Co-creation’s neoliberal roots
Co-creation is an increasingly widely used term but, as my research has shown, it is given a wide range of meanings with an equally wide range of purposes. Some of those are entirely at odds with what many people working in participatory art believe to be their ethos. So, the academic literature says that co-creation exists:
To use the experience of individuals as the starting point, rather than its own products and services. In addition, the development of compelling experiences with individuals requires that they be allowed to engage in interactions of their own choosing. In co-creative enterprises, individuals participate in the design of value through their own experiences.
Ramaswamy & Gouillart, The Power of Co-Creation: Free Press, 2010, p. 7
This is controlling language in which people are ‘allowed’ to engage and participate in the design of value based on their experiences: who benefits from that value is an obvious but unanswered question. The same authors go on to claim that:
The co-creative enterprise is also a formidable productivity engine that can pay for itself many times over […]. In addition to cutting costs and improving efficiency, co-creation reduces business risk. Most important, the co-creative enterprise is a growth engine. It enhances strategic capital, increases returns, and expands market opportunities. Co-creation draws innovative ideas from customers, employees, and stakeholders at large.
Co-creation is a slippery, contested idea that is widely open to manipulation. Perhaps its contemporary apogee is social media, in which people participate in providing content that others control through algorithms, making it easier to extract money from them and others without appearing to do so.
One task of A Selfless Art is to deconstruct this pleasant sounding term so that it can be defined as real, tough and with worthwhile values of its own.
François Matarasso 