Performing Labour Relations in the Age of Austerity

Abstract

Exploitation in the sphere of production is not specific only to capitalism. However, only in the capitalist mode of production is the extraction of surplus value made legally possible by mediation of the sphere of circulation: the wage worker enters into contractual relations as a free legal subject in order to become the object of exploitation in the sphere of production. In recent decades social and economic distance between artists and the industrial working class has been diminished due to overall precarisation of labour and the global division of work. Displaced work propelled by growing economic migrations, expanding self-employment, temporary work, project-based work and other forms of insecure and irregular work are rapidly becoming “standard” types of employment in many branches of economy, not only in cultural industries, while unlimited full-time employment contracts are becoming almost an endemic way of legal agreement between labour and capital. The author analyses several contemporary performances as examples of artistic critique of current ideological canons and power structures governing labour relations in the globalised capitalist production. He is predominantly interested in projects by Stefan Kaegi / Rimini Protokoll, Sebastijan Horvat, Brane Zorman and Irena Pivka, dealing with labour relations, migrations and the global division of work as well as experimenting with workers and/or spectators as performers. The performances referred to in this article are just a few examples of a new wave of critical art practices dealing with the brutalisation of labour relations and the destruction of social solidarity. Although performance is maybe not the best place to rehearse revolution, these artistic statements against degradation of work in the age of austerity are nevertheless a valuable attempt to swim against the tide.