Issue #09: The Money Issue

April 2016

The idea of a special money issue for the Diary arose last year when, in the midst of the Brandis debacle, it turned out there were so many issues around the money in the arts that it appeared obvious, after much heated debate and turmoil, that money, after all, was hardly the sole issue.

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? And should it be so, what and who funds performing arts today? What forces enter into its commodity form? What monetary value is placed on the labour of those who produce performance? How does money – public, corporate or philanthropic – affect, prescribe or determine the content of the performative arts, the forms of thinking they embody, their modes of production, the artist’s status in a society, the economies of values and the value of value itself? And where does performance sit on the sliding scale of compliance and resistance?

This issue investigates these questions and more. But what has become clear, is that in these these times of global economic systems and the affect of the material on contemporary culture, we will have to be fierce, uncompromising and relentless active spectators.

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...

Year Zero

Let’s be bold. We need to develop not only an artistic dramaturgy and a cultural dramaturgy but a progressive, social dramaturgy. We need to operate cross-sectorally and think transversally. Read more...

Money and Art: Money and Us

Anti-capitalist resisters are driven by social and environmental values and relationships. Monetary values disrupt, counter and undermine such values and relationships. A capitalist economy is ineffective for and inefficient in expressing or fulfilling social and environmental values, such as health, well being and creativity. Money is a functionally divisive technique of production and exchange. Money operationalises classes of managers vs. the managed; those with more vs. those with less; cycles of boom and bust. Read more...

Art and Money

Art and money are a volatile combination. Putting the two together immediately emphasises the tensions fuelling our contradictory attitudes towards art: we believe it musn’t be a commodity – indeed, one of the most common beliefs about art is that it trascends the commodity and is, in its purest forms, an argument against commodification. And on the other, every arts institution in the country exists because of art’s value as a commodity. 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...

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...

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...

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...

Issues Concerning the Money Issue

What seems to be missing from discussions about the political economy of Indian dance is a genuine concern for the precarious lives dancers, especially contemporary choreographers who struggle to make a decent living from their creative works in Indian cities predominantly interested in preserving and promoting their rich legacy of classical dances. Read more...
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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...

About This Issue

Contributors

Alison Croggon, Andy Horwitz, Anitra Nelson, Arushi Singh, Bojana Kunst, Cassie Thornton, David Pledger, Jan Ritsema, Joeri Mol, Lim How Ngean, Mathieu Briand, Matthew Day, Max Haiven, Xavier Le Roy

Dancehouse would like to warmly thank all the contributors to this issue and particularly: the incredible Dan Perjovschi for so kindly accepting to delight us with his witty drawings; and Audrey Schmidt for her thorough transcriptions, editing and proofreading.

Editorial Board

PHILIPA ROTHFIELD (Chair) is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy program, La Trobe University. She is a dance reviewer for RealTime arts magazine and Momm magazine, Korea. She is co-convenor of the Choreography and Corporeality working group, International Federation of Theatre Research. She has been dancing on and off for some decades. As a philosopher, she writes on French philosophy, political philosophy, feminism and postmodernism, specialising in philosophy of the body. She is currently writing a book on dance and philosophy. She has published on dance in relation to Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead, Nietzsche, Klossowski and Ravaisson. She is also Dancehouse’s 2014 Creative Advisor.

ANGELA CONQUET is Artistic Director of Dancehouse and founder of this publication. She has worked extensively in the independent dance sector as artistic director, presenter and producer and her work experiences took her to different contexts and countries. She is also a translator and interpreter.

Illustrations:
DAN PERJOVSCHI is a visual artist mixing drawing, cartoon and graffiti in artistic pieces drawn directly on the walls of museums and contemporary art spaces all over the world. His drawings comment of current political, social and cultural issues. He has played an active role in the development of the civil society in Romania. His work has been presented – as exhibition, installation and performance – namely by MoMA, Basel Kunsthalle, Tate Modern London, Aichi Triennial, Centre Pompidou. He lives and works in Bucharest.

Editing, transcriptions and proofreading:
AUDREY SCHMIDT joined Dancehouse as Administration and Communications Coordinator in 2016. She is also a writer, curator and media and communications professional. In 2011, she graduated from the University of Melbourne with a double major in film, media and cultural studies and linguistics. Her continuing research centres on contemporary art, gender, biopolitics and identity in late capitalism. She is currently co-editor of Dissect Journal 3.

This website was developed with the support of the IAN POTTER FOUNDATION.

The views and opinions expressed in this Dancehouse Diary are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Dancehouse.

ISSN 2203-4161
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