Why Are We (Not) Creative? (2021)

In this second installment of his exploration of creativity, Hermann Vaske looks for factors that inhibit it. He asks artists, activists, and thinkers, among them artist Marina Abramović, author T. C. Boyle, and climate activist Luisa Neubauer, about things that kill their creativity. He notes that assassins lurk everywhere, be they in the form of money, fear, censorship, or bureaucracy. Ironically, however, these things can also foster creativity. Today in particular, the Anthropocene period threatens our very survival. This existential threat keeps us exploring new ideas. Creativity may be under threat, but it is often this very threat that drives it. In dialectically synthesizing opposites, Vaske is surprised to find that some reasons for a lack of creativity are themselves particularly creative.