ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an eco-materialist analysis of the digital turn in the administration of arts and cultural organizations. The digital turn in this sector can be understood as another instance in the sixty year process of political-economic transformation that has wired information and communication technology (ICT) into the heart of the capitalist system. In this context, digitization is supposed to be a driver of more efficient, more productive, and more relevant cultural provision derived mostly from so-called audience development (that is, marketing). I argue that arts and cultural groups might want to revisit their fulsome love of high-tech solutions, especially if they truly want to live up to promises of sustainable operations. As the novelist, Philip Pullman says, “it would be strange if the best work being produced didn’t take some account, in some way, of what’s happening to our climate. Art is not only about beauty: sometimes it has to warn” (IMAGINE 2020, n.d.). The chapter begins with a brief introduction on the digital turn in arts/cultural administration, placing it in a political-economic context of digital capitalism. The subsequent sections focus on digitization’s impact on the environment, on labour involved in the global supply chain of digital technologies, and on electronic waste (e-waste).
