From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City ( Richard Lloyd )
To: "op-n-m@googlegroups.com" <op-n-m@googlegroups.com>, "econowmix@googlegroups.com" <econowmix@googlegroups.com>, ovni-os@googlegroups.com
" Far from mounting resistance to capitalism in its neoliberal incarnation, Wicker Park’s neo-bohemians, precisely because they are bohemian, contribute to its reproduction. What counts as the artist lifestyle nowadays, Lloyd argues, has been deeply influenced by the legacy of bohemia, and bohemia has always been associated with urban spaces. With most artists being bohemian and all bohemians living in densely populated urban areas, spaces like Wicker Park become home to a reserve army of labor that the service and design industries benefit from having flexible access to. However, Chicago’s neo-bohemia does more than just concentrate an ample source of so-called creative labor in one area. As Lloyd points out time and again, it also fosters dispositions and attitudes particularly useful to capitalist accumulation in its post-Fordist form. For example, like bohemians in the past, Wicker Park’s artists take pride in tolerating material scarcity, thus constituting a pool of labor particularly well adapted to the needs of the neighborhood’s design firms, whose hiring (and firing) fluctuates in accordance with the volume of piece work they happen to have contracted out to them by corporate clients. "
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 4:41 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson@gmail.com> wrote:
( did not watch it yet )On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson@gmail.com> wrote:
Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City
Neo-Bohemia brings the study of bohemian culture down to the street level, while maintaining a commitment to understanding broader historical and economic urban contexts. Simultaneously readable and academic, this book anticipates key urban trends at the dawn of the twenty-first century, shedding light on both the nature of contemporary bohemias and the cities that house them. The relevance of understanding the trends it depicts has only increased, especially in light of the current urban crisis puncturing a long period of gentrification and new economy development, putting us on the precipice, perhaps, of the next new bohemia.