I have to admit, when I first read – ‘We are not just in the creative economy, but in the re-creative economy. Are you a creator or a re-creator?’ – the first thing to come to mind was –
Homer Simpson: “I don’t know, Herb. People are afraid of new things. You should have taken an existing product and put a clock in it or something.”
And my initial thought that while the creator was pure, the re-creator just took what came before and changed it a little. Added in the clock and called it theirs. Called it creativity. Called themselves an artiste.
I thought that the term re-creator was just someone who took the old , or the already created, and added their ‘spin on it,’ some hack piggybacking off the work of true creators; kind of like Los Angeles based Frenchman ‘Thierry Guetta’ who reinvents himself as a street artist called “Mr. Brainwash,” who then goes on to exhibit work that plagiarizes other copyrighted images in Banksy’s – ‘Exit through the Gift Shop.’ **
So to me, initially, the term re-creator was almost derogative.
Then I thought about that some more.
There is a long standing (by some) belief that – there is nothing new, everything is a remix, every idea has been thought of, every storyline has been done before – and so I wondered then if any of us were actually real creators and not just re-creators anyway. That maybe, in essence, we’re all just re-creating something, adding in our own little clocks, just calling ourselves creators when we really are just one of ‘those guys.’
But that kind of didn’t sit well with me either.
So I wondered then if maybe the re-creator isn’t necessarily any less creative than the creator (the one that would seem closer to god or the universe or whatever you believe created this world) and maybe the re-creator is even more creative, or at the very least, more rebellious, more courageous, more innovative.
And I liked that.
I began to wonder if maybe a creator wasn’t just someone who creates (obviously), but just someone who creates within the constraints of society or within a framework. What if a creator just makes things appear different, when they are really the same, just presents their ‘creations,’ in new ways? Perhaps they don’t necessarily change anything, aren’t the real trailblazers, they just have innovative approaches to what already is. (Hey I could be wrong, bear with me).
You see, when the structure needs to be torn down and a new way developed, a creator may take what has come before and add to it, the collision of two pre-existing elements. A new approach. They can make things, for the moment, better or at the very least, different. However, no matter how much emphasis we put on being creative (and rightly so) maybe there are times when re-creation is the only way forward.
So consider for a moment what it might mean to be a re-creator. Is it possible that they are the ones that acknowledge what was, but do what they want regardless? Are they the ones that tear stuff down and change how it is going to be, rather than just build upon what already is? Are they the ones who find new paths, and disregard the old ones, re-creates the natural order of things? Are they those who will rebuild after the apocalypse, knowing that you can never go back to how things use to be?
Maybe the creator is anyone who is creative, but the re-creator is the one who creatively changes the way things have always been done, the true innovators?
What do you think? Tell us!
If a re-creator is someone who creates, not from what was, but changes things altogether – who do you know who does that? Is it you?