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The Call to Play: New Work and Labor at Artsadmin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2020
Extract
February 2010. The lights are off. As I adjust to the dark I can make out shapes of others scattered around the room. Disoriented and uncertain I wait for some sign or direction of what to do. The air is thick with anticipation, but as time drags it becomes clear that no instructions are coming. Then it begins all around me. Sat in the dark in a workshop in the courtroom studio of Toynbee Studios, I begin to feel anxious. I see the outline of another body in front of me and I panic. I should do something. I reach for anything that might keep things working, that might keep play going. Does anyone want to dance, I ask. I waltz. I sense someone dancing behind me.
In what follows I think through my participation in a 2010 workshop led by Anne Bean, recounted in part above, to understand better the role of play in the conditions of production for theatre and performance under capital. Bean is an interdisciplinary artist, belonging to (or claimed by) multiple experimental art scenes, including visual, performance, and sound art, who has been a central figure of European live art since the 1970s. The workshop, which was conducted largely in the dark and focused on the aestheticization of cooperation through an emphasis on its participants doing play was held at Artsadmin's Toynbee Studios, the influential UK arts producing organization's home in East London. This article puts my account of Bean's workshop in conversation with Victorian economist Arnold Toynbee's demand for a new capitalist morality. Toynbee's appeal was, of course, not directed at me or the other workshop participants disoriented and uncertain in the dark. But, I argue, the situation of play that arose in Bean's workshop is a contemporary iteration of what Toynbee called a gospel of life, a term referring to a commitment to self and civic betterment at the core of a burgeoning capitalist morality. The connection between the shaping of Victorian labor practices and the staging of cooperation between participants in Bean's contemporary workshop is the basis for this essay's core assertion: that the value of play as a counterpoint to work within practices and discourses of theatre and performance needs considerable rethinking.
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Footnotes
With thanks to Shane Boyle, Adam Alston, Myka Tucker-Abramson, Giulia Palladini, and Dominic Johnson for their invaluable comments on early drafts of this article. Thanks also to Michael McKinnie for early discussions that helped shaped this work and to Anne Bean for her generous participation in this research. I also offer my deep appreciation for the productive comments from Theatre Survey's Editor, peer reviewers, and copy editor.
References
Endnotes
1 The full quote from Toynbee in context reads: “Increased production was necessary for man as an instrument of social and political progress. And the old economy succeeded in establishing new conditions of production. But when it came to the more delicate task of distribution it failed. A more equitable distribution of wealth is now demanded and required. But this end can only be attained coincidently with moral progress. For such an end a gospel of life is needed, and the old Political Economy had none. This was its great fault, a fault which, now its work is done, has becoming glaring in the extreme. Such a gospel must now be put forward or all that work will fail. Morality must be united with economics as a practical science.” Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England: Popular Addresses, Notes and Other Fragments (Newton Abbot: David & Charles Reprints, 1969), 25.
2 Taken from my notebook, 27 February 2010.
3 See, for example, Callery, Dymphna, Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books, 2001)Google Scholar; and Schechner, Richard, “Playing,” in The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 24–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Schechner, Richard, “Drama, Script, Theatre and Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 17.3 (1973): 5–36Google Scholar; I cite the reprint in Schechner, Performance Theory (London: Routledge, 2003), 66–111, quote at 110.
5 The oil shocks, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of international financial governance, and the US-backed military coup of President Allende in Chile are all cited by David Harvey as signposts of the ascendency of neoliberalism following the breakdown of capitalism's embedded liberalism; Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7–8, 10–12.
6 Schechner, Performance Theory, 110. There is not sufficient scope here to unpack the history of the workshop in theatre and performance and its relationship to theatre and performance more broadly. However, at the time of this writing, I am in process on an article tentatively titled “Workshops, New Work, and the Cultural Sector.”
7 This article develops ideas I introduced in “The Passion Players,” New Left Project 23 (January 2013). This can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20130419022805/http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/print_article/the_passion_players, accessed 1 February 2020, and is also available from the author.
8 In the UK the New Work Network, which ran from 1997 and 2012, and a more recent call for the establishment of a London New Work Network in 2014, in a piece of research on artist development funded by Arts Council England, are useful points of reference. See Hannah Nicklin, “Artist Development: Camden People's Theatre and Artist Development—How Are We Doing? How Can We Do Better?” (December 2014), 37–8; www.cptheatre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Artist-Development-Report-for-publication.pdf, accessed 18 January 2020. Though it's beyond the scope of this article to unpack fully the history and myriad functions of the term “new work” in the United Kingdom and its potential in a national and transnational context, I claim this term is central to understanding the sector and its associated practices, how they relate to the wider cultural sector and to shifts in labor more broadly.
9 For a discussion of the relationship between deindustrialization and literature that resonates with elements of my discussion here, see Bernes, Jasper, The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar.
