For starters, consider the lounge. What exhibition today is complete without one? A good example was provided by 'Be Creative! Der kreative Imperativ', a show that opened at Zürich's Design Museum in late 2002. Participating artists, designers, architects and theorists contributed projects devoted to the themes of neo-liberal economic policy, flexible business management and immaterial labour.

To get a sense of the show's layout, think hip dot-com startup. Or, in the words of its curator, the Swiss artist Marion von Osten, 'a modern space for living and working, ranging from the loft to the open-plan office, alternating production and regeneration, and using game tables, advisory literature and chill out zones'.¹

Now compare this to the more recent 'Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne' at the Philadelphia ICA, a show with a similar sounding title, also phrased in the imperative - only, rather than 'be creative', its command, following the marketing trend ignited by the popularity of websites such as MySpace andYouTube, was to customise and personalise, to be self-creative. ('"Our", "my" and "your" are consumer empowerment words', notes Manning Field, Senior Vice President for brand management at Chase Card Services.²) Whereas the Zürich show openly worried over the post-Fordist production protocols it critically mimed, the Philadelphia show stressed the liberating promise the creative personality holds out to society. Rather than flexibility, it talked about autonomy; rather than fret over neo-liberal appropriations of the artist as an idealisation of entrepreneurial subjectivity, it