Feargal Sharkey goes to POLIS

POLIS are running a series of dialogues on the theme of 'what is media for', one of which will feature Feargal Sharkey insisting that "Media is for the Culture Industry".

Which sounds a bit clunky - even if the phrase "the Culture Industry" itself doesn't make you want to start destroying culture with sticks and marker pens. Other speakers are suggesting that media is for things like free speech, or mobility, or peace. Nobody else seems to be suggesting quite so directly that the idea of having media should be to line their own pockets. And there's a sense that there's half a sentence missing in Sharkey's contention - for the Culture Industry to do what, exactly?

Still, the idea that media is something that comes from the rich and culturally powerful at the citizenry should't be a surprise coming from Sharkey.

His brief biography, as given by Polis, is interesting:

He will discuss the challenges facing the music industry today, and in particular, how problems of file sharing and intellectual property look from the perspective of the artist.

Except Sharkey isn't really an artist, is he? He's a curator of his own back catalogue, but he's not released a single since 1991. There's something a little disingenuous suggesting that he's the voice of the artist in New Media; Sharkey speaks for a very different part of the family.