysis also points towards the onto-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship. The second analysis focuses on the bodily encounters and affective capacities created by the art projects of the enterprise. It shows how the cultural entrepreneurial process articulates a different ecology of intensities by fostering ecological couplings that subvert dominant modes of ordering. The analysis further elaborates on how the entrepreneurial process draws upon an interplay of four affective tactics to move the affective capacities of bodies towards enacting and sustaining this alternative ecology of encounters. The analysis hence contributes to a more embodied understanding of the relational work which cultural entrepreneurs engage in to create momentum and support for their entrepreneurial initiatives and shift institutional boundaries. Ultimately, it argues that this ecology of encounter as an affective commons produces different collectively shared and fostered affective relations that point towards the ethico-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship.
Language
English
Keywords
Kreativwirtschaft
Entreprepeurship
Organisationslehre
Affekt
Neuer Materialismus
Art
Intervention
EDIS-5128
Affect theory
Kunstintervention
Cultural and creative industries
Art intervention
Vital materialism
Organization studies
Cultural entrepreneurship
Politics
HSG Classification
not classified
HSG Profile Area
None
Publisher
Universität St. Gallen
Publisher place
St.Gallen
Official URL
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
264355
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
Dis5128.pdf
Size
27.89 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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