Abstract
Common understandings of creativity reduce it to a flash of insight or to a personal characteristic of a highly-gifted person. This paper develops an alternative way of understanding creativity departing from a series of interviews with local painters by conceptualizing creativity as a process of articulating and getting caught up in a “meshwork” of materials, places, spaces and social encounters. Using assemblage theoretical framework, my perspective examines how different elements (both human and non-human) are brought together in flows of connections. Looking at the art world this paper takes into account also the materiality of the creative process and inquiry into how the materiality of working materials (paint, coal, brushes etc.) and the materiality of the space affect and are affected in the creativity assemblage. As such, departing from an anthropocentric perspective on artistic creativity, that takes only in consideration the meanings attributed by people (especially the artist) to forms, social uses and trajectories of artistic objects.
Highlights
Often, common stereotypes tend to link creativity to innovation, originality, spontaneous and solitary processes
Even though we tend to talk about creativity in one way or another on a daily basis (“creative work”, “creative class”, “creative city”, “creative writing”, “creative thinking”, “creative personality” etc.) it remains an almost absent concept from the social sciences
The theoretical framework and methodology section presents the proposed research designed followed in the empirical process of this paper, followed by the results section which presents the main insights of the empirical process, tracing the flows of materiality and social flows in artists discourses and mapping the creativity assemblage
Summary
Common stereotypes tend to link creativity to innovation, originality, spontaneous and solitary processes. Demystifying creativity: an assemblage perspective towards artistic creativity focus on understanding the institutions of creativity, the creative economy and creativity industries (Florida, 2004; Hartley, 2005; Landry, 2000), the creativity of social action (Joas, 1990), creative society (Reimeris, 2016), creative city (Brzozowska, 2016), everyday creativity (Richards, 2010), art and creativity (Becker, 1984; O’Sullivan, 2006; Ingold, 2010; Juzefovič, 2016). The theoretical framework and methodology section presents the proposed research designed followed in the empirical process of this paper, followed by the results section which presents the main insights of the empirical process, tracing the flows of materiality and social flows in artists discourses and mapping the creativity assemblage. The final section of this paper summarizes the results of this work and draws conclusions
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