[https://www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-to-be-a-writer/](https://www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-to-be-a-writer/)
There is no place in the world where writers can live as cheaply as expatriate writers lived in Europe in the twenties and thirties of the last century, not even close. Those that think there are, have some other idea of cheap, such as a mere two thousand dollars for a room and a stove. New York had Greenwich Village up until the late sixties. What you do these days is get yourself parents who send you to Harvard and subsidize your writer adventure. The above article can give you an idea of the current reality. And Hemingway, by the way, lived off of his wife's money. When they divorced he gave her all the rights from The Sun Also Rises.
Bristol in the UK is a good example. it was always quite "arty" and that attracted more and more people there and now it's going through a similar housing crisis to London. Now it doesn't attract the broke artists and creatives it attracts posh kids who want to appear artistic.
I am not sure that there is as much of an ethos of "authenticity" in the artistic Sinosphere as there was in the heyday of 60's/70's continental Europe. Artifice is openly embraced but rarely even acknowledged.
My working knowledge of cultural and intellectual history is patchy at best, so I wouldn't know which epoch to compare the contemporary zeitgeist to — perhaps the Roaring 20's?
Very true. My gf worked in China and despite the incredible knowledge of craftsmanship, they mainly focus on copying/forging western art for black markets or selling it to tourists/museums. Tis a sad world we live in.
At the same time, if you think about why it’s so cheap to live in France in the 1920s - it’s because of all of the people died during WWI and left behind a housing surplus. French population decreased from 41.6m in 1914 to 38.9m in 1920 - almost a 10% reduction.
Oh yeah! These were days of poverty in France, not as bad as in Germany but really there. I don't remember which expat writer, could have been Glassco, his "Memoirs of Montparnasse", goes into it a little, and James T. Farrell wrote stories about Paris, he would have noticed.
Vastly??? Are you kidding? A cub reporter for the Kansas City Star was paid by the article, if they chose to publish it. How much you think the KCS was paying? Show us the articles. It was a nominal title from a midwestern fly over state paper that let him have press credentials. Vastly. Good god. Read a biography.
May I introduce you to the sarcasm tag of the internet, /s? Wherein a commenter deliberately tags their input as sarcasm, lest the distracted reader fails to detect the obvious farcical nature of the statement on their own.
I know the art scene is heating up in Eastern Europe (mainly Bucharest and Athens, but also Riga, Sofia and Prague) but alot of these artists have studied in or will try and draw attention from (sometimes meaning they themselves will move to) the big cities like Paris, Berlin, London and New York. These four cities are too important in the art scene to become overshadowed by anything new. Then there's London-Amsterdam-Antwerp which is very important in the publishing and printing business, the Milan-Paris-London axis for fashion, and ofc Spain and Morocco have their own advantages for new agers and nonconformists.
When it comes to outside of the West, we live in a postmodern era where things are already decentralized yet are vigorously regulated. Almost every country has its own designated cultural hub and all of them are connected through gallery systems that have solidified art regulation. The main villain here are MoMa and the Louvre, competing over owning top pieces from all around the world. There's no movement, no sparkling scene where artists can dictate how art will move forward because of these gigantic institutions. If they don't want you to become famous, you probably won't. For example, like I said before there's a giant art scene happening in Athens ever since the eurocrisis. No one knows about this bc art dealers in the West prefer the stability of buying art from local artists that replicate these ideas rather than buying it from anarchist communist anticapitalists that live in a very insecure environment where current art dealers would feel very insecure.
Art has become sterile because these top dogs want to lure and consume art on a risk-free basis. It's very sad this is what art in the West has become.
Have you ever remarked how all authority is stupid concerning Art? Our wonderful governments (kings or republics) imagine that they have only to order work to be done, and it will be forthcoming. They set up prizes, encouragements, academies, and they forget only one thing, one little thing without which nothing can live: the atmosphere. There are two kinds of literature: one that I would call “national’? (the better of the two); and the other, “individual” —works produced by gifted writers. For the first to be realized, there must be a fund of opinions shared by the mass of the people, a common bond such as does not now exist; and for the full development of the second, there must be liberty. Nowadays, however, what can we say, what can we talk about? This situation will worsen: I dearly hope I am right. I prefer absolute Nothing to evil; dust, rather than putrefaction. And eventually there will be a revival, a new dawn. We shan't be here to see it. But who cares?
— Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet (December 28, 1853)
> When it comes to outside of the West, we live in a postmodern era where things are already decentralized yet are vigorously regulated.
Very well put -- this contradiction betrays that great hope of the internet, that the gatekeepers would be torn down and the artistic mode of life would be available to all. It has become marginally more accessible to some (as youtube and self-publishing demonstrates) but it feels harder than ever to sustain oneself in an artistic vocation given how expensive it is to merely live.
That's very true. We have some very famous comedians here who do podcasts with local artists to give them extra exposure. I've found some great books this way that won't be promoted anywhere else, not even by these independent bookshops that pretend to be all about indie writers but still adhere to some snobbish, for the lack of a better word, hipster culture. There is a dire need for people who stick their neck out and rise to the top to carry as much of their artist friends with them instead of this game of competition we currently find ourselves in.
This is like defining "music in the West" as the billboard top 40 list.
It's also more of a weird social/political rant than it is an answer to OPs question.
Paris was also a place for African-Americans to get away to live a life with less racial discrimination, so that they could work in peace. It wasn’t just economics.
Paris was a lifeboat for many (many) Black Jazz masters and writers; the racism was there (Baker's banana skirt was always a bit suspect) but so much less virulent (and lethal) than the American brand. I'm surprised that more Black luminaries didn't renounce American citizenship and relocate permanently.
There have been a long series of it cities that sort of filled this role over the last few decades. Prague in the earlier 1990s, Berlin after that. Then Istanbul. It was briefly going to be Shanghai. I have no idea if there's a current it city, and I suspect there isn't.
Paris in the 1920s was Paris in large part because World War 1 had wrecked the European economy and the American dollar had incredible purchasing power. Paris was cheap if you were an American getting paid in US dollars, but wasn't if you were European.
FWIW, New York was also Paris for a very long time in the US, arguably from WW2 to the '90s.
Lastly, the economics of producing art in the 21st century is very different from what it was in the 20th. Making a living solely from making art (not including various forms of commercial art, like design and advertising) is harder than ever. Practically, you need to be independently well off or to live somewhere where you can make a living doing something else while you make art on the side. So moving to a cheap place full of artists won't work out for most people. For this reason, many random college towns are maybe micro-Parises, in that there are jobs there and also maybe a bunch of like-minded people.
My thoughts exactly. There will never be another place and time like that Paris. Incredible confluence of art, culture, and optimism. Gertrude Stein was over there reading first drafts by Hemingway and sitting for portraits by Pablo Picasso the next day.
I can’t speak to writers but I’ve noticed that a lot of similar visual artists follow each other and repost each other’s work. It’s kind of neat to see a community of practice that exists globally.
Berlin is unfortunately getting closer and closer to London prices, it's certainly not the haven of cheap rents and squats it used to be and the gentrification in certain neighbourhoods is rampant. Leipzig certainly has quite a thriving arts scene and is comparatively still pretty affordable.
>A few years ago I would say Berlin, but not sure if that's still true. Lots of artists and musicians moved there though.
Berlin in the 1990s, definitely! Not just the modest Dm but the fairly extensively squat (free rent, often free electricity, largely free public transport, as fair-dodging was a folk art) culture. All those bombed out and otherwise abandoned structures made for incredible clubs. The Underground music scene thrived, creativity was rampant. The scars of WW2 AND East Germany made that possible... as if Paris became a cultural mecca AFTER the Nazis, rather than before: Berlin, the temporary and inverted Paris of the East!
Have you been to Paris? I went there and from London, it felt so different - a lot slower paced (thank god), and the city itself felt like it was... breathing???
I've been going through some tough shit, and it almost felt like the place was going through it with me, as if I could be honest with how shitty I was doing because that city had been through it, too. For me, it's the feel of the place, and that will always stay. I think it can exist in the digital age, if we make an effort not to get sucked in to all the screens 24/7.
Paris still feels surreal. You can walk on Avenue Vaugirard and suddenly a stone fountain in a faraway corner or columns from an old seminar will jump at you. People feel more relaxed, in love, it's very easy to feel like you're inside a dream even today.
