Hybrid Space Lab @ Governance of the Creative Industries

Theses on the Governance of the Creative Industries

1. Support measures in the creative industries must always be based on the paradox of the creative imperative – ‘be creative!’ Contextual control is needed instead of direct influence.

2. The high degree of risk-laden self-control requires both an official policy of recognition and intelligent cooperation between established institutions and the free networks of creative people. This also means that politics must be open to new forms of opinion articulation.

3. A policy of promotion can also be expressed through practices of temporary non-compliance, short-term inattention, and conscious looking away, so as not to nip events that have their own logic in the bud. Control can be achieved through deliberate non-control. Much more ambiguity must be allowed.

4. If the public sector wants to promote the creative industries through economic and cultural policy measures, its previous role as a provider of support will be transformed into that of an activating sponsor. It will combine existing potential and pool resources instead of defining itself solely through the allocation of financial resources.

5. It is important to strengthen the state administration in such a way that, with an expanded pool of proven specialists – ‘intelligent agents’ – it can respond to the heterogeneity of the creative industries in an increasingly adept and proactive manner.

6. Creative industry practices are leading to a reassessment of previously known and familiar spatial, thematic and profession-specific scales and levels of interaction. This makes the need to develop new forms of governance greater than ever, even though – paradoxically – the effects of control are likely to decrease rather than increase due to uncertain framework conditions.

7. Creative self-organisation counteracts the rhetoric of leadership and urban leaders. Traditional leaders increasingly lack social followers, but postmodern tricksters can temporarily unite followers behind them. As a cultural hero, the trickster is a founder of culture and a medium of cultural change who succeeds in finding creative solutions to problems by transcending the definition and function of what is currently at hand and inventively reinterpreting and then using the available means.

8. Control over control procedures only arises when governance subjects allow themselves to be controlled and steered (and want to be). This requires a willingness on the part of all those involved to engage in dialogue with one another and to develop contemporary formats for exchange and encounter. In the case of the creative industries, this must go beyond the classic structures of political influence, as the heterogeneity and dynamism of the creative industries make it impossible to represent interests in a traditionally organised manner.

9. The city is, as it were, the relevant location for the social interactions of market participants, and at the same time, these interactions retroactively create new and thus different locations through their communication practices. As a result, urban development policy will have to deal with the creative industries in an increasingly decisive manner.

10. The role of the interface actor is becoming increasingly relevant as a social mediator. There is a need for the professionalisation of cultural intermediaries who can move confidently between the various functional systems and are able to mediate between old (industrial capitalist) and new (network economic) ways of thinking and acting. These can be individual actors in the cultural economy as well as state-supported intermediary institutions.

Interview

What is Hybrid Space Lab?

Frans Vogelaar: Hybrid Space Lab is an interdisciplinary environment characterized by an innovative and integrated approach to spatial issues. It specializes in strategic research and high-end design. It is an R&D and design practice that focuses on the hybrid fields that are emerging through the combination and fusion of environments, objects and services in the information/communication age. Hybrid stands for our strategy of combining fields, Space reflects our expertise and Lab stands for our innovative and experimental approach. Our web address ends in .net, suggesting our working practice of involving a network of specialists.

 

What concept does the name reflect?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: Mixing fields, combining expertises and considering environments in their multiplicity of dimensions is for us a method for finding new relevant solutions to increasingly complex spa- tial design challenges. We investigate actual developments in the general fields of culture, communication, production, exchange (markets) as well as technological innovations, not to foremost monitor market development but in order to generate visions.

