Passion without Objects. Young Graduates and the Politics of Temporary Art Spaces

Ferreri, M.; Graziano, V.

Abstract

This paper addresses the position of young arts graduates seeking to respond to the unequal access and precarity of jobs in the cultural sector by establishing artist-led temporary spaces. With the increasing dissemination of the discourse of pop-up urban uses in the United Kingdom since 2008, former genealogies of autonomous self-organised spaces intersect with the urban agendas of public commissioners and private actors. Following a long-established critique of the “creative industries” and recent studies of working conditions in the sector, this paper brings together critical textual analysis of specialized press and policy documents and a series of in-depth interviews with a young arts graduate collective involved in setting up a pop-up space in London. Our research shows how in the context of low-budget public commissions in affluent areas of central London artists are encouraged to translate their passion for autonomous, self-organised practice into dominant discourses of artistic “community provision” and place marketing.

Citation

Ferreri, M., & Graziano, V. (2014). Passion without Objects. Young Graduates and the Politics of Temporary Art Spaces. Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, 45(2), 85-101. https://doi.org/10.4000/rsa.1271

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Oct 14, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 12, 2018
• Journal: Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques : RS&A.
• Print ISSN: 1782-1592
• Electronic ISSN: 2033-7485
• Publisher: Université catholique de Louvain, Unité d'anthropologie et de sociologie
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 85-101
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rsa.1271
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1400678