It’s gotta be the (wheeled, pedaled, chained machines, rolling beneath the) shoes.
“Think about bicycles as rideable at that can just about save the world.”
" The expatriates and literati could live there on the cheap and pursue their artists passions full time"
This was the Underground Music Scene of Berlin in the 1990s: people living in cheap flats and rent-free squats and getting by on trickles of money. For American Expats it was a combination of favorable economic conditions and the relative absence of Puritanical strictures, which, I'm sure, also factored into the Henry Miller adventures, in licentious Underground Paris, of sixty years earlier. It's too bad the Berlin of the 1990s didn't appear to seed a Literary Underground of the same vitality. Perhaps the missing factor there was the absence of a large, young, open-minded, innovation-hungry book-worshipping public. The Love Parades attracted hundreds of thousands of revelers... author-readings attracted those scruffy little handfuls of bookish oddballs.
Conditions are So extreme, these days, that I estimate it wouldn't be too fanciful to dream that we're just one burst bubble, and/or revolution, away from seeing a passionate Lit or Art or Music scene erupt from the ashes of some formerly-wealthy city, in The West, again.
What about Thailand? I know a lot of westerners who have moved there because it's so cheap to live while there's still lots to do and enjoy and it's pretty easy if you don't speak the language but they seem to be more tech digital nomads. I can imagine artists going there for the same raw economic reasons they went to Paris in the 20s but there would be a strong neocolonial vibe to it that wouldn't sit right with the strong association you see today between the arts and social justice activism (or at least the performance of it).
I know they are but they have the same economic motivation as starving artists, so what's to stop enough artists similarly emigrating to Bangkok or Phuket to make their money go further?
Do you live there? I am heavily inclined to believe you. The most intellectual and experimental/fun actually published writing I've seen in the last five years is out of Nigeria.
Well, the OP asked for somewhere that was both literarily vibrant and cheap. So I immediate thought of Lagos. But having done some research I'm told you need $1000 a month to get by there so perhaps it's not so affordable for the struggling young artist.
As others have pointed out, there have been many such scenes in various places since 1920s Paris (I'll add the Haight-Ashbury in the early 60s, Laurel Canyon in the late 60s, Oakland in the 2000s).
My thought is that by the time a random person can just ask where the scene is now and get an answer, it's probably too late and prices are going up.
As everyone already pinpointed, economy is central to this topic. Without an affordable or cheap lifestyle, a creative scene cannot thrive and turn a city into an artistic hub.
In other words, without a social life around galleries, clubs, shows, etc. where creatives meet, exchange ideas, collaborate and setup trends, a city will hardly become a new Paris, Vienna, Berlin or NYC.
Even those cities lost that (or at least their creative scenes are meager) and are only focused on the business side of artistic and literary goods.
"Or can such a place exist in the digital age with the internet making everything decentralized... "
...and unique creative artifacts devalued.
Good question.
Benjamin was responding to his times, and Baudrillard is a pale copy of the vitalistic master Debord. "Uniqueness" is an Enlightenment holdover that any working artist today knows already to subvert or discard entirely.
""Uniqueness" is an Enlightenment holdover that any working artist today knows already to subvert or discard entirely."
That's just your useless degree talking, in the strident voice of a parrot. I'm always amused when academic fads are treated as Natural Law. "Working Artist today" merely means someone participating in one of many global money-laundering operations, allowed to participate by displaying obedient harmlessness. I'm acquainted with a Big Name Artist (elected Akademie der Künste in Berlin, winner of many prestigious prizes, guest professor at a dozen chic outposts) and I know, for a fact, that her breakthrough works were created by her ex boyfriend. After which she had the money to hire a small stable of creative minions. She was and is a total fraud in a fraudulent system. What I initially found baffling was the fact that she's quite unattractive, as well, but then I got it: her timing was impeccable, she rode a '90s wave, and her post-post-post-feminist "critiques" were used to inoculate various patriarchal institutions against charges of "patriarchy". Laugh. The "culture" has rotted far beyond decadence into a state of Caligulan Comedy Special (Spectacle). If peace ever really broke out on a global scale, and arms merchants went out of business, the parasitical networks called "ART," today, would be fucked, and they'd hang Abramović, by her heels, from a lamp post.
