Defensa de la creación - José Antonio de Ory

This book is a plea in favour of the primordial and indispensable role of the creative impulse. The genius of the creator who needs to compose, paint, sculpt, write, dance, perform, act, design is the raw material for what we call "culture" to exist. Like wood, iron, oil or bauxite, it can be moulded, transformed and used, but not manufactured. Mediators and managers are fundamental, no doubt, but they exist only because there are those who have the creative drive and the genius that leads them to create and others the parallel need to see, contemplate, listen and understand what they produce. Without them there would be nothing to call culture, nothing to order and classify, nothing to promote, consolidate or give meaning to, nothing to publish, sell or auction; there would be no need for management and intermediation, there would be no need for so many trades, so many activities; there would be no prizes to award or foundations to establish around. Only from the creative impulse arises the creative act, nothing is comparable to its strength and its nature is therefore different from the rest: the others surround and envelop, only the creative act is at the centre. 

José Antonio de Ory

He has held various cultural management positions in his native Madrid and in other cities around the world. Despite this, he shows a notable disagreement with some of the usual practices of the discipline, he doesn't like the name "cultural management" very much and doesn't quite understand what we mean when we talk about "culture". In order to understand it, perhaps, he began a few years ago to write articles or opinions in various publications that are at the origin of this book of essays. This is his second book, after Ángeles Clandestinos. Una memoria oral del poeta Raúl Gómez Jattin (Bogotá: Norma, 2004).