Tenth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This paper considers emergent tensions surrounding the idea, role and function of artist studios in algorithmic cultures. Artist engagement in studio assemblages has transformed in response to a range of pressures including real estate booms, processes of gentrification, economic growth, space and resource pressures on art schools and technological transformations that have both diminished access to brick and mortar studio space, while allowing some kinds of artistic practice to be less dependent on material exploration and experimentation. This paper builds on an ethnography of working artists in east London whose access to affordable rental studies has been supported by the Acme Housing Organization for over 50 years, relevant to democratic access to studios amid wider issues of labour, precarity, and the roles of cultural production in the neoliberal city and state. We consider the studio as a process of becoming in relation to changing conditions around it, focusing on the rise of post-studio digital arts that supersede the constraints of traditional space and practice but can yet retain and expand the capacity of the physical studio to act as a dynamic support or interface for social interaction and transformative experiences.