PUBLIC EDITING SESSION #1:
for joined issue of TkH Journal and le Journal de Laboratoires: Materialist approaches to immaterial labour /(in) performance – Re-materializing immaterial labor
Notes
Format – of Public Editing
TkH’s project How to Do Things by Theory defines critical theory (of performing arts) as a social practice, and views Public Editing as one of the formats of performing theory – by doing editing of a journal as a public process. PE sessions aim not only at public theoretical discussions of the issue, but also at commissioning, producing, and live proof-reading concrete contributions to the journal.
Main topic: Why immaterial labor in relation to performing arts today?
- from social field to performing arts and back -
The aim of the PE session#1 was on one side to apply theoretical, philosophical, political concepts to the performance practice, but also to investigate how we can challenge wider social-political concepts by performance practices and experiences.
What is immaterial labor in performing arts?
Immaterial (labour) is not addressing the ‘inherent’, ontological immateriality of performance itself, but the materialist (economic-political) approach to process orientation in performance, shift from the commodity of performance to the commodification of all the processes that enable the event and the product of performance.
Immaterial work in performance field implies cheap political-economic deal: what is all that a young performing artist need? ‘A room of one’s own (Virginia Woolf) and a bit of cash’ model results in proliferation of solos, ‘research aesthetics’ etc.
There are many activities, not oriented to production of a piece, but the artistic production depends on them: knowledge production, collaboration, conferences, networking. Organising these kind of activities is cheap, and so they easily become products substituting high performance production budgets.
Poiesis and praxis: political consequences of their proximity
Practices of research, process orientation, and articulation of art as research (G. C. Argan), emerged in the 50es and 60es in the arts as resistance to commodification, only to be commodified themselves later. Today’s general paradigm of immaterial labor, cognitive capitalism etc. blurs the borders between practice (praxis) and production (poiesis). However, poiesis is part of production that is de-politicising, that doesn’t belong to the public sphere, but it is an affirmative contribution to the civilisation (adding an object to the collection of the objects).
Re-materialisation vs commodification/capitalisation
Re-materialisation, from the subtitle of the journal issue, is not to be confused with commodification and capitalisation. The distinction should be made between materialisation in the sense of commodification (capitalist) and materialisation as articulation of critical theoretical objects that are put into concrete political and economical situations (materialist or Marxist, post-Marxist approach). (Re-)materialisation is therefore necessary in order for us not to stay at a socially transcendent thinking about freedom, creativity, inventiveness, (idealist discourse); but rather go down to the material level of society, finding politically and economically regulated relation to capital (materialist discourse).
Losing political relevance / intervention and transformation vs making and affirming status quo
With “nomadism” of artists and cultural workers, practitioners have become a floating commodity, with no stable or clear context of action. Losing a political sphere, a sphere of pressure, the practice becomes mediatised and it’s not intervening anymore.
Relations with the audience – not a (patronising) service, but building a common situation
We are taking part in a game of care for audience. All the discourse we produce in last years is on how the work is communicated, on the ways we deal with audience and not the ways we produce. We should open the production/poiesis in such a way that we do not merely mediate it to the spectators, but rather view their ‘ignorance’ as their capacity and intelligence (emancipated spectator by J. Rancière).
What is being done?
Some artists are already questioning the system – there are many practices that are producing new micro-institutional frames for exchange of knowledge as means of producing work without collaboration, trying to create another public sphere in art. However, those practices can be viewed as supplementary to the ‘old’ frame, virtual production that is complementary to the material production.
Responses to the problem:
1) How to claim all these (immaterial) activities that are present and are not being recognised and paid enough?
2) How to resolve the tension between being part of the performance production system and still be interventive?
3) What can be done without merely reproducing capitalist institution of performing arts?
- giving public life to immaterial labour, give it value in the public sphere;
- pay immaterial labour – solution of the intermittents du spectacle;
- sell the performances for their actual costs, like visual artists sell their pieces;
- define immaterial work as The Work, not as supplementary or side activity of an artist;
- clarifying the difference between praxis and (immaterial) poiesis in performance => turn to practice, which means re-politicization of the activities that are commodified today as poiesis with a false aura of intervention, transformation, “political capacity” of performance;
- turn the practice into poetics (poesis) of the object; opening up of the poetics and not mediatising it.
- We mentioned that collaboration and research projects are a “cheap deal”, a way to diminish financial investment in artistic project. Not only because it lowers general production costs, but because it is often badly paid. Under which conditions can we talk than about demands for better retribution? Aren’t we reproducing a model of symbolic retribution, once characteristic for artistic professions, so called “vocational” professions in the sense that financial struggle is compensated by the satisfaction of recognition. In research project there is often a certain level of prestige, or in the other hand the research satisfies the desire for knowledge. But then aren’t we going towards the model of education as work?