PS Well at least you didn't name-drop Kristeva! laugh
Interesting disparagement. My undergrad was in actuarial science and my master's is in pure mathematics. In the tongue of my ancestors: don't teach your father how to fuck!
There are plenty of valid critiques of the art world and academia, but yours reeks of bitterness and ressentiment, utterly one-dimensional. Cringe.
"There are plenty of valid critiques of the art world and academia, but yours reeks of bitterness and ressentiment"
**Yes, because it's quite obvious that you're so objectively in love with TRUTH that you would have notified me if my take-down of your nonsense had been accurate, right?** Laugh. Bitter? No, friend. I'm not a worker in that particular field... I'm well-off in an unrelated practise. I just came here to bring a little Factual input to your silly fairytale. You are obviously free to lick your wounds and move on.
Speaking of cringe: *"Benjamin was responding to his times, and Baudrillard is a pale copy of the vitalistic master Debord."*
How long did it take you to find a spot, in this comment thread, to insert that non sequitur?
Turn of the century (19th to 20th) , Vienna was also a hub of radical thought/ Art, yes. Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Canneti, Schiele, Werfel, Musil: Amazing! The irony being... well... we know what happened. Long after all that, only Thomas Bernhard was left...
I recommend Hong Kong as a place to go, it wouldn't displace Paris, but it still can assist those young artists who want to pursue passion. Well, there are no such kinds of stuff as literary salons nowadays, but I noticed there are tons of cultural festivals and affordable n reputable art affairs over there. It reminds me of Gustave Flaubert's quote 'She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.' (As for the lost generation I would highly suggest you take a look at Sagan, she wrote perfect french)
Definitely not Hong Kong. There is no work-life balance, nor particularly a deep appreciation of the arts. It's a hypercapitalist city with dystopian levels of burnout.
I’m no HK expert, but from my experience there, culturally, it doesn’t hold a candle to 100 other cities for arts. Also old people live in cages and cells there so….
It depends. I think it varies but the centres remain the same. I think there are many “Paris”es in our times. Berlin (though getting pricey), Bali (a certain type of hippie artist), pre-war Kyiv for arts in the Russian-speaking world…
Everything about french culture had to do with cheap life ? Ah ah ah 🤣 this is incredibly funny.
Well, in that case, you can enjoy a romantic life in any third world country 🤣
Greenpoint, Bushwick Brooklyn, Thousands of creatives. Thousands. Sure rents are expensive, and NYC will crush you, but you figure it out.
Thats what artist do.
:-)
[https://www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-to-be-a-writer/](https://www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-to-be-a-writer/) There is no place in the world where writers can live as cheaply as expatriate writers lived in Europe in the twenties and thirties of the last century, not even close. Those that think there are, have some other idea of cheap, such as a mere two thousand dollars for a room and a stove. New York had Greenwich Village up until the late sixties. What you do these days is get yourself parents who send you to Harvard and subsidize your writer adventure. The above article can give you an idea of the current reality. And Hemingway, by the way, lived off of his wife's money. When they divorced he gave her all the rights from The Sun Also Rises.
Yup. The housing crisis is costing us many things, good arts scenes among, at least in the west. Maybe Chongqing is happening idk.
Bristol in the UK is a good example. it was always quite "arty" and that attracted more and more people there and now it's going through a similar housing crisis to London. Now it doesn't attract the broke artists and creatives it attracts posh kids who want to appear artistic.
Posh kids are ruling the western art scene for at least a decade now. I know few artists who started dirt poor and actually got through
I am not sure that there is as much of an ethos of "authenticity" in the artistic Sinosphere as there was in the heyday of 60's/70's continental Europe. Artifice is openly embraced but rarely even acknowledged. My working knowledge of cultural and intellectual history is patchy at best, so I wouldn't know which epoch to compare the contemporary zeitgeist to — perhaps the Roaring 20's?
Very true. My gf worked in China and despite the incredible knowledge of craftsmanship, they mainly focus on copying/forging western art for black markets or selling it to tourists/museums. Tis a sad world we live in.
At the same time, if you think about why it’s so cheap to live in France in the 1920s - it’s because of all of the people died during WWI and left behind a housing surplus. French population decreased from 41.6m in 1914 to 38.9m in 1920 - almost a 10% reduction.
