Towards alternative ecologies of encounter: crafting a vital materialist perspective of cultural entrepreneurship
Lüthy, Christina LU
(2021)
- Abstract
- In the wake of an aesthetic capitalism, the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have become a growing and thriving sector of Western and other economies. Cultural entrepreneurial processes propel the CCI and their regime of aesthetic innovation and constitute constantly evolving art worlds. My dissertation focuses on the material-affective dimensions of these art worlds. It explores cultural entrepreneurial processes from a vital materialist perspective in order to understand the role of sociomaterial relations and affective capacities in the production and transformation of these art worlds as well as their critical-political underpinnings. To address these research concerns empirically, my thesis conceptualizes entrepreneurial... (More)
- In the wake of an aesthetic capitalism, the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have become a growing and thriving sector of Western and other economies. Cultural entrepreneurial processes propel the CCI and their regime of aesthetic innovation and constitute constantly evolving art worlds. My dissertation focuses on the material-affective dimensions of these art worlds. It explores cultural entrepreneurial processes from a vital materialist perspective in order to understand the role of sociomaterial relations and affective capacities in the production and transformation of these art worlds as well as their critical-political underpinnings. To address these research concerns empirically, my thesis conceptualizes entrepreneurial processes as heterogeneous assemblages that articulate and challenge sociomaterial orders and create dynamic ecologies of encounter between different affective bodies. Empirically, it turns to the case of a Swiss art enterprise and adopts an affective ethnography for the data creation and analysis. In the first analysis, the dissertation focuses on the sociomaterial relations in the entrepreneurial process of the art enterprise and one of its key projects. It theorizes this process as one of experimentation and argues that the cultural entrepreneurial process moves and sustains by articulating a fragile and dynamic experimental system. The analysis then carves out the microdynamics of this process of entrepreneurial experimentation and emphasizes the capacity of experimentation to create new regional ontologies. The vital materialist model of entrepreneurial experimentation contributes to a more material understanding of how cultural entrepreneurial processes navigate agency and constraint and create institutional agency to innovate art worlds. By highlighting how cultural entrepreneurial experimentation re-matters reality and reconfigures the systems of self-others-things that organize our everyday experience, the analysis also points towards the onto-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship. The second analysis focuses on the bodily encounters and affective capacities created by the art projects of the enterprise. It shows how the cultural entrepreneurial process articulates a different ecology of intensities by fostering ecological couplings that subvert dominant modes of ordering. The analysis further elaborates on how the entrepreneurial process draws upon an interplay of four affective tactics to move the affective capacities of bodies towards enacting and sustaining this alternative ecology of encounters. The analysis hence contributes to a more embodied understanding of the relational work which cultural entrepreneurs engage in to create momentum and support for their entrepreneurial initiatives and shift institutional boundaries. Ultimately, it argues that this ecology of encounter as an affective commons produces different collectively shared and fostered affective relations that point towards the ethico-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/db6d70ea-3847-4c00-bd8c-6bb152397d40
- author
- Lüthy, Christina
LU
- supervisor
- publishing date
- 2021-08-10
- type
- Thesis
- publication status
- published
- subject
- publisher
- University of St Gallen
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- db6d70ea-3847-4c00-bd8c-6bb152397d40
- alternative location
- https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/api/download/urn%3Anbn%3Ach%3Abel-2307553%3ADis5128.pdf/Dis5128.pdf
- date added to LUP
- 2024-09-20 14:30:01
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:32:27
@phdthesis{db6d70ea-3847-4c00-bd8c-6bb152397d40,
abstract = {{In the wake of an aesthetic capitalism, the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have become a growing and thriving sector of Western and other economies. Cultural entrepreneurial processes propel the CCI and their regime of aesthetic innovation and constitute constantly evolving art worlds. My dissertation focuses on the material-affective dimensions of these art worlds. It explores cultural entrepreneurial processes from a vital materialist perspective in order to understand the role of sociomaterial relations and affective capacities in the production and transformation of these art worlds as well as their critical-political underpinnings. To address these research concerns empirically, my thesis conceptualizes entrepreneurial processes as heterogeneous assemblages that articulate and challenge sociomaterial orders and create dynamic ecologies of encounter between different affective bodies. Empirically, it turns to the case of a Swiss art enterprise and adopts an affective ethnography for the data creation and analysis. In the first analysis, the dissertation focuses on the sociomaterial relations in the entrepreneurial process of the art enterprise and one of its key projects. It theorizes this process as one of experimentation and argues that the cultural entrepreneurial process moves and sustains by articulating a fragile and dynamic experimental system. The analysis then carves out the microdynamics of this process of entrepreneurial experimentation and emphasizes the capacity of experimentation to create new regional ontologies. The vital materialist model of entrepreneurial experimentation contributes to a more material understanding of how cultural entrepreneurial processes navigate agency and constraint and create institutional agency to innovate art worlds. By highlighting how cultural entrepreneurial experimentation re-matters reality and reconfigures the systems of self-others-things that organize our everyday experience, the analysis also points towards the onto-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship. The second analysis focuses on the bodily encounters and affective capacities created by the art projects of the enterprise. It shows how the cultural entrepreneurial process articulates a different ecology of intensities by fostering ecological couplings that subvert dominant modes of ordering. The analysis further elaborates on how the entrepreneurial process draws upon an interplay of four affective tactics to move the affective capacities of bodies towards enacting and sustaining this alternative ecology of encounters. The analysis hence contributes to a more embodied understanding of the relational work which cultural entrepreneurs engage in to create momentum and support for their entrepreneurial initiatives and shift institutional boundaries. Ultimately, it argues that this ecology of encounter as an affective commons produces different collectively shared and fostered affective relations that point towards the ethico-political capacity of cultural entrepreneurship.}},
author = {{Lüthy, Christina}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{08}},
publisher = {{University of St Gallen}},
title = {{Towards alternative ecologies of encounter: crafting a vital materialist perspective of cultural entrepreneurship}},
url = {{https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/api/download/urn%3Anbn%3Ach%3Abel-2307553%3ADis5128.pdf/Dis5128.pdf}},
year = {{2021}},
}