It’s interesting to read the work of sociologist Pierre-Emmaneul Sorignet, who also works as a professional dancer. He doesn’t discuss the issue of immaterial work at all, at my knowledge, but does a thorough research of the question of “vocation” and symbolic v. material retribution. It’s interesting in the sense that the spreading of “creativity” and “flexibility” in the working world in general can be read as one of the means of control of workers and their potential social demands.
(some texts here: http://www.cairn.info/publications-de-Sorignet-Pierre-Emmanuel–3619.htm)
on different positions and divisions of labor in artistic research.
in collaborations and networks without a production agenda, it’s the curator and the dramaturge that emerge as power figures, as the only one’s that offers an immediately tangible “product” : discourse.
The projects of dance research for example, as movement research etc. does not have a very high quota on the market. (examples: some project at Contredanse in Brussels, or Mas de la Danse in south of France held by Dominique and Françoise Dupuy)
There might be a possibility to look at re-materializing from that perspective. as re-engaging with dance-specific knowledge- not general “capacities” of flexibility, creativity etc. but knowledge specify to body work. It’s another area where distinction art-not art doesn’t operate, but that is not new for dance and its different social statuses through history. What happened is a societal shift, so quite the same characteristics that were prejudicial to dance when it was fighting for recognition and validation as “art” now appear re-invested.
The whole field of movement and perception research receives attention from different scientific communities. Somatic techniques and practices that are often practiced in its most pertinent form by dancers or people related to dance field are an area of therapeutic intervention etc. In those cases it’s interesting to see if, and on which lever the Art-nonArt question is operant, as some project that are busy with movement research do not seam to deal with Art Institution. (It might be good to talk to Carla Bottiglieri who is a BMC practitioner and involved in one such project)
On the other hand I’m quite interested in understanding what is the place of terms of aesthetics and poetics (and their relation ot ethics) in this discussion on labor.
How we work and what we work (on) overlap, but do not merge into one, unless we admit that this division is no longer valid either. I’m thinking of artistic work in relative autonomy (not institutional) but, art as autonomous zone of production of different modes of perception. If this may appear as evident, it still needs questioning (perhaps through yet another theorization of poiesis-praxis couple) because we are thinking of modes of facing, if not resisting and changing the capital’s grasp on production of subjectivity. The question of perception is crucial here. I’m thinking of an interview that José Gil gave recently where he talked about bad consequences of
art in time of culture. “You loose a density of perception and of work of art that is necessary. When you expose and well all those reproduction, little sculptures… we approve of all this because its democratization of art etc. But I guarantee that you loose there a complexity and density of perception. In other words: you loose silence. We need silence. And this are not some deep thoughts. What is terrible is that they became today deep thoughts!
During the first session there was talk about not being mediated, which is something important, maybe worth coming back to and developing, both trough concrete ideas/examples and through theoretical development, as it could touch upon the poeisis/praxis problem as well as the things I mention in the paragraph above: re-investing certain objects of poetic production, but not as commodification.
Another thing that might be interesting to look at is the work in terms of intensity. We don’t necessarily work more and even if we do, perhaps the quantity is not the problem, but the fact that the production of subjectivity is at the core of the capitalist production + the demands of creativity, flexibility etc. raises the intensity of work. I think there are some publications about this, I’ll look it up.
in anticipation of session with M. Lazzarato:
On of the ideas is that social struggle, or any capacity for action is to be found in the capacity of creating new connections, new associations, new assemblages of subjectivities etc. (deleuzian and, and, and) . There still seams to be a very open question: how to have sustained associations. They dissolve easily. So the imperative of “soft” and “micro” actions, makes them quite localized in time, and only half effective. I’m thinking of recent cases of intermitents-precaires and the Universities. After months of struggle, things are settled like in disappointing court case, where the settlement is made outside court. So a lot of demands end up in temporary settlements which is an interesting topographic and temporal metaphor. (nomad-worriors, settlements, sedentary)
I beleibe Mr Lazzarato talks about the fact that the danger is in the collective modes of enunciation. If I’m not mistaking, capital recognized that there is no danger in individual radical enunciations, critique and so on. This in some way was always the case: Collective struggle is the dangerous one. The difference is that it was believed that an individual’s critique, radicalism, call for action would mobilize the collective. Which appears not to be the case any more. So we have two options: – look for reasons why today individual enunciation is not capable any more of mobilizing collective enunciation. Or admit that the most effective mode of societal control is to allow for total, or a perception of total individual freedom.
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