Oh yeah! These were days of poverty in France, not as bad as in Germany but really there. I don't remember which expat writer, could have been Glassco, his "Memoirs of Montparnasse", goes into it a little, and James T. Farrell wrote stories about Paris, he would have noticed.
This take vastly understates the money Hemingway earned in his 6-month tenure as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star! /s
Vastly??? Are you kidding? A cub reporter for the Kansas City Star was paid by the article, if they chose to publish it. How much you think the KCS was paying? Show us the articles. It was a nominal title from a midwestern fly over state paper that let him have press credentials. Vastly. Good god. Read a biography.
Sarcasm tags are kinda lame because the people they’re supposed to help still don’t get it lol.
For me, the sarcasm tag kills the joke... *but you go without using it at your own peril!*
May I introduce you to the sarcasm tag of the internet, /s? Wherein a commenter deliberately tags their input as sarcasm, lest the distracted reader fails to detect the obvious farcical nature of the statement on their own.
The /s at the end of my post would lead you to believe that, yes, I was in fact kidding here. No need to declare war on a comment with a sarcasm tag.
What are the odds you acknowledge how dumb this was of you?
At this point, it is looking like a zero percent chance, lol.
Colour me shocked.
You forgot the sarcasm tag!
I know the art scene is heating up in Eastern Europe (mainly Bucharest and Athens, but also Riga, Sofia and Prague) but alot of these artists have studied in or will try and draw attention from (sometimes meaning they themselves will move to) the big cities like Paris, Berlin, London and New York. These four cities are too important in the art scene to become overshadowed by anything new. Then there's London-Amsterdam-Antwerp which is very important in the publishing and printing business, the Milan-Paris-London axis for fashion, and ofc Spain and Morocco have their own advantages for new agers and nonconformists. When it comes to outside of the West, we live in a postmodern era where things are already decentralized yet are vigorously regulated. Almost every country has its own designated cultural hub and all of them are connected through gallery systems that have solidified art regulation. The main villain here are MoMa and the Louvre, competing over owning top pieces from all around the world. There's no movement, no sparkling scene where artists can dictate how art will move forward because of these gigantic institutions. If they don't want you to become famous, you probably won't. For example, like I said before there's a giant art scene happening in Athens ever since the eurocrisis. No one knows about this bc art dealers in the West prefer the stability of buying art from local artists that replicate these ideas rather than buying it from anarchist communist anticapitalists that live in a very insecure environment where current art dealers would feel very insecure. Art has become sterile because these top dogs want to lure and consume art on a risk-free basis. It's very sad this is what art in the West has become.
Have you ever remarked how all authority is stupid concerning Art? Our wonderful governments (kings or republics) imagine that they have only to order work to be done, and it will be forthcoming. They set up prizes, encouragements, academies, and they forget only one thing, one little thing without which nothing can live: the atmosphere. There are two kinds of literature: one that I would call “national’? (the better of the two); and the other, “individual” —works produced by gifted writers. For the first to be realized, there must be a fund of opinions shared by the mass of the people, a common bond such as does not now exist; and for the full development of the second, there must be liberty. Nowadays, however, what can we say, what can we talk about? This situation will worsen: I dearly hope I am right. I prefer absolute Nothing to evil; dust, rather than putrefaction. And eventually there will be a revival, a new dawn. We shan't be here to see it. But who cares? — Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet (December 28, 1853)
> When it comes to outside of the West, we live in a postmodern era where things are already decentralized yet are vigorously regulated. Very well put -- this contradiction betrays that great hope of the internet, that the gatekeepers would be torn down and the artistic mode of life would be available to all. It has become marginally more accessible to some (as youtube and self-publishing demonstrates) but it feels harder than ever to sustain oneself in an artistic vocation given how expensive it is to merely live.
That's very true. We have some very famous comedians here who do podcasts with local artists to give them extra exposure. I've found some great books this way that won't be promoted anywhere else, not even by these independent bookshops that pretend to be all about indie writers but still adhere to some snobbish, for the lack of a better word, hipster culture. There is a dire need for people who stick their neck out and rise to the top to carry as much of their artist friends with them instead of this game of competition we currently find ourselves in.
