Against Creativity Quotes

“One of the most important refrains in Marx’s work (and many of the philosophers who built upon his work) is that the human desire to work and produce is innate; it dwells within us all. It is a fundamental desire to create new worlds, experiences and subjects.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Precariousness, domicide, marginalization, disability, hyper-mediation, austerity, codification, atomization, gentrification, dispossession and many more: creativity as preached by capitalism enacts a ‘slow violence’ that grinds down any other forms of societal organization, to the chorus of ‘there is no alternative’.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Believe that creativity is about searching for, giving space to, and trying to realize the impossible.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Capitalism’s most effective tactic of disarming critique is distinctly neoliberal: it divides the social fabric into individuals, and then pits them against each other.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Galleries, public art and hyper-commodified street art play to a particular version of aesthetic consumption that is high-culture and overly white.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“the way to work in the twenty-first century is to shun management’s control because it denies agility, speed and creativity.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“In general terms, austerity is the reduction of expenditure to decrease debt, be that personal, within a household, or a national government’s.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“self-promotion that neoliberalism demands at all times.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“the reality of ‘reality TV’ has been lost: it has become mediated into a hyper-virtuality of pervasive online communication and politics, endless programming and constant bombardment of stylized and manicured imagery.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Politicians are put in front of the cameras and probed on their ability to answer questions truthfully, but without any acknowledgement about how that truth manifests in real life.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“They are judged on their ability to recount numbers, avoid platitudes and deflect direct attacks; and it is all rated in real-time by social media.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Chris Downey, the blind architect, has said that there are two types of people in the world. There are those with disabilities, and those who haven’t found theirs yet.27 To be truly creative then is to find that disability and explore how it changes your world.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Rather than talking about ‘hearing loss’, the term ‘Deaf gain’ could be used.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Grant’s work extols the virtues of questioning default ideas, of engaging with different audiences and constantly looking for ways to change the status quo.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Working together is only worth it if it benefits those involved more than if they were to perform on their own.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Yet, this often masks class-based attacks: those who use these ‘new’ languages often are working class, the urban poor or simply the younger generation.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“Collapsing the boundaries (physical and psychological) between the office, the home, the street, the café, and even the bed becomes a means of further profit generation. The traditional notion of the office becomes almost redundant.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity

“These examples (and many more besides) cut to the heart of an inherent contradiction to the narrative of creative work: it often extols collaborative, ‘agile’, collective and co-operative working practices, but only rewards insular, atomized, self-interested and individualized work.”
― Oli Mould, Against Creativity