Protecting Creativity in a Capitalistic Society Diana Fonte

Photography by Luke Quezada Writing by Diana Fonte

It appears that a common belief of Generation Z is that we are the first generation to be born into a time of rapid innovation. In reality, though, we are merely the continuation of a series of revolutions, from the Technological Revolution in the early 20th century to the Digital Revolution of the 1990s. Our generation is a product of neoliberalism, a paradigm that has earned somewhat of a bad name in colloquial vocabulary, but by definition, emphasizes competition under a fully free market, undying faith in private business and minimization of government intervention. These concepts, which were introduced in the 1930s and were promoted by figures like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, have shaped not only our generation but our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, even preceding the term “neoliberalism” itself. The entire ethos of western policy and society for the past century has been centered around the concept of individualism in a free market, individualism in society and individualism in innovation. The more one innovates, the more one creates, the more one works –– the more successful one will be.

However, now that we enter the second decade of the 21st century, our generation is confronted with the consequences of this sort of paradigm. For me, neoliberalism defined the ”American Dream” that my parents chased, convinced that bringing me to the U.S. would offer us a better life. While it did bring us an objectively better selection of resources and quality of life, the infectious idea of “bigger and more is better” has revealed a darker reality as I have progressed through my college years. As I explored my artistic interests and developed my creative skills, I met other people with similar passions who were trying to make a living off of their art. For the first time in my life, I was considering a career in the arts, something that my family had always urged me to stray from because a career in the arts is unformidable, unlucrative and unsustainable. But how could that be so, when art provides an entirely different type of lucrative innovation?

Oscar Wilde said, “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” Through the lens of neoliberalism, which en-

courages people to embrace their individuality and innovate by setting themselves apart from the crowd, the arts seem to fit the mold of a successful infrastructure. While this is true, what my parents thought also carried some truth; the margin of wealthy and respected artists is smaller than that of essential jobs like doctors or lawyers. That is, until the rise of the internet.

The internet has created cultural capital in a speed and extent that was unforeseen by most. Initially, people doubted the potential of the internet with the productivity paradox, detailing the productivity slowdown since 2000 in comparison to the productivity from the 1940s to the 1970s or from 1994 to 2004. People doubted the feasibility of e-commerce and cloud computing, two inventions that have now disrupted their respective industries and changed our everyday lives.

Finally, the cultural capital of social media celebrities cannot be underestimated. While C-suite executives once joked about paying for social media posts or thousand dollar partnerships, they now pour money into influencer relations, digital ads and earned media. Instagram and Facebook have integrated marketplaces into what was originally a place for organic social connection, self-expression and exploration.

With the digital landscape, the free market is at play once again but this time, creativity is king. Views mean ad revenue, likes and engagement mean return on investment and a positive “brand image” means more opportunities for income. Creatives are targets of the social world that we have built, but their freedom to create without boundaries has been stripped away by businesses and companies. While initially, an unsponsored post about the top five products used by a micro-influencer (a modern-day small celebrity) was well met, this market has been saturated with brands and creatives pushing products and services rather than creating pensive, unique, or impressive content. There is simply not enough time to keep the audience’s attention, be attractive to financial opportunities and create quality artwork. While this is a generaliza-

tion, much of our generation sees through the creatives and brands who are producing content for the sake of revenue.

Yet, while there have been several spaces and creatives online that embrace pure creativity, they are not seen as conventionally successful in comparison to those who produce content for brands and companies. Whether they be digital artists or mixed media artists, the art produced on the internet is infinite in both size and quality. There is not enough space on the internet to recognize artists for their unique talents, and the sole way for artists to make money seemed to be by associating themselves with a notable brand or name. These newfound realities led to the recent phenomenon of digital art trading.

NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, have taken the art cryptocurrency markets by storm. The crypto-art pieces allow digital artists to sell an “artwork” to one specific owner, and through a blockchain, they can resell the work, track its ownership and make sure the original work never gets altered or destroyed. The digital creations gained legitimacy around the time crypto-artist Mike Winkelmann (artist name Beeple) sold a digital collage of his work called “The First 5000 Days” for $69 million in a Christie’s auction in March. Before then, the most he had ever sold a print of his work for was $100.

Since then, art enthusiasts have been embracing the opportunity to commission NFTs from their favorite digital artists, and some have even taken the new chapter of art trading to heart. A group of art buyers burned a $33 thousand Banksy print and sold the NFT online, and an auction is being held for a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that is set to do the same thing, keeping solely the NFT version of the late artist’s painting.

