The work of the creator and the cultural manager, under debate

Thinking about cultural management from a critical perspective as a “productive” action capable of generating social change is the objective of the international colloquium that 17, the Institute of Critical Studies, convenes and carries out from January 23 to next Saturday in the Tlatelolco University Cultural Center (CCUT), in person, and open to the public through the social networks of the organizing organization.

The International Colloquium “For a Critical Management of Culture. Management as Production”, which brings together cultural scholars and thinkers from different latitudes of the world and from a wide spectrum of disciplines, started with the conference. “Cultural emergencies and indignation: manage them?”, by the anthropologist and culture critic Néstor García Canclini, after the welcome offered by Benjamín Mayer Foulkes, founding director of 17, Institute of Critical Studies, and Leonora Cróquer Pedrón, coordinator scholar of the colloquium

In an interview with this newspaper, Leonora Cróquer, a doctor in Hispanic literature, stressed that the central theme of the meeting is to debate from different positions the deontology of cultural production, beyond economic and administrative practices in the spheres of the State and the market.

“The cultural manager and the creators must be detonators of change in our societies, not only mediators between the action of the State, the public and the cultural market,” he said.

These ideas are born or inspired by two great thinkers, without exhausting themselves, on the one hand, Walter Benjamin, whose reflection revolves around the nature and destiny of the author, of the creator, who focuses his work not only on the product but also on the means of production; and on the other hand, the idea of ​​Giorgio Agamben, in “Poiesis y praxis”, for whom “Man on earth has a poetic condition; that is to say, productive”, generator of initiative, emphasizes Cróquer.

For Dr. Cróquer Pedrón, in global and local scenarios as complex as the current ones, “it is urgent to analyze the practices linked to cultural work, not as instances of mediation, but as theoretically supported and ethically positioned places; It is vital to take charge of the complex articulation of knowledge and perspectives on what culture is, together with the foundations, tools and pertinent problems for management in the contemporary scene, in which so many things collapse”.

The academic coordinator of the colloquium summarizes the program in three lines of discussion:

1. “Rethink culture not only as a resource of the dominant industry, but as a place of translation, bridge and social bond”.
2. “The function of the manager / creator is no longer as a mediator between the State, the market and the public, but as a producer, that is, as a manager, as a generator of critical cultural initiatives.”
3. “Beyond criticism of cultural management, the proposal of a critical management of culture.

The meeting will touch on topics that include new technologies in the digital age as spaces for cultural production, ethics on the Internet, the intersection between critical theory and cultural management, training of cultural managers in rural territories, culture and disability, corporalities and sex dissidence, projects cultural studies for children, critical studies of fashion; feminist, editorial and film initiatives in Latin America, among others.

Specialists and researchers of the stature of George Yúdice, Diana Taylor, Margo Glantz, Geert Lovink, Eric Manheimer, Raúl Rodríguez Freire, Javier Guerrero, among others, in addition to those already mentioned, García Canclini, Mayer Foulkes and Cróquer Pedrón participate in the colloquium. .

The colloquium can be followed online through the YouTube and Facebook channels of 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos. Admission to the Tlatelolco University Cultural Center is free, prior registration. The full program is available here:

https://17instituto.org/posgrado/xxxiv-coloquio-internacional-por-una-gestion-critica-de-la-cultura-la-gestion-como-pro-duccion/

francisco.deanda@eleconomista.mx