Joasia Krysa writes:
The European Journal of Higher Arts Education
Call for Contributions, Issue 2, November 2004
"Economies of Knowledge: New Technologies in Higher Arts Education"
The deadline for submissions 30 September 2004.
This issue of the European Journal of Higher Arts Education explores ideas
around the production (research and enterprise) and distribution (teaching
and learning) of knowledge in higher arts education in relation to digital technologies.
Recent changes in the mode of production and dissemination of knowledge have
been often described in the context of what has been fashionably termed as knowledge economy. Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society, (1996) points to the change in the ways technological processes are
organised — from a mode of development focussed on economic growth and surplus-value (industrialism) to one based on the pursuit of knowledge and increased levels of complexity of information (informationalism).In this way, new technologies have enhanced the effectiveness of global
apitalism, enabling it to become more flexible, adaptable, faster,
efficient and pervasive. Culture, too, and indeed the education system, has
become integrated in the process of the creation of capital, with cultural
regeneration and a link between research and enterprise as an example of
capital's renewal. In this context it is clear that art and art education follow economic imperatives for the most part but do they also offer the possibility of influencing it? To what extent can the spaces of
determination be creatively reclaimed?