Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with state-funded theatre institutions, new performance arts centres, and protest movements in Germany and Brazil, this paper explores the relevance of an anthropological engagement with creativity, ethics, and patronage for this interest group.

Paper long abstract:

Creativity, ethics, and patronage are not just at the heart of recent transformations in the contemporary German and Brazilian performance arts scene. Anthropological attention to the artistic, social, and political negotiation of these concepts also sheds a different light on a number of fundamental developments in contemporary (European) societies, such as the role of artistic subjectivities in contesting or perpetuating entrepreneurial ethical imperatives, protest movements and agonistic pluralism in contemporary 'democracies', the relation between art patronage and the so-called creative industries.