IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Our cities constitute the heart and main place of refuge for creative work, whether it is art, theatre, music, journalism, writing or film. Working in those industries is associated with a bohemian lifestyle that includes project-based employment, detached relationships or informalities, individuality and levels of freedom or autonomy. In order to succeed in the creative industries, a career more commonly starts with poor working conditions, low payment and multiple jobs to secure subsistence, while others believe the journey to a career in creativity would be the reward. Due to the advancement of technologies, an abundance of new jobs in media industries are the advertised artists of modern city work. Although some working areas are merely bureaucratic or technical, freelance and self-employed labour envisioned as the ‘model creative entrepreneur’ is the most common form of employment in the cultural and media industries. What strategies keep labour in modern cultural industries alienated and how does it affect workers? How are ‘creative standards’ still upheld and what conditions does modern media work face? How are workers able to resist exacerbating labour cuts? In my research, I’m looking into the UK and German film industries, where freelance and self-employed workers are balancing ‘creativity’, autonomy, increasing workload and precarity due to financial cuts. The aim is to provide a hitherto inimitable perspective in relation to affective, immaterial and cognitive labour from inside the industry, in order to identify improvements to working conditions and to challenge political, economic and technological development that produce social injustices. The findings will help me to challenge contemporary work exploitation strategies and biases in the cultural industries that are concentrated in our cities. This will be an essential factor for the sustainability of creative autonomy in a livable city, given the susceptible disruptions in accumulating crises.