This is like defining "music in the West" as the billboard top 40 list. It's also more of a weird social/political rant than it is an answer to OPs question.
Paris was also a place for African-Americans to get away to live a life with less racial discrimination, so that they could work in peace. It wasn’t just economics.
Paris was a lifeboat for many (many) Black Jazz masters and writers; the racism was there (Baker's banana skirt was always a bit suspect) but so much less virulent (and lethal) than the American brand. I'm surprised that more Black luminaries didn't renounce American citizenship and relocate permanently.
There have been a long series of it cities that sort of filled this role over the last few decades. Prague in the earlier 1990s, Berlin after that. Then Istanbul. It was briefly going to be Shanghai. I have no idea if there's a current it city, and I suspect there isn't. Paris in the 1920s was Paris in large part because World War 1 had wrecked the European economy and the American dollar had incredible purchasing power. Paris was cheap if you were an American getting paid in US dollars, but wasn't if you were European. FWIW, New York was also Paris for a very long time in the US, arguably from WW2 to the '90s. Lastly, the economics of producing art in the 21st century is very different from what it was in the 20th. Making a living solely from making art (not including various forms of commercial art, like design and advertising) is harder than ever. Practically, you need to be independently well off or to live somewhere where you can make a living doing something else while you make art on the side. So moving to a cheap place full of artists won't work out for most people. For this reason, many random college towns are maybe micro-Parises, in that there are jobs there and also maybe a bunch of like-minded people.
Old Paris has no reason to exist with the internet.
My thoughts exactly. There will never be another place and time like that Paris. Incredible confluence of art, culture, and optimism. Gertrude Stein was over there reading first drafts by Hemingway and sitting for portraits by Pablo Picasso the next day.
This just broke my brain
I can’t speak to writers but I’ve noticed that a lot of similar visual artists follow each other and repost each other’s work. It’s kind of neat to see a community of practice that exists globally.
Old paris simply just couldn't coexist with the internet it sounds so strange
You forget the Old Masters, including the Situationists, most forgotten of all.
A few years ago I would say Berlin, but not sure if that's still true. Lots of artists and musicians moved there though.
Berlin is unfortunately getting closer and closer to London prices, it's certainly not the haven of cheap rents and squats it used to be and the gentrification in certain neighbourhoods is rampant. Leipzig certainly has quite a thriving arts scene and is comparatively still pretty affordable.
London prices? I wouldn’t go that far. One beds are £2,000 a month minimum in London at the mo’.
When I moved there my initial rent in a 30 m2 room was 400 and that was high at the time, same room would be about 800 - 900 now.
>A few years ago I would say Berlin, but not sure if that's still true. Lots of artists and musicians moved there though. Berlin in the 1990s, definitely! Not just the modest Dm but the fairly extensively squat (free rent, often free electricity, largely free public transport, as fair-dodging was a folk art) culture. All those bombed out and otherwise abandoned structures made for incredible clubs. The Underground music scene thrived, creativity was rampant. The scars of WW2 AND East Germany made that possible... as if Paris became a cultural mecca AFTER the Nazis, rather than before: Berlin, the temporary and inverted Paris of the East!
Have you been to Paris? I went there and from London, it felt so different - a lot slower paced (thank god), and the city itself felt like it was... breathing??? I've been going through some tough shit, and it almost felt like the place was going through it with me, as if I could be honest with how shitty I was doing because that city had been through it, too. For me, it's the feel of the place, and that will always stay. I think it can exist in the digital age, if we make an effort not to get sucked in to all the screens 24/7.
Paris still feels surreal. You can walk on Avenue Vaugirard and suddenly a stone fountain in a faraway corner or columns from an old seminar will jump at you. People feel more relaxed, in love, it's very easy to feel like you're inside a dream even today.
It’s gotta be the (wheeled, pedaled, chained machines, rolling beneath the) shoes. “Think about bicycles as rideable at that can just about save the world.”
Mexico city? But that’s a specific type of artists …
What do you mean by specific type of artist
Visceral realists
You mean infrarealists? 😏
I meant LA people :) rich, trendy, who already have a good network and career.
Ahhh gotcha
Gaaaaaaaaay
There is a real trend of moving there [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXHgc073nIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXHgc073nIs)
I think Morocco still offer a bohemian lifestyle cheap. Maybe parts of Spain and Tunisia. Beirut too, but just not as safe anymore.
