Art of Management & Organization Conference 2018 University of Brighton

The Poetic Self of Sisters Academy: - Making the invisible visible through radical performance art methods.

Gry Worre Hallberg, performance artist and PhD fellow University of Copenhagen

sensuoussociety.org and sistersacademy.dk

Sisters Academy is a performance experiment in search of a society and educational system that values the sensuous and the poetic. Sisters Academy is initiated by my performance group Sisters Hope and consists of performers, set- sound- and light-designers and a documentary and graphic team from various backgrounds. Together we work from a performance-methodology of developing a ‘poetic self’. We propose that the poetic self is something that we perform in-between our everyday-self and the otherworldly, sensuous universes that we imagine and embody. We are interested in how the gap between the imagined and the embodied can be narrowed and brought almost to zero. The poetic self is not a character, it is not a fiction, it is our inner inherent poetic potential that we might not unfold in our everyday life but that we discover, give an image and donate our flesh to. By doing so we experience an expanding spectrum of possibilities, new spaces in which we can be. We don’t change; we liberate new potential; we expand our space of maneuverability. It is also a space that invites the mystery and the ‘unheimliche’ in – An exploration of the territories of the unknown including, that which is hidden in the dark.

Fragment from the manifesto of Sisters Academy

The End is a New Beginning: In 2008 the financial world cracked, leaving a gap for a new paradigm to emerge. We regard the crack as a major opportunity.

The New Paradigm: We wish to take this opportunity and support the transition into the new, by living and breathing in the cracks.

The Sensuous Society: We will draw from the aesthetic dimension as a source of inspiration to inform the dawning world. We will call it: The Sensuous Society

The Academy

Sisters Academy is a school of an imagined future world made present today. As Sister Academy we have temporarily taken over the leadership of a series of Nordic upper secondary schools and created large-scale otherworldly boarding schools at contemporary art institutions. Our first manifestation was funded by the Danish Art Council and took place in Odense 2014: 200 students and 20 teachers were placed under the leadership of the two ‘unheimliche’ twin sisters. Through immersive strategies we transform the space of the school. Everything from classrooms, hallways and bathrooms are transformed physically through set-, light-, and sound-design in order for the participants (both students and teachers) to investigate their own poetic self in an intensified time-space.

