Comments on: The State of the Industry

By: ap

ap — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:07:35 +0000

well i am very interested in the up coming conference, so will try to keep track of things here. the proposed topics and methods sound excellent

i am interested too in your comments about frankie / social networking:

along with your accurate comments about networks and the employment landscape, i’d add the observation that it creates a kind of an expectation regarding ‘collegality / friendship’ which we are under increasing pressure to live up to. if you agree to sign up to someone’s network (by adding them on facebook etc.), does that mean you also sign up to be on call for their tight deadlines for copy or ideas for grant applications or references? how we pass on the ‘high pressure’ associated with cultural labour to those we’re networked to is interesting to me.

in my time volunteering on projects like this is not art – and since then – i have been disappointed / frustrated with the refusal to ask for/demand more reasonable timelines and workloads amongst ourselves. i see less of this in the academic context (a few deadline hating colleagues aside ). working across diy/volunteer cultural sites and the academy i am increasingly aware how *time* (to think, to draft, to work) is a privilege not often granted.

(frankie article is a case in point! i received an email asking if i was interested in being interviewed and (from memory) was given a day to respond…)

By: glen

glen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:32:10 +0000

the frankie writer and i exchanged emails about this article, she didn’t let me know I wasn’t needed. guess i am not sexxxy enough.

you may be interested in the 2015 report/project at UWS as one university’s response to dealing with the generational shifts that will occur in the industry over the next several years. the report is written as if omg aging population of academics! but it is a constant process, not a one off crisis… neoliberal managerialism…

By: Jason W

Jason W — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:13:35 +0000

The comments above are all very well, but shouldn’t you be talking about the hott doodz in Frankie?

By: MC

MC — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:30:52 +0000

Yes Rach. Exactly. One idea we have already is to have a couple of respondents at the end of each day who speak from outside academia in just this way – people who might open up the terms of debate and further displace the established ways of approaching issues/ problems/ challenges given how they manifest across institutions.

But to the extent that we can program this depends on people’s willingness to volunteer. Hopefully there will be participation throughout the three days that reflect these kinds of crossover too.

By: Rachel O'Reilly

Rachel O'Reilly — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:40:53 +0000

i.e. the alliance of academic and non-academic ‘cultural work’ perspectives with volitional and systemic investments in/commitments to the terrain, arguments and achievements of such an event would be in many ways different from the official map of academia-industry alliances. I think my post above just expressed hope that some element of programming would account for this rather obvious point I realise I just made here, and not there.

By: Rachel O'Reilly

Rachel O'Reilly — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:58:53 +0000

I like this idea. An ideas and strategy state of the industry conference specific to academia. Given this:
“While we don’t intend to dwell on the politics of generationalism, we do think there is a distinctiveness to the experiences of those who have entered the university as students and employees since the 1990s.”
And this:
“…the whole issue has me thinking about the alliances developing across different industries — how a new generation is developing a profile in the media sphere despite the slow institutional change in the work contexts they navigate.”
[which is not new at all, just the instrumentality as you mention more visible]
…I am expecting it might also be useful to interweave the platform with strategy-educated cultural workers, art workers, non-profits whose work is very much aligned with / parallel to/informed by, or indeed counter-formed by academic research, who are aware of the first point, above, indeed deal with it everyday, and bring ‘industry’ (and by industry I actually mean ‘cultural work’) perspective on the academic context. i.e. Those who watch their own generation (including themselves) fall in and out of the academic industry in pursuit of their commitments to cultural work. It would be very important to frame such contributions not as examples of “refusal” of academic constraint -but of an approach that entails a broader commitment to cultural work that refuses predetermination by states of industry. Of course need a better adjective than refuses. ‘Navigates?’