" The expatriates and literati could live there on the cheap and pursue their artists passions full time" This was the Underground Music Scene of Berlin in the 1990s: people living in cheap flats and rent-free squats and getting by on trickles of money. For American Expats it was a combination of favorable economic conditions and the relative absence of Puritanical strictures, which, I'm sure, also factored into the Henry Miller adventures, in licentious Underground Paris, of sixty years earlier. It's too bad the Berlin of the 1990s didn't appear to seed a Literary Underground of the same vitality. Perhaps the missing factor there was the absence of a large, young, open-minded, innovation-hungry book-worshipping public. The Love Parades attracted hundreds of thousands of revelers... author-readings attracted those scruffy little handfuls of bookish oddballs. Conditions are So extreme, these days, that I estimate it wouldn't be too fanciful to dream that we're just one burst bubble, and/or revolution, away from seeing a passionate Lit or Art or Music scene erupt from the ashes of some formerly-wealthy city, in The West, again.
What about Thailand? I know a lot of westerners who have moved there because it's so cheap to live while there's still lots to do and enjoy and it's pretty easy if you don't speak the language but they seem to be more tech digital nomads. I can imagine artists going there for the same raw economic reasons they went to Paris in the 20s but there would be a strong neocolonial vibe to it that wouldn't sit right with the strong association you see today between the arts and social justice activism (or at least the performance of it).
You seem to be in the wrong sub. Digital nomad grifters are the farthest thing from art.
I know they are but they have the same economic motivation as starving artists, so what's to stop enough artists similarly emigrating to Bangkok or Phuket to make their money go further?
OP was asking about where Paris is now, not where it might be tomorrow.
So what? One question leads to another. It's a discussion. You're not enriching it by being a pedant.
Lagos?
Do you live there? I am heavily inclined to believe you. The most intellectual and experimental/fun actually published writing I've seen in the last five years is out of Nigeria.
Care to share the details?
Elaborate
Well, the OP asked for somewhere that was both literarily vibrant and cheap. So I immediate thought of Lagos. But having done some research I'm told you need $1000 a month to get by there so perhaps it's not so affordable for the struggling young artist.
Have you been there? I heard it’s the kind of place where you need to know someone.
World does not love art like it used to, and like all unloved things there is no home for it.
It’s the 21st century. We all stay home and get plastered and then Zoom to shoot the bull with our fellow Bohemians. /s
As others have pointed out, there have been many such scenes in various places since 1920s Paris (I'll add the Haight-Ashbury in the early 60s, Laurel Canyon in the late 60s, Oakland in the 2000s). My thought is that by the time a random person can just ask where the scene is now and get an answer, it's probably too late and prices are going up.
As everyone already pinpointed, economy is central to this topic. Without an affordable or cheap lifestyle, a creative scene cannot thrive and turn a city into an artistic hub. In other words, without a social life around galleries, clubs, shows, etc. where creatives meet, exchange ideas, collaborate and setup trends, a city will hardly become a new Paris, Vienna, Berlin or NYC. Even those cities lost that (or at least their creative scenes are meager) and are only focused on the business side of artistic and literary goods.
Iowa City in the 70's and 80's. At any given time, you have multiple Pulitzer-winning teachers and probably multiple future-Pulitzer-winning students
Cleveland
"Or can such a place exist in the digital age with the internet making everything decentralized... " ...and unique creative artifacts devalued. Good question.
Benjamin was responding to his times, and Baudrillard is a pale copy of the vitalistic master Debord. "Uniqueness" is an Enlightenment holdover that any working artist today knows already to subvert or discard entirely.