Frans Vogelaar: The starting point and spearhead of our work lie in the fusing of digital and analog environments, in embedding media networks in ur- ban, architectural, social and cultural space. Our environments are today being rapidly transformed by medialization – and hence globalization. Today’s technological developments are accelerated by the fusions of information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology and neurotechnologies (brain technologies) and their convergence into new hybrid technology platforms such as DNA computing, nano biotechnology, synthetic biology and neuroengineering… We approach these technological developments from the perspective of the designer, the architect and the urbanist, by ‘inhabiting technology’, by transforming these technological developments to meet the way we want to live.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: Innovation is not a goal in itself, but a means of coping with and steering developments. Hybridization is an evolutionary strategy to develop new solutions for the changing environments in our fast-moving world. I remember an early reading of an essay entitled Race and His- tory that Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote for UNESCO in 1952. Lévi-Strauss contrasts cumulative, dynamic, moving cultures with static, non- developing cultures and argues that intercultural connections and cross- fertilization are crucial to the development of differentiated civilizations.

 

What kind of projects do you work on and initiate?

Frans Vogelaar: Hybrid Space Lab is a lab and a network in which designers, architects, urbanists, landscape architects, environmental planners, software and hardware engineers, and media artists collaborate to develop projects for combined analog and digital, urban, architectural, design and media spaces. The relationship of digital service environments and artifacts to our architectural and urban surroundings and objects is central to our strategic research and design agenda. The research and development projects range from urban games and urban planning to buildings, architectural interiors and industrial design applications and wearables.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: We also have a long track record in consultancy; we were part of a think tank for the Dutch government and have advised corporations, lo- cal authorities, and cultural, educational and research institutes. We developed the project idea for the Urban Dinners on the main highway of the Ruhr region for the RUHR.2010 Cultural Capital organization. Our working method is to merge analytical investigations with synthetic de- sign processes. We apply Design Thinking to a very extensive range of issues and fields.

Frans Vogelaar: We work internationally. At the moment we are busy with a project for the Tschumi Pavilion Foundation in Groningen in the Netherlands, consisting of a programmatic plan, a business plan, an urban strategy and an architectural design for a new Media and Performing Arts Centre. We are also in the final stages of a project for the Torino World Design
Capital 2008, geared to security in public space – politically, a heavily abused issue in Italy. Our approach is based on the appropriation of pub- lic space by proposing and designing a series of services that strengthen and encourage public involvement in the open spaces of the city. Last but not least, we are curating an international touring exhibition on city- scape and sustainability and designing a ‘Media Camp’ due to be built in Shenzhen by the end of 2009.

 

Where does the Hybrid Space Lab come from (i.e. your background story/out of what need did you set the ground for the Hybrid Space Lab)?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: Frans studied industrial design and architecture and urbanism; I studied architecture and urbanism. Before setting up our practice we had already gained professional experience in many different fields, including architecture (OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Behnisch & Pa.); industrial de- sign (Studio Alchemia/Alessandro Mendini); and fashion (trend research in Paris), as well as urbanism; landscape architecture and urbanism; material design, food design and exhibition design; interior architecture; media design… We both have hybrid cultural backgrounds and have lived and worked internationally: I was born in London, grew up in Athens, studied at the École d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris and at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Frans was born in the Nether- lands, grew up in Zimbabwe, studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London.

Frans Vogelaar: We were aware from early on that the ICT developments, the rise of a network society as Manuel Castells puts it, would have an immense impact on the way we live and work, accelerating globalization, the flexibilization of lifestyles and the development of the creative economy. The new production and communication tool of the networked computer provides a common working instrument for a broad range of creative professions. It is also transforming creative processes and products and paving the way for a series of hybrid professional fields.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: At first, when people were thinking in terms of the polarity of media and physical space, it was difficult to communicate our ‘hybrid space’ approach, which considers the physical environment in the context of and in relation to the networks that it belongs to and interacts with. We started with self-initiated artistic research projects. These led to consultancies and research and development and design assignments.

 

Where do you locate yourself within the broader context of the creative economy? Would you consider yourself to be an intermediary institution at the interface of several disciplines?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: The creative economy is, by definition, dynamic. The traditional disciplines will develop, transform, mutate, fuse. We see our ‘undisciplined’ laboratory as a catalyst in this process and as a space for development and experimentation.

