IAI Presents the New Creative Industries and Design School, 2023
IAI infiltrated academia with this institutional parody, staging a faux-celebration of neoliberal education reforms. Mimicking university open-day theatrics, the exhibition critiqued the transformation of art schools into vocational hubs for “creative entrepreneurs.” Installations featured rebranded degree programs (MFA in Venture Aesthetics), corporate-style mission statements, and architectural designs mapping art’s subsumption into gig-economy workflows.
The work weaponized the visual language of university marketing—infographics touting “industry partnerships,” glossy prospectuses framing artists as CEOs—to expose how neoliberal policies gut critical pedagogy. Visitors navigated a maze of bureaucratic doublespeak that mirrored real-world shifts: the replacement of studio critique with business pitches, and the rebranding of critique itself as a “transferable skill.”
Channeling Marcel Broodthaers’ fictive museums and Andrea Fraser’s institutional drag, IAI framed the “new creative industries” as a surrender to capital—where art schools train students to self-exploit, and resistance becomes a marketable aesthetic. The exhibition’s centerpiece: a wall-sized infographic tracing Sydney College of the Arts’ trajectory from experimental studio to “design thinking” incubator, complete with shareholder-style profit projections.
This darkly comic intervention asked: When universities adopt corporate jargon and metrics, what happens to art’s role as social critique? The New Creative Industries and Design School reflects on academia’s Faustian pact with neoliberalism.
IAI Institute 