Abstract
I argue that the plural character of artistic precarity in the accelerated work regime oftentimes results in a twofold deceleration of burning out and slowing down. I address several tactics of deceleration in response to overburdening or to avoid burning out assisted by Michael Helland’s performance RECESS: Dance of Light (2016). I unveil the double paradox of slowing down as a tactic of resistance against the forces of neoliberalism: ultimately, slowing down does not turn out to be subversive, because firstly it proves to be rather an accelerating form of deceleration so as to increase our productivity, and secondly, slowing down has become commodified itself
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Notes
- 1.
Burnout is a severe problem in academia too: although academic scholars are well-paid, they often lack the time for research due to myriad obligations (see Cvetkovich 2012).
- 2.
It also depends on how one understands productivity, be it in the quantitative sense or the qualitative sense.
- 3.
The observations here are based on a performance in Abrons Arts Center in New York, on June 6, 2016. This analysis is highly reworked from an earlier version published in Research in Dance Education on October 11, 2017, by Taylor & Francis, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14647893.2017.1387526 (Van Assche 2017).
- 4.
I write invite here because paradoxically, the compulsive nature of participatory art seemingly runs against the slowing down discourse. Very much aware of this paradox, Helland does not impose duties on the audience.
- 5.
Own translation from Dutch.
- 6.
I have participated in two try-outs of such an installation on two different locations in Belgium.
References
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Van Assche, A. (2020). Slowing Down. In: Labor and Aesthetics in European Contemporary Dance . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40693-6_10
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