Studio studies : notes for a research program

Introduction This edited collection approaches the ‘studio’ as a key site for the production of cultural artefacts, and in doing so it aims to open up a novel and underdeveloped topic for social and cultural research. As the various chapters of this book will demonstrate, studios play an essential role in the bringing into being of all manner of aesthetic, affective and reflexive objects including, but not limited to, artworks, brands, buildings, crafted artefacts, concepts, designed products and services, live action and animated films, information technologies, music, software and video games. Even government policy is being conceived and incubated in ‘social’ and ‘service’ design studios, continuing the intervention of design into democratic procedures (e.g. Bisgaard et al. 2013). The list is seemingly endless. Studios, it would seem, have become the principle resource for what are, after Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1997 [1944]), commonly known as ‘culture industries’ where so called ‘creativity’ is heralded as the driving factor in the revitalization of contemporary capitalist economies. The premise of this collection, however, is that despite the key role played by the studio in cultural production, its importance has and remains largely overlooked by anthropologists, sociologists, cultural theorists, historians, planners and urbanists, policy makers and so forth. In short, the studio remains a peculiar and remarkable lacuna in our understanding of how cultural artefacts are brought into the world and how creativity operates as a situated practice.