Vol. 1, No. 11: Cult of Creativity
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Dear Soft Labor,
I’m a middle manager in what I’ll obliquely call a “cultural institution”—one characteristically rife with bureaucratic red tape, political infighting, and lack of process. I was promoted into management several years back after even more years of simply getting it done, day in and day out. We have a new executive on the team and as far as the Internet tells me, they bumbled their way up the ladder through a series of seemingly unrelated jobs. This person carries themselves (and manages others) with a deep sense of insecurity, especially where “creativity” is concerned.
The majority of our staff are filthy rich in cultural capital: We live and breathe the arts writ large, no handbook required. Our chief, however, is a B-school basic who forces us to participate in all manner of what they perceive as creativity-enhancing exercises. White boards, post-it notes, card decks—you name it, we’ve done it.
My question: How can I maintain my street cred—for myself, more than anyone—while operating in such an increasingly-cringe environment?
From the group brainstorm,
Cult of Creativity
Dear Cult,
This is admittedly very Gen-X (cusp!) of us, but even as art school freshmen we called bullshit on The Artist’s Way. Sometimes one is simply born knowing, dear Cult, and you seem to be one of those people. Our advice to you is simple, straightforward, and most of all, field tested: It is imperative that you build and maintain your own “second shift” in the form of a personal creative practice, whatever that might look like and however it might operate. We know all sorts of folks—the majority of people we know, in fact—who have demanding jobs, and yet also teach, write, curate shows, or maintain a studio, for example. There is life outside of work, even when work feels like life.
We have another myth to dispel: Some kinds of institutional work cultures (likely the one you are in) tend to suggest, if not outright implore, that individuals give their intellectual “all” at work. This needn’t be the case. You have every right to your own thoughts, and not every good idea must be handed over to the common pot. Retain some of that intellectual property for yourself, and we guarantee that your perspective on work—and maybe even on this new boss—will start to shift.
As for street cred, we’ll close with a quote from Patti Smith. It’s a lofty one befit of another time perhaps (certainly an earlier, more affordable iteration of New York City!) but we keep it in mind nonetheless.: “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.”
Yours,
Soft Labor
Search Results
“Search Results” points toward Soft Labor’s ongoing research interests.
🔗 Follow Soft Labor's Are.na channel, which also links to our selected writings from these past years.
🔗 Several comrades sent us links to James O'Sullivan's “The Last Days of Social Media,” which was published recently in The Berggruen Institute’s Noēma magazine and introduced us to the delightful neologism “Bot-Girl Economy.” “Social media platforms have also achieved something more elegant than coercion, they’ve made non-participation a form of self-exile, a luxury available only to those who can afford its costs.”
🔗 We’ve been reading N+1 since its very first issue and its newest, Force Majeure, features a letter from its editors, “Large Language Muddle,” that reads as the most deeply intelligent, informed, and entertaining swipes at AI and AI-related media and culture—as well as its social and intellectual impact—we’ve yet read. “Put plainly, you should feel bad for using AI. (The broad embrace of the term slop is a heartening sign of a nascent constituency for machine denial.) These systems haven’t worked well for very long, and consensus about their use remains far from settled. That’s why so much writing about AI writing sounds the way it does — nervous, uneven, ambivalent about the new regime’s utility — and it means there’s still time to disenchant AI, provincialize it, make it uncompelling and uncool.” Read it. Better yet, subscribe.
🔗 We preordered Mindy Seu’s A Sexual History of the Internet from Metalabel. (So can you!) This leather-bound, iPhone-sized artist book, designed by Laura Coombs, commemorates Seu’s performance of the same title, which saw its sold-out New York debut on Saturday at Pioneer Works. The performance’s iPhone-driven format—Soft Labor comrade Julio Correa devised its form while working with Seu at the Yale School of Art—speaks to her interest in Internet subcultures as evidenced in her first book, Cyberfeminism Index.
Dress Code“Dress Code” spotlights workplace looks of all forms and kinds.
Nota Bene: Soft Labor (the strategic consultancy) is currently taking on new clients. Here's more about what we do and how we do it. Contact founding principal Sarah Hromack-Chan at sarah@softlabor.biz.