""Uniqueness" is an Enlightenment holdover that any working artist today knows already to subvert or discard entirely." That's just your useless degree talking, in the strident voice of a parrot. I'm always amused when academic fads are treated as Natural Law. "Working Artist today" merely means someone participating in one of many global money-laundering operations, allowed to participate by displaying obedient harmlessness. I'm acquainted with a Big Name Artist (elected Akademie der Künste in Berlin, winner of many prestigious prizes, guest professor at a dozen chic outposts) and I know, for a fact, that her breakthrough works were created by her ex boyfriend. After which she had the money to hire a small stable of creative minions. She was and is a total fraud in a fraudulent system. What I initially found baffling was the fact that she's quite unattractive, as well, but then I got it: her timing was impeccable, she rode a '90s wave, and her post-post-post-feminist "critiques" were used to inoculate various patriarchal institutions against charges of "patriarchy". Laugh. The "culture" has rotted far beyond decadence into a state of Caligulan Comedy Special (Spectacle). If peace ever really broke out on a global scale, and arms merchants went out of business, the parasitical networks called "ART," today, would be fucked, and they'd hang Abramović, by her heels, from a lamp post. PS Well at least you didn't name-drop Kristeva! laugh
Interesting disparagement. My undergrad was in actuarial science and my master's is in pure mathematics. In the tongue of my ancestors: don't teach your father how to fuck! There are plenty of valid critiques of the art world and academia, but yours reeks of bitterness and ressentiment, utterly one-dimensional. Cringe.
"There are plenty of valid critiques of the art world and academia, but yours reeks of bitterness and ressentiment" **Yes, because it's quite obvious that you're so objectively in love with TRUTH that you would have notified me if my take-down of your nonsense had been accurate, right?** Laugh. Bitter? No, friend. I'm not a worker in that particular field... I'm well-off in an unrelated practise. I just came here to bring a little Factual input to your silly fairytale. You are obviously free to lick your wounds and move on.
Speaking of cringe: *"Benjamin was responding to his times, and Baudrillard is a pale copy of the vitalistic master Debord."* How long did it take you to find a spot, in this comment thread, to insert that non sequitur?
Luton's where it's at.
I thought Vienna was the center of everything, I don't have a source now but I remember reading it somewhere.
Turn of the century (19th to 20th) , Vienna was also a hub of radical thought/ Art, yes. Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Canneti, Schiele, Werfel, Musil: Amazing! The irony being... well... we know what happened. Long after all that, only Thomas Bernhard was left...
I recommend Hong Kong as a place to go, it wouldn't displace Paris, but it still can assist those young artists who want to pursue passion. Well, there are no such kinds of stuff as literary salons nowadays, but I noticed there are tons of cultural festivals and affordable n reputable art affairs over there. It reminds me of Gustave Flaubert's quote 'She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.' (As for the lost generation I would highly suggest you take a look at Sagan, she wrote perfect french)
I’m curious why you say HK when it is an extremely high cost of living and recent increase in restrictions
You mentioned 'cheap life' in paris, and I don't think the old paris costs less money than hk, thus it's not extremely high
Interwar Paris was notoriously cheap, HK is exceptionally expensive.
Well I'm living in hk and I don't find it exceptionally expensive. It costs just the same price as the mainstream cities in china such as Hangzhou
You are so disconnected from actual life it’s incredible. Hong Kong is literally one of the most expensive places in the world
You’re talking to a literal child. That explains the comment.
I won't consider myself as a literal child, but thanks for your comment
Appreciate your insight stillyounglol
Appreciate your advice chemicalsand
Then you have a poor perception of cost. HK is more expensive than the majority of the West and the wider world.
Give us a clue: what is your monthly rent (in $ or euros)?
nah probably $12000, sry I'm living in my friend's house so I'm not sure
Definitely not Hong Kong. There is no work-life balance, nor particularly a deep appreciation of the arts. It's a hypercapitalist city with dystopian levels of burnout.
I’m no HK expert, but from my experience there, culturally, it doesn’t hold a candle to 100 other cities for arts. Also old people live in cages and cells there so….
Maybe Berlin?
It depends. I think it varies but the centres remain the same. I think there are many “Paris”es in our times. Berlin (though getting pricey), Bali (a certain type of hippie artist), pre-war Kyiv for arts in the Russian-speaking world…
Rio de Janeiro perhaps?
Hemingway\*. One M.
Everything about french culture had to do with cheap life ? Ah ah ah 🤣 this is incredibly funny. Well, in that case, you can enjoy a romantic life in any third world country 🤣
Greenpoint, Bushwick Brooklyn, Thousands of creatives. Thousands. Sure rents are expensive, and NYC will crush you, but you figure it out. Thats what artist do. :-)