Topic outline

  • General Information and Lectures

    Welcome to "Creative Professional Life"!

    Throughout the following weeks, you will attend three different lectures (24.4./8.5./15.5.) with everybody, as well as short clinics (8-29.5.) on important aspects of creative professional life.


    Here you can find the platform to share notes, feedback, or discussions during the three lecture days:

    CPL Figma: https://www.figma.com

    In case of any questions, please contact the Teaching Assistants of the course:

    Monika Hauck: monika.hauck(a)aalto.fi

    Aska Mayer: aska.mayer(a)aalto.fi


    GENERAL LECTURES:

    24.4. 

    9.15–12.00 / Jeti - A208d, A Grid

    Introduction of the course

    On Creative Work in contemporary capitalism lecture by Eetu Viren and Taina Rajanti,

    Creative work presents many kinds of challenges. Some are enticing and part of the charm of being a creative worker - some are a damn pain in the ass, like the precarity and constant need to compete against your friends for livelihood. This lecture is about contextualizing creative work in the contemporary capitalist system - and also contextualizing several of the challenges, which turn out not to be arbitrary or personal but systemic. We will also talk about why and how contemporary capitalism is different from the previous era, and what this means for work, especially creative work.

    Sources: Contemporary capitalism and creative work   

    Enzo Rullani: Modernita sostenibile   

     Michel Foucault: Intellectuals and Power - discussion with Gilles Deleuze https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-michel-foucault-intellectuals-and-power   

     Gilles Deleuze: Postscript on the Societies of Control https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control   

    Paolo Virno: A Grammar of the Multitude/ suomeksi: Väen kielioppi  In English in interwebs as pdf: https://archive.org/details/PaoloVirnoAGrammarOfTheMultitude   

     Maurizio Lazzarato, Construction of Cultural labour Market  https://eipcp.net/policies/cci/lazzarato/en.html   

    Andrea Fumagalli & Cristina Morini: Life put to work: Towards a life theory of valye  https://ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/10-3morinifumagalli.pdf   

     For those who read italian I can also recommend Morini’s book Vite lavorate (2022)   

    Veronica Gago: La potencia feminista. O el deseo de cambiarlo todo, https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/TDS_map55_La%20potencia%20feminista_web.pdf  (I think this has been translated into English with the title ”The Feminist International” but I am not sure whether it really is the same book   

    Precarias a la deriva: https://traficantes.net/libros/la-deriva  The book has also been translated into Finnish ”Hoivaajien kapina”  (Parts also in English, which you can find by googling Precarias a la Deriva)   

    Eetu Viren: Vallankumouksen asennot  

    Eetu Viren & Jussi Vähämäki: Seutu joka ei ole paikka   

    Christian Marazzi: Il posto dei calzini/Capital and Affects,   But also everything else Marazzi has ever written, I believe all of his books have been translated into English, and some of them into Finnish 

    Jenny Odell: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019)   

    Taina would also like to mention some MA theses she knows (having been the supervisor), dealing in interesting ways on the issues of creative work. (MA theses also are a good source of pretty recent readings on the issues they discuss.):

    Valeria Nekhaeva: The Risk of Art. Valeria used the risk-analysis performed by banks and businesses to calculate her possibility of “making it” as an artist, and discussing the risks involved in choosing arts as your field of work. The analysis also formed a conceptual art-work in itself.   

    Paola Jalili Villaroel: Office Aesthetics: Labor in the Contemporary Workplace.  Paola studies the concrete physical objects and spatial settings set up to control and gender labor in contemporary offices.    

    Ana Fernandez: “I’m Fine, I’m Just Tired.” Performing femininity and invisible labour.  Ana looks at her own experience working in a creative agency and becoming overloaded with the “invisible”, gendered caring, mediating, sustaining work. She also looks for the manners and values and mechanisms through which especially women learn to perform this work - and at some tools we use to cope with the overload, like memes (humour).   

    Saara Mahbouba: Self Performance - Performing Identity and The Self as a Form of Labor  Saara asks a central question, why and how has the necessity to “perform a desirable self” become so central in contemporary work and especially in arts.  

    Saara has also published a version of the thesis as a book with Gladys Camilo  Saara Mahbouba & Gladys Camilo: Performing A Lifetime https://goodpress.co.uk/products/performing-a-lifetime-by-saara-mahbouba-gladys-camilo   

     Naya Magaliou: Iterations and Moments of Work and Unwork: Some Texts and Some Images.  Naya studies what “work” means for contemporary artist, looking at her own ways and reasons for working, and also those of several known artists. She asks questions like is art work if it is so fun to do it - or is art a waste of time when one earns nothing? I find she manages in many ways to “change the way we see things” - for instance seeing all making (thus also art) as a heterotopy, something that is open and expanding, not limited and scarce. Instead of wasting time, art makes time. 

    Also Naya’s thesis will be published as a book, coming out any day now!



    8.5. 

    9.15–12.00 / Jeti - A208d, A Grid

    Grant Writing and Funding Opportunities

    by Garbutt Gwyndaf, Mervi Lipponen, and Hanna Karkku

    15.5. 

    9.15–12.00 / Jeti - A208d, A Grid

    Copyrights and Agreements

    by Maria Rehbinder

    13.15-17.00