[csaa-forum] Creativity, Communication, and Cultural value

Danny Butt db at dannybutt.net
Fri Sep 24 10:51:35 CST 2004


Hi Melissa/all

Yes, I'm referring to the term as coined in the paper Ned Rossiter and I
gave at CSAA 2002 and circulated online, though I forgot that CSAA-forum
wasn't around then :7. The paper is available at:

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0212/msg00057.html

We identify the QI (from the Californian Ideology) as a very specific
ideological platform outlined most clearly in Hartley and Cunningham's
"Creative Industries - From Blue Poles to Fat Pipes" in 2001, where creative
industries is positioned as superseding a "subsidised arts" whose time has
passed. Of course - as I've been careful to point out since - there is a
wide diversity of work in this field undertaken within QUT (not to mention
UQ and at Griffith) but nevertheless there are a few heavily stereotyped
positions that circulate in Australian cultural studies and this is a pretty
identifiable one that has in my view been influential in redefining the
terrain. 

What scholars make of this legacy - including those in queensland; or from
there like myself; or even the original protagonists - is something else :).
I argue that it's still useful to identify QI as a general approach
indentifiably descended from certain debates in Australian cultural studies
around theoreticism, the "policy moment", political economy, and a
valorisation of consumption. In doing that I don't try and divorce myself
from the approach (I have produced work with clear QI tendencies and will
continue to) or claim that it's not useful - sorry if I've offended anyone
or not been clear. My interest here is in trying to suggest certain blind
spots in identifiable ways of thinking (QI, art theory, etc.) that can only
be overcome through an interdisciplinary approaches, and this brings it's
own set of problems, but in any case I think it's a mistake to forget about
the way that strong polemics such as "blue poles to fat pipes" have shaped
the institutional and conceptual fields in which we work.

Regards,

Danny

 




On 9/24/04 9:49 AM, "Melissa Gregg" <m.gregg at uq.edu.au> wrote:

> danny, 
> 
> you might like to explain to the list what you mean by the term
> "queensland ideology" for those unfamiliar with it - the quotation marks
> are pointing out that this is your own term, right? having survived the
> transition to queensland without any obvious initiation rites, i'm
> wondering how useful it is to promote this term amongst the otherwise
> critical concerns you're talking about. i doubt whether a new generation
> of researchers working in CI and cultural studies in QLD are helped by
> it, and in fact many of the students here seem to me to be doing
> sophisticated work in the areas you're interested in, not least because
> they are negotiating and testing inherited research legacies.
> 
> 
> melissa
> 
> _______________________________________
> 
> csaa-forum
> discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
> 
> www.csaa.asn.au

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