All articles tagged: Capitalism

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What Matters

‘What Matters’ was the last of a series of salon conversations as a part of the Xavier Le Roy _In Dialogue public program, co-presented by Dancehouse with MPavilion. The conversations aimed to link dance and choreography to current issues in art and society; highlighting the connections between the thinking, moving body and contemporary aesthetic, cultural and political issues. Led by Angela Conquet, Artistic Director of Dancehouse, Xavier Le Roy was joined by a panel of local practitioners such as choreographer Matthew Day and Joeri Mol – senior lecturer in Organisation Studies at the University of Melbourne; as well as French artist Mathieu Brand. Read more...

Percolating an Idea of a Project on Dance, Labour and Economics

It was the exchange of their physical prowess as dancers with different training that interested me, from the pedagogical approaches of both dancers to the notion of economic exchange. How are these dancers repositories of body disciplines that contribute to their economic sustainability, and how might this lead to the exchange of different body disciplines as an exchange of information or knowledge that could be traded or circulated, perhaps as a form of capital? Read more...

On Senseless Spending

The proposals for common being, which are articulated regardless of the existing power relations, can never be evaluated. If art really needs to be affirmed through the language of economics, it needs to be pointed out that art is not connected to the economy of the production of value but is much closer to aimless spending – to giving gifts without expecting a return. Read more...

Is There a Way Out of Self-Exploitation?

After having served capital as agents for gentrification in all big cities, artists serve capital as agents and explorers for colonising the rest of the world. Artists are the expression and incarnation of western values like free individualism. They carry these values inherently, transporting and transferring them almost innocently. They are missionaries of capital often disguised as its opponents. In this sense, they are representatives of capital’s perversity. Read more...
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On Exiting Capitalism

We tend to imagine that money infects or sullies art, but financial history could equally be narrated as one in which increasingly abstract figuration, surreal visualisation and aesthetic chaos seep into what is presumed to be the antiseptic, mimetic rationality of the market. Which is all to say, I’m for the abolition of capitalism (the rule of society by money) and also the abolition of “art as such.” And I think until we get there (and maybe after) support for the arts will always be dirty. Read more...

On the Pursuit of What Matters

With this issue in mind, we wanted to take a closer look at the realities of those working with ephemeral time-based processes and products. In a money-driven world, the performing arts are equally subjected to market rules – specifically those of commodification and consumerism – like any other field of practice. And yet, with no tangible object to trade except the experiential moment of the now, should the embodied performative event be a commodity traded like any other? Read more...