Participatory Cultural Platforms and Labour

Crowdfunding from the perspective of labour is the focus of this chapter. Though the ideology of digital intermediaries seeks to emphasize the ludic nature of digital interaction and gamification this rhetoric leaves aside the issue of labour, both on the surface and embedded deeper within crowdfunding platforms. This chapter doesn’t consider project creators and platform employees separately: its contribution is to question their activity conjointly, as both participating in the same logic of ‘polymorphic entrepreneurship’. Organising and optimizing labour is a key element of these digital apparatuses with the role of project creators and platform managers central to maintaining momentum. Also important is the development of a ‘common language’ used by different players and as a requirement for success the need to ‘train, educate, agitate’. It is not just a question of the artist as worker, but also of the mobilization of the artist’s ‘community’. Platforms are obliged to reassure, motivate and mobilize by using a judicious mix of technology and marketing but in this regard they remain dependent on ideological production that accounts for a significant proportion of the activities of the various managers. New modalities of cultural production are made possible by even greater labour flexibility, mobility and insecurity.