Trade is an institution almost as old as human civilization itself, with the earliest records of humans trading cultural property when Pope Pius traded art for his territories in the Papal States in 1463. In order

to survive, we were forced to exchange goods or services, oftentimes for money, to mobilize upward in society. During the Renaissance, art trading became a trend that bewildered some and fascinated others, allowing the opportunity to craft one’s own legacy by illustrating their likeness, family or estate, thereby immortalizing their presence in modern society. This sort of art trading became known as commissioned art, which brought income to growing artists and prestige to the wealthy patrons that commissioned them. Art trading lives on because we attribute value to these cultural relics, whether it be technical craftsmanship or simple provenance. Once the Basquiat and Banksy works are burned, the cultural capital has been deemed zero by a group that has fully transferred their focus to the digital age; however, this comes with a cost.

Centuries later, the world has gone virtual, something the artisans of the 15th and 16th century could not have foreseen but that the great philosophers of the Renaissance wrote about in great detail. During the Renaissance, philosophers debated the necessity and benefit of the arts in a lot of their works. In his book “Discourse on Inequality,” JeanJacques Rousseau argues that the reason behind humanity’s need for culture, art and innovation stems from a need for self-improvement, something unshared with any other species.

Before the rise of cultural values, humans did not feel the need to improve themselves or their societies. Over time, the development of agriculture led to the creation of property and eventually what we have come to know in the modern world: Infrastructures outline metropolitan cities, nations are separated by make-believe borders, world economics are determined by foreign diplomacy. Everything we interact with, much of what we see and most of what we are concerned about exists only to our species.

According to historian Yuval Harari, humans are also hardwired differently from any other species because we are able to craft stories and

make other people believe in them. We have told stories and passed down narratives to help ourselves make sense of the world, attributing importance to luxury, beauty and complexity.

It is inarguable that centuries later, art and creativity have led to some of the largest advancements of our lifespan, improving the standard of living and the accessibility of resources of billions of people. But when monetization, industrialization and capitalization infiltrate something as freeing and infinite as art and creativity, we have to shift the stories we have been taught to believe.

NFTs can be anything digital – famous tweets, viral videos or GIFs – and we, the consumers, decide how much these “artworks” are worth. However, one singular piece from an artist like Beeple emits $5,000 worth of greenhouse gases, as the blockchain is an energy-guzzling machine that uses gases to mine the blocks. The intricate process of using bitcoin and blockchain to, by extension, create revenue for creatives and artists, creates irreversible damage to the environment. Yet, the burden is placed on the backs of the artists to not “sell out” or to reject the opportunity for financial stability.

The central concept of competition and a free market means that artists must play a game of survival of the fittest in order to rise above the rest. When we prioritize capital over creativity, we drain artists of their freedom. True innovation is the ability to see the world in ways that are outside the boundaries of institutions. When artists do not have the freedom to create without the stress of having to make earnings from their work, we become culturally stunted.

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a result of humans entering a land that was uninhabitable for them, setting up camp in places that did not welcome them. The pandemic has shown us the destruction that an overly industrialized world can reap, but it only enhanced cracks in the foundation of our society prior to it. The Australian bushfires and

rampant wildfires all over the world were direct symptoms of a world that is overheating and filled with astronomical carbon levels. A struggle for justice in the world and a bitter reckoning against the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world has begun to permeate into our everyday lives, with the Black Lives Matter movement and the concurrent digital protests against climate deniers, military, and police.

It is our duty to shift the stories we have been told. It is our responsibility to resist the rat race of neoliberalism and competition, to sit with our loved ones to remember what makes us human. As creatives, we deserve to have access to the most human parts of ourselves, the most beautiful parts of ourselves, and the most beautiful parts of the world around us, in order to innovate in the most meaningful way.

Innovation does not always have to mean individual ideas that have explosive success; it can mean connecting people to one another in a way that moves them or allowing people to have realizations that they did not see before. We can reject the capital-centric society that we are living in by remembering that we are more than just consumers and more than just creators for a private company. As artists, we deserve to stand firm in the truth that being an artist is separate from a job, separate from a mode of survival; being an artist is being an innovator in the way that counts the most because it connects us to the parts of ourselves that make us human.

Diana Fonte is a student at the University of Southern California pursuing a degree in Public Relations. She is the Co-Founder and former Editor in Chief of Haute Magazine.

Luke Quezada is a media artist originally from South Pasadena, CA. He works across mediums – including animation, programming, 3D asset creation, and video work – to create work that is as meaningful as it is aesthetically interesting. He is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Media, Arts, and Practice.