The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude

Here, art sociologist Pascal Gielen examines the notion that the global art economy--with its ever-renewable youth quota, its gender imbalance, flexible working hours and short-term contracts (or lack of contracts)--is wholly congruent with the worst aspirations of late capitalism, and is ripe for economic exploitation. Conscious that art also offers real liberties, Gielen also proposes alternative models and argues for a recognition of the values implied by the creative process, rather than by the subtle coercions of post-Fordist production imperatives to which we are all subject.