Ambiguïtés de la « ville créative »

Art and culture have a renewed role in the contemporary city. Theories relative to the creative class, the creative economy and the creative city are both descriptive and prescriptive; they focus on the role of culture in the urban production process and, as operational programs, prescribe the integration and incorporation of artistic and cultural projects into urban development. The emergence and adoption of these theories by public authorities follows the evacuation of numerous squats and marks an inflection in Geneva: the end of a series of political and counter-culture struggles opened between 1998 and 2007 and the beginning of a double phenomenon of repression and promotion of a horizon of (new) counter-cultural practices. In this light the “creative” city is like a distillation of the ideology that underlies the urban and cultural policies in and of the creative city. In this PhD Dissertation we will look at how the theories of this creative capitalism incorporate artistic and cultural practices into the neo-liberalization process currently underway. While cities’ role in neo-liberalism is often cited, the creative economy’s integration of art and culture is unprecedented. This integration is nonetheless ambiguous: though art participates in both the urban production process and, more transitively, processes of neo-liberalization, it is nonetheless the breeding ground of criticism in action and urban struggles. This paper identifies the shifting of lines established by art’s role in the urban production process. It aims to show that this “capture” redefines that classic contradictions between institutional art and emerging art. Several studies on the spatializing of art in Geneva (art districts, museums, workshops, demonstrations and street art) will serve as case studies for exploring these ambiguities. Our investigation isbased on direct and participatory observation, interviews and the analysis of archives, and helps us to better understand the urban condition of art in the era of late capitalism.