Ecologies, Econo­mies, Creativity & Crisis

In what ways can we orient the knowledge practices of art and design in order to provide alternate responses to the reductive, simplifying metrics of market economies? How might we redefine utility and invoke prefigurative practices for thought and action that are preconditioned by sympathy, empathy, intimacy, or even love? From the front lines of a supposed “creative” economy we might seek to cultivate a hopeful insurgency that says “no” to insipid play, counterfeit transformation and the industrial-professional supposition that singularly, monetary ends require or are justified by naïve means. Earth species Homo creatus economicus is a contradictory mob, at once hyper-productive and creatively destructive. Ignorance and inaction in the face of such ambiguity derails collective expressions of the conditions of ecological and creative crises — crises that are perhaps both symptoms of more difficult to diagnose, incipient maladies besetting the earth and its peoples.
In this talk, Jamie Allen will employ the conceptual rubric of “infrastructure” to discuss potential activations of material ecologies and media technologies as creative practices. The talk will give an overview of developments in critical media application and theory in the context of the Critical Media Lab and Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures in Basel, Switzerland. We will also talk through and review the collaborative activities of these groups with the Media Lab at SciencesPo, Paris as regards the context of the Reset Modernity! exhibition at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the follow-up workshop series in Shanghai and related publications.