Things

Abstract

We are born into a world of things: something that is undeniable. Things surround us, they give our life stability, accumulate over time but also change and diversify. Arguably, the most simple definition of creativity would be the process leading to the creation of new things, material and symbolic. In most cases, creative processes leave a ‘visible’ mark in the world, they generate or change things around us, but they can also take the shape of utterances or processes (see also Chapter 7). A dance performance can be a creative outcome despite the fact we would not commonly call it a ‘thing’ (although its recording might be considered one). Nonetheless, by and large, creativity involves a kind of externalisation or materialisation (Moran & John-Steiner, 2003). Individuals and their culture are connected to each other through things, in the constant dynamic between internalisation and externalisation, appropriation and transformation of the material world. But, of course, other people stand ‘between’ person and things (Vygotsky, 1997), those who make the things we use, who introduce them to us, who teach us or guide our action. It is virtually impossible — or, in any case, reductionist — to consider the relation between individuals and their material surroundings without taking into account the crucial part played by other people and by society at large.