OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

3. PROMOTING LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BY CREATING CULTURAL PRODUCTS
Needs satisfaction, then, is compatible with difference in forms, and forms can
become elements for conquering new markets. Moreover, this change of form can come
in sudden leaps, with the adoption or penetration of new images or new models, while
adaptation of content is often more steady and continuous, reflecting progress at the
margin. This change of form often plays upon the emotions or upon symbolic values
that evoke a need for a thorough retooling, which itself is a source of economic gain.
The good thus takes on a meaning that exceeds its function. This symbolic value can
be determinant: it produces veritable logos testifying to membership in a group, or
even a new ethnic identity. Artists often like to play upon this confusion between form
and content, as we can see in the famous garden bench that was made to accommodate
both strollers and flowers.
Products of whatever kind associate these functions in various proportions, and
sometimes to extremes — where the good has lost all its utilitarian function but is
endowed with an aesthetic or semiotic dimension, or where the aesthetic or formal
value of the good pales against its functional content. Perversions are possible, as
Duchamp showed when he placed in a museum a utilitarian object [a toilet bowl] that
had completely lost its utility but had not thereby acquired any recognised aesthetic
value. The contemporary economy stresses this aesthetic value of goods as a way of
differentiating products and identifying consumers. Cultural products are thus products
were the aesthetic value is prized for its own sake, without interfering with the
utilitarian function. Here again we have the extreme case that is the work of art, which
can never have anything but an aesthetic or semiotic value. Production of these
cultural products is doubly indebted to the arts: artistic knowledge serves as their
point of reference, and artistic know-how provides the means for making them.
The idiosyncratic nature of cultural products
A cultural product reflects specific conditions of production, and it changes its
nature depending on the factors of production, tangible and intangible, and on their
combinations. The production of these products therefore cannot be indifferent to
the nature of their environment, and their location then appears as a determinant of
such goods. This idiosyncratic nature may be more or less obvious. A work of art is
the very essence of an idiosyncratic product, for it is unique to the image of its
producer. Other goods, such as multiple editions or copies, may fit this description
to a lesser degree. On the other hand, in the case of cultural industries, this characteristic
only applies to some but not all of the good’s components. For their part, the creative
industries produce idiosyncratic goods at the outset, even if the nature of these
goods and of the structures that produce them will tend over time toward standardisation
and industrialisation.
The specific place helps to determine the essence of goods made there, and that
essence will change from one place to another. This finding can be applied to the image
100 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005