Creative Industries sterilise creativity

Gregor Kosi

I don’t really like the idea of creative industries or the creative economy. It is just another word for using cultural production to make profit. The city authorities are thinking about us as a big potential in this way, i.e. that we could deliver more creative satisfaction to the general public. However, I believe Pekarna won’t change in this direction even after the reconstruction. We will probably have more shiny, happy spaces and better production opportunities but we have to remain very political, which means we have to open up these questions for public debate. I don’t believe that culture is able to change anything. Culture helps people forget how they are really living during the week. Culture is just another word for sleeping pills. Culture can change something only with a strong statement, only when it brings responsibility to the audience. So if we are talking about creative industries, my answer always is – bringing the audience to face their responsibility. This means that the audience is not just a silent part of what is happening on the stage but that they are completely involved and that after the event they really think about it, that they do not have the impression that somebody else thought about it instead of them. In other words, we are becoming part of the creative industries, at least the municipality hopes so: they expect that within the context of the European Capital of Culture we will provide them with the „cultural goods,“ whatever that means, and they will sell more hotel beds as a result. But we have our own plan and for us this is the most important thing. In the system called capitalism the equations are very simple: culture can only make money when it satisfies the majority of the audiences. Places like Pekarna do not satisfy the majority of the audiences, nor is it what we try to do. Moreover, culture cannot help the economy in the time called crisis. This crisis is artificial, it is not something natural or normal, nor is it something that we, the normal people, should help to solve. I don’t think this large burden can or should be placed on the shoulders of culture. It has to be solved by those who caused it; culture won’t help. Culture could only become sterile, castrated, without a sense of humour.

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Gregor Kosi

Gregor Kosi

Director of Pekarna Magdalenske mreže in Maribor, Slovenia

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