The Autonomous Fabric of Rotterdam - Self-Organization as Contemporary Art

A growing part of contemporary arts practices in the Netherlands has reoriented itself from studio and institutional art towards self-organization in self-run initiatives. In this type of contemporary art, self-organization is not only a way of gaining economic independence. Just as importantly, it is a form of expression where the organizational structure becomes the art project: self-organization-as-contemporary-art.

Often using informal and underground settings, these initiatives reach audiences who have little or no access to the established system of cultural institutions. Aiming to bring art closer to everyday life, they often are no longer easily recognizable as art projects at all. Instead of individual studio practice with the artist as the central figure, these projects and initiatives are based on participation and non-hierarchical collaboration and rarely produce art objects for the traditional gallery art market. Examples include restaurants run as art projects, experimental schools, radio stations run as art performances, and do-it-yourself publishers.

Rotterdam is an ideal case study for this development, since the city has played a role in self-organized artists’ initiatives and activist practices like no other city in the Netherlands. The trend towards self-employed work and flexibilization in the creative sector after 2008 accelerated this development. Self-organization-as-contemporary-art has developed throughout the years into an active, extensive and complex network of more than 80 self-organized initiatives; a fabric of autonomously operating initiatives that covers the entire city which we have mapped in previous research.

This leads to the questions: How can the creative industries and cultural institutions adapt to these new forms of artistic practice which are no longer based on (a) individual work and (b) classical artists’ portfolios? How can art school curricula be adapted so that they educate innovative network artists who actively contribute to the fabric of self-organization-as-contemporary-art?