
Cultural industry: at what cost?
There are moments when one begins to wonder whether the collective narrative we have been telling ourselves is slipping out of our grasp. In our eagerness to structure, professionalize, and industrialize, we end up creating a playground where those who control economic and institutional levers inevitably gain the upper hand. And the others, artists, independent producers, cultural organizations, watch the wave approaching.
What is unfolding today in digital art goes far beyond a question of economic models. It is about the place we give to creation, to the diversity of voices, to the ability to experiment without being immediately required to perform. When art becomes a strategic tool, a communication medium, or an instrument of influence, something shifts. Subtly, yet profoundly.
Perhaps it takes the courage to ask an uncomfortable question:
what if the desire to build an "industry" is a dead end?
What if the real challenge is not to grow bigger, but to inhabit our practices more fully, by re-embedding them within a broader cultural field, more hybrid, more demanding in substance?
Hybrid arts are zones of friction. Spaces that are not defined solely by a market, but by a discourse, a stance, a relationship to the world. It is precisely this complexity that constitutes their strength and what makes them incompatible with simplistic logics of domination.
Nothing is ever guaranteed. A creative ecosystem remains alive only as long as it protects its margins, its rough edges, its disagreements. Otherwise, it becomes a backdrop. Functional, smooth… and interchangeable.
Anyway… that's just my take.
Merry Christmas!
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Published in the Being Adelin Schweitzer newsletter, 19 December 2025.
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