ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 introduces the debate about ‘post-politics’ as an assumed condition in which political engagement declines and politics is reduced to technocratic or managerial concerns without real alternatives. While this hypothesis might insightfully problematize people’s growing distrust in political institutions and structures, the chapter suggests exploring the myriad of emerging social and political movements and actors as new forms of ‘the political’ that can potentially exceed and challenge narrow notions of ‘politics’. This differentiation lends itself to investigate the Koalition der Freien Szene (Coalition of the Independent Scene; Koalition), an open action platform of Berlin-based artists and cultural workers, and to discuss the latter as a new activist collective engaging in modes of political mobilization, representation and legitimation between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. Moreover, the chapter introduces a framework of conflict and antagonism to explore new modes of political agency and action as moments of ‘the political’ that might restitute the latter for emancipatory politics. With a critical approach to debates about ‘creative’ cities, the chapter investigates this neoliberal rhetoric and introduces the Koalition as a counter-hegemonic, self-empowered actor to (re)claim the meaning of the ‘creative’ city from the producers’ point of view.
