Since the year 2000 we have seen the rise of a brash young Romanian creative class acting as perfect and slavish 'collaborators' of the powers in charge. 'Collaborators' in the old Ceausescu era-sense, were vilified and secretly hated. To be a 'collaborator' was an ignominious way to gain access to advantages, rent-seeking and resources that were unavailable to most others. Still, there was always the sense that everything was a great exaggeration, that it was all a big lie, that you only pretended being a cheerleader of the system.
Nowadays being the creative 'collaborator' is seen as the smart decision or the only decision. Nobody has any problems with giving a helping hand for the next fabulous country branding campaign, making marvelous adds for the party elections or designing the next Cultural Institute logo. This creative class has been called into existence by the very fact of their subservience. We are finally aware that this new creative mind got deeply involved in manufacturing both consumer propaganda and contemporary political iconography. Creative freedom actually means how you can creatively out-smart the public, the consumers or yourself.
Brutal competition has taken care of one thing – how you can actually out-compete others into being a better and a more efficient 'collaborator'. This in exchange has made it unrealistic or impossible to criticize, question or evaluate the role of smoothing down the edges of power. It has made a virtual taboo of discussing the very object of creativity in Romania – how to embellish the conservative, how to color and cherish exploitation, how to deodorize and glamorize economic rapacity. We owe it, at least in part, to the gifted malleability and managerial propensity of this young creative class the nearly complete disappearance of independent non-profit spaces/events in the city of Bucharest in 2010.
