Passion without Objects. Young Graduates and the Politics of Temporary Art Spaces

• Main Authors: Mara Ferreri, Valeria Graziano
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2014-12-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Subjects: art graduate; artist-run; commission; gallery; London; passion
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/1271

This paper addresses the position of young arts graduates seeking to respond to the unequal access and precarity of jobs in the cultural sector by establishing artist-led temporary spaces. With the increasing dissemination of the discourse of pop-up urban uses in the United Kingdom since 2008, former genealogies of autonomous self-organised spaces intersect with the urban agendas of public commissioners and private actors. Following a long-established critique of the “creative industries” and recent studies of working conditions in the sector, this paper brings together critical textual analysis of specialized press and policy documents and a series of in-depth interviews with a young arts graduate collective involved in setting up a pop-up space in London. Our research shows how in the context of low-budget public commissions in affluent areas of central London artists are encouraged to translate their passion for autonomous, self-organised practice into dominant discourses of artistic “community provision” and place marketing.