Tanzquartier Wien

“Dance is not close to work issues because it can function as a representation of work or an image of the working process, but because it is work in terms of its material rhythms, efforts and the ways in which it inhabits space and time.” – Bojana Kunst

Negotiations, the year long, durational project, initiated by choreographer Alexander Gottfarb, thematizes amongst others the notion that ‘dance is work’. In more and more, recent critical thinking on art (dance in particular), it is acknowledged as a particular form of labor from which other economical fields can learn a lot. For instance in “Together, the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation”, Richard Sennett describes the arts as a laboratory in which people still train the social skills of working together which are eroding in a lot of other domains. The format of Negotiations highlights and makes visible these processes of labor and collaboration.

In order to contextualize the performances of Negotiations, we will organize a reading circle, discussing in detail the book by the Slovenian philosopher and dramaturg Bojana Kunst: “Artist at Work. Proximity of Art and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015). The reading circle will be guided by Guy Cools, dramaturg of Negotiations. On three evenings from 18.30 till 20.00, we will do a close reading of the book and discuss its ideas and content and the other works it references.

27 March: Preface and Chapters 1 (The Uneasiness of Active Art) and 2 (The Production of Subjectivity), pp. 1–49.

10 April: Chapter 3 (The Production of Sociality) and 4 (Movement, Duration and Post-Fordism), pp. 50–133.

24 April: Chapter 5 (The Visibility of Work) and Conclusion, pp. 134–193.

Participants are kindly invited to read the relevant chapters in advance and formulate their questions and comments. They are also invited to visit the performance of Negotiations, any time between 10.00 and 18.00 at the Tanzquartierfiliale at Neustiftgasse 31.

Registration requested: kunstvereinarchipelago@gmail.com