This lecture comprises a critical overview of the leading paradigms in creative labour studies 1999-2019 with a particular but not exclusive focus on the UK for reasons of the emphasis on the creativity dispositif which became such an emblematic feature of New Labour governmentality 1997-2007. The lecture reflects on the paradigm of cultural policy, it then considers in more depth 'places of creative labour', followed by a consideration of the role which art theory has played in extending the debate into the politics of precarity. However, the main thread of the lecture is to query the 'place of the object' so that its ‘social life’ can be foregrounded and animated politically while also being subject to greater analytical scrutiny.

The seminar is public, and we welcome everybody.

Programme: Aesthetic Seminars Spring 2019