TY - JOUR

T1 - Infrastructural Performance

T2 - Reclaiming Social Relationality in Times of Structural Precarity

AU - Schmidt, Cecilie Ullerup

PY - 2018/8/3

Y1 - 2018/8/3

N2 - As freelance workers are living in inconstancy and increasing social isolation, a crucial question arises: how can solidarity be reclaimed through a critique of structural precarity? Precarity as a consequence of neoliberal working conditions is analysed and problematized across academic disciplines. Departing from Lauren Berlant’s description of structural precarity and Judith Butler’s elaborations on performativity, I propose the term infrastructural performance in order to portray artistic strategies which criticize inequality and organize collectively. I analyse the infrastructural performance of the performance art collective cobratheater.cobra to show how precarity has provoked organisational and artistic reconfigurations in the independent performance art scene. I demonstrate how features within the neoliberal work ethos such as the repetition of the artistic signature, individualisation, and the imperative of mobility are dismantled by the group’s infrastructural performance. I conclude that infrastructural performance criticises structural precarity through collective actions of infection, exposure, and disobedience. It is a new form of collective artistic organisation, which proposes the possibility of change in social and economic conditions. At the end of the article, I speculate how infrastructural performance might change the conception of the art work itself.

AB - As freelance workers are living in inconstancy and increasing social isolation, a crucial question arises: how can solidarity be reclaimed through a critique of structural precarity? Precarity as a consequence of neoliberal working conditions is analysed and problematized across academic disciplines. Departing from Lauren Berlant’s description of structural precarity and Judith Butler’s elaborations on performativity, I propose the term infrastructural performance in order to portray artistic strategies which criticize inequality and organize collectively. I analyse the infrastructural performance of the performance art collective cobratheater.cobra to show how precarity has provoked organisational and artistic reconfigurations in the independent performance art scene. I demonstrate how features within the neoliberal work ethos such as the repetition of the artistic signature, individualisation, and the imperative of mobility are dismantled by the group’s infrastructural performance. I conclude that infrastructural performance criticises structural precarity through collective actions of infection, exposure, and disobedience. It is a new form of collective artistic organisation, which proposes the possibility of change in social and economic conditions. At the end of the article, I speculate how infrastructural performance might change the conception of the art work itself.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Infrastructural performance

KW - structural precarity

KW - Neoliberalism

KW - performance art

KW - collectivism

KW - self-organisation

U2 - 10.7146/nts.v30i1.106915

DO - 10.7146/nts.v30i1.106915

M3 - Journal article

VL - 30

SP - 5

EP - 19

JO - Nordic Theatre Studies

JF - Nordic Theatre Studies

SN - 0904-6380

IS - 1

ER -