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13 Instructions on a paper affixed to the door of Toynbee Studio's Courtroom Studio, welcoming participants to the start of Anne Bean's Weekender on 27 and 28 February 2010.
14 Bean, conversation with the author, London, 24 June 2011.
15 “Artsadmin Weekenders: Anne Bean,” Artsadmin, www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/2521, accessed 13 June 2018.
16 “Artists We Work With: Anne Bean,” Artsadmin, www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/anne-bean; and “Anne Bean,” England & Co. Gallery, www.englandgallery.com/anne-bean/, both accessed 7 July 2019.
17 Nicholas Ridout, Theatre & Ethics (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1.
18 Caillois sets down a rubric for play forms that includes competition, chance, simulation, and vertigo. See Caillois, Roger, “The Classification of Games,” in Man, Play, and Games [1958], trans. Barash, Meyer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 11–36Google Scholar.
19 Maurizio Lazzarato, “Conversation with Maurizio Lazzarato,” Public Editing Session no. 3, 23 June 2010, in “Exhausting Immaterial Labour in Performance,” joint issue of Le Journal des Laboratories and TKH Journal for Performing Arts Theory 17 (2010): 12–16, at 15.
20 Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience [1990] (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
21 Ibid., 16, 54.
22 Braidotti, Rosi, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006), 181Google Scholar. Braidotti draws on Deleuze here: “Deleuze stresses the extent to which unconscious forces are the flows of intensity that create feedback relations between self and reality.”
23 Bean, conversation with the author, London, 24 June 2011.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 JHuizinga, ohan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture [1938], trans. Hull, R. F. C. ([1950] Boston: Beacon Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Caillois; Geertz, Clifford, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” [1972], in Culture and Politics: A Reader, ed. Crothers, Lane and Lockhart, Charles (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 175–201Google Scholar; and Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure [1969] (New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction, 1995])Google Scholar.
28 Schechner, “Playing,” 27.
29 Etchells, Tim, Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 49Google Scholar.
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31 Dolan, Jill, “On ‘Publics’: A Feminist Constellation of Key Words,” Performance Research 16.2 (2011): 182–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reproduced on Dolan's website The Feminist Spectator, http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/articles/on-publics-a-feminist-constellation/, accessed 1 April 2019.
32 Schiller, Friedrich, On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters [1795], ed. and trans. Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. and Willoughby, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 107Google Scholar.
33 Kaprow, Allan, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Kelley, Jeff (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 125–6Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.
34 Recent writing on the relationship between labor and performance includes Harvie, Jen, Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the special consortium issue of TDR: The Drama Review, 56.4 (2012) entitled “Precarity and Performance,” ed. Nicholas Ridout and Rebecca Schneider.
35 Kunst, Bojana, Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism (Alresford, Essex, UK: Zero, 2015)Google Scholar.
36 Palladini, Giulia, The Scene of Foreplay: Theatre, Labor, and Leisure in 1960s New York (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 See Peter Fleming's review of Niels Åkerstrom Andersen's book Power at Play: The Relationship between Play, Work, and Governance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), in “The Playing Fields of Capitalism,” Ephemera 11.4 (2011) www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/playing-fields-late-capitalism, accessed 13 July 2018.
38 Kane, Pat, The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living (London: Pan Macmillan, 2005)Google Scholar.
39 French historian Fernand Braudel argues that capitalism should be viewed through a longue durée (a long moment) rather than through periodization. Giovanni Arrighi on Braudel's longue durée in The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times [1994] (New York: Verso, 2010), 6.
40 Berlant, Lauren, “Cruel Optimism,” Differences 17.3 (2006), 20–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Please see Livergant, Elyssa, “Belarus Free Theatre, Labour Mobility, and the Cultural Politics of the Border,” Contemporary Theatre Review 26.2 (2016): 241–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 251–2, for more extensive engagement with Berlant's idea of cruel optimism in the context of the “new work” theatre and performance sector.
41 Running annually for the past twenty years the scheme supports a period of open-ended research for a group of between seven and ten early to mid-career UK artists.
42 With thanks to Adam Alston for articulating so clearly how Weekenders expand the workweek.
43 For example, the Barbican Centre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Battersea Arts Centre, and London International Festival of Theatre all used the Weekender label to promote participatory activities for audiences between 2010 and 2011.
44 In conversation with Nikki Tomlinson, London, 12 January 2011.
45 Ibid.
46 See Tyndall, Kate, The Producers: Alchemists of the Impossible (London: Arts Council England, 2007), 35–6Google Scholar.
47 Klein, Jennie, “Developing Live Art,” Histories and Practices of Live Art, ed. Heddon, Deirdre and Klein, Jennie (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 12–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 26, 34.
48 Artsadmin was part of a small consortium of live art organizations that received an investment from Arts Council England of £117,600 in a very competitive bidding process to support creative approaches to private and philanthropic fundraising. Artsadmin, media release, “Live Art Organisations Benefit from Arts Council England Award,” 8 May 2013, www.artsadmin.co.