The Creative Paradox in Managing Cultural Organizations: A Biographic Study

Fabiana Pimentel Santos, School of Management, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Eduardo Davel, School of Management, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Vlad Glaveanu. Webster University Geneva, Switzerland
Within the cultural and creative economy, organizations work hard to manage material, relational and symbolic conditions for the creation, circulation, distribution and promotion of cultural goods and services (Carr, 2003; Byrnes, 2003; Chong, 2002; Radbourne& Fraser, 1996; Varbanova, 2013; Fopp, 1997). Despite the many typesof organizations that fit into this description, organizations driven by cultural purpose share two common features:(a) a paradox-intense context and (b) a paradox-driven management practice (Dephillippi & Arthur, 1998; Gotsi et al., 2002; Kosmala, 2007; Lampel, 2000).Despite the increasing relevance of organizations in the cultural and creative economy, we lack systematic and robust knowledge about the value of paradox for understanding the singularities of their managerial practice.
Traditionally, literature on organizations and management in the cultural sector are focused on two axes: (a) the technical-operational orientation and (b) the public policy orientation. The first axis is interested in normative and prescriptive modes and applies traditional concepts of management to organizational daily practices. As any positivist approach, it reduces cultural management to a set of tools and tasks that can be reproduced no matter the organizational singularities or context. The second axis, in contrast, is sensitive to the specificities of cultural sector and their interdisciplinary nature, but it does not consider the practice of management. This axis of research is oriented towards the macro analysis of cultural policy in terms of political and societal effects. These two axes of research do not deal directly and fully with knowledge about managerial practice.
Our research aims to propose a theoretical way for rethinking managerial practice in organizations working on the cultural and creative sector by focusing on paradox. We argue that the integration of paradox theory into the conceptualization of management practice within organizations in the cultural and creative economy may represent a contribution that can advance our understanding of these organizations and the daily practices of their managers. Theoretically, our research connects the organizational literature on paradox to the studies on creativity in order to produce a better terrain to examine creative paradox as a managerial practice. Empirically, we interact with several managers that have experienced the creative paradox in practice. Our methodological approach is biographic and combines several techniques: in-depth interview, documents and narrative analysis.
We consider paradox as a “persistent contradiction between interdependent elements” (Schad et al., 2016: 10) – elements that seem logical in isolation but surprising and irrational when appearing simultaneously (Smith & Lewis, 2011).The study of management paradoxes emerged as a topic of growing interest in the field of Organizational Studies over the last 25 years(Schad et al., 2016). There are a considerable number of paradox theory researches(Ybema, 1996; Dephillipi & Arthur, 1998; Eisenhardt, 2000; Trevelyan, 2001; Streatfield, 2001; Clegg et al., 2002; Clegg, 2002; Fiol, 2002; Gotsi et al., 2002; Lampel, 2000; Lewis, 2000; Beech, 2004; Kosmala, 2007; Smith & Lewis, 2011; Michaud, 2013; Putnam, 2016), focused in different contexts such as organizational change, innovation, creativity, identity, and control. However, there are few studies applied to organizations in the cultural and creative economy (Dephillippi & Arthur, 1998; Gotsi et al., 2002; Kosmala, 2007; Lampel, 2000).
Organizations’ everyday life includes plenty of paradoxical happenings. A central paradox for organizations in the cultural and creative economy relates to creativity. Creative paradox involves the tension produced in the confrontation between artistic creation, managerial demands (how can we manage artistic creation?) and economic necessities (is it profitable, is it art? how to become profitable without betraying artistic matters?).The essence of these tensions is related to the belief that a rational approach, expressed in managerial demands and in economic necessities, is opposed to the idea of creativity that requires complete freedom. It reflects the belief that creativity is an innate and magical gift.
Theoretically, we focus on the understanding of creativity as a social and cultural process (Glaveanu,2010, 2014a, 2014b), integrating the literature on creativity in the fields of management and paradox (Amabile, 1996; Cohendet, P. & Simon, L., 2007; George, 2007; Townley, 2010; Defillippi, Grabher& Jones, 2007; Bassett-Jones, 2005).The empirical research is anchored in a biographical approach (Cunha, 2017; Merrill, 2009; Rouleaux, 2015) and in the practice-based stories (Rouleaux, 2011) of 15 managers. The biographical approach generates rich information because it appreciates the symbolic meaning that individuals attribute to the phenomena experienced by them.
Managers were selected for the research considering the diversity of their profile, as well as their experience working in cultural management. They are managers with great and long-term experience in managing organizations in the cultural and creative economy, such as in the field of theater, dance, cinema, music, visual arts. Managers explain and describe how creativity appears as paradox in their managerial practice, accounting all situation and context. They also reflect on their practices to handle them. Each manager was interviewed at least three times. In the first time, the interview focused on mapping their experience and exploring how the creative paradox appeared in their professional lives. The second interview focused in deepening the investigation in specific aspects. And the third one had the purpose of refining the research and presenting the findings to the interviewed managers.
We have also used documents (administrative papers, reports, etc.) to enrich description and the understanding of each story, as information gathered during the interviews was organized in terms of rich stories about creative paradox. Empirical material was analyzed and interpreted from a narrative perspective (Csarniawska, 2004; Gubrium & Holstein, 2009; Kim, 2016; Maitlis, 2012; Riessman, 2008).
This research intends to offer two kinds of contribution, one oriented to the academic community and another one oriented towards the managers. The first contribution refers to a new theoretical perspective for research on organizations in the cultural and creative economy, proposing paradox as a heuristic concept for managerial practice. The second contribution involves an intent do help managers in the cultural and creative economy to recognize and face paradoxes in a more open-minded way and free from dualistic mindsets.