HOW TO DO THINGS BY THEORY

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.

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PUBLIC EDITING #2 reference text_3:

THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION

Robert Luxemburg

text published on 04/04/2004 on http://makeworlds.net/node/113

»Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.« (Steve Jobs, Keynote, MacWorld San Francisco 2004)

Preface

When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself. The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than one and a half centuries to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the new proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, shareholder value and copyright — concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.

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PUBLIC EDITING #2 reference text_2:

COLLABORATION

Florian Schneider

text published on 02/17/2007 on http://summit.kein.org/node/190

If one principle could be seen to inform the opaque surface of what in the 1990s was called a “new economy” — the shifts and changes, the dynamics and blockades, the emergencies and habit formations taking place within the realm of immaterial production — it would certainly be: “Work together”.

Facing the challenges of digital technologies, global communications, and networking environments, as well as the inherant ignorance of traditional systems towards these, ‘working together’ has emerged as an unsystematic mode of collective learning processes.

Slowly and almost unnoticeably, a new word came into vogue. At first sight it might seem the least significant common denominator for describing new modes of working together, yet “collaboration” has become one of the leading terms of an emergent contemporary political sensibility.

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