 

What are your strategies in overcoming outdated structures or practices?

Frans Vogelaar: When we started, we did have a communication problem as we did not fit neatly into the predefined territory of the distinct disciplines. We were repeatedly asked: What exactly are you? Designers, architects, urbanists, landscape urbanists, researchers… or media artists? We responded with an offensive strategy, by defining our office as a hybrid laboratory.

 

What definition or interpretation of the ‘hybrid’ do you feel is of relevance for contemporary phenomena in the economical, social and cultural sphere? Where and how does the phenomenon of the hybrid transform the way we work, share and use space, organize ourselves and others, develop new institutions, identities and job profiles, and so forth?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: In the times of the Aristotelian categories, the notion of the ‘hybrid’, the crossbreed, had a negative connotation. Today the notion of the ‘hybrid’ is everywhere. Hybridization is becoming an increasingly important issue in the cultural field. Look at the attention paid to world literature; think of the 2008 Nobel Price for Literature. Today, you have hybrid cars, hybrid businesses, hybrid securities, hybrid plastics, hybrid plants, hybrid pigs… all reflecting a cultural shift away from a mindset based on clear-cut categories towards a flexible approach based on intermixtures, on interconnections and networks.

Frans Vogelaar: Hybrid space is everywhere in our daily lives. Take, for example, the private (communication) space of mobile telephony, which creates islands of private space within public urban space. Or monitored environments, where cameras keep watch over open urban areas. The tele- workplace is becoming an integral part of the home, the office is becoming a space for encounters, with a meeting lounge atmosphere, the (connected) car is becoming a mobile extension of our networked existence, to name only a few examples.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: Hybrid defined as the combination – the fusion – of the analog and the digital is a good starting point. As Frans just mentioned, medialization and globalization are transforming space, activities and professional fields. Hybrid retail, integrating e-commerce and physical stores, changes the shop into the experiential space of the point of sale. Hybrid publishing is closely entwined with citizen journalism. In new business models customers are co-creating and co-developing products. Think of the Lego Digital Designer that enables users to create, share and im- prove the design of the building brick toys.

Frans Vogelaar: The days when people were defined by their profession and remained with the same employer and in the same professional field throughout their working life belong in the past. Together with my stu- dents at the Academy of Media Cologne we are developing strategies for ‘hybrid practice’. The aim is to generate new practice models for the multi-job strategies and the patchwork biographies of the ‘project workers’ of today and tomorrow.

 

In the past, who and what were the forerunners and idols of today’s hybrid practice?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: One of the pioneers was the Greek and French music composer, media artist, architect and engineer Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001). In the 1990’s we worked with Xenakis in his personal archives in Paris and interviewed him on his work and artistic concepts. What is interesting about Xenakis is the way he implemented structures in different fields and transferred them from one field to another: from engineering and mathematical-scientific research to music, from music to architecture and to visual events. Xenakis worked on the poetics of the electronic age, as he called it, integrating the new, universal, electronic tools of the computer in his artistic oeuvre. He argued for the development of a gen- eral discipline of form, a general morphology, an interdisciplinary effort, corresponding with his universal thinking and his practice of ‘transfer’.

Frans Vogelaar: Another pioneer is the American designer, architect, author and visionary inventor, Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), who was deeply concerned with sustainability issues.

 

And, with regard to the book title, what do you consider important for the governance of the creative economy? Is there a special need for new intermediaries, both on an individual and an institutional level? Will it be important to find new modes of representation for the ‘in-betweens’ – such as a lobby for creative intermediaries, or new institutional interfaces?

Elizabeth Sikiaridi: It is important to reflect on and discuss these themes. We still need to develop not only working business models for the creative sector but also social strategies to support the sustainable development of a creative society and economy.

Frans Vogelaar: We believe that it is important to strengthen the interdisciplinary networking platforms and support creative environments of encounter because they foster innovation. One shouldn’t underestimate the strategic value of cross-over spaces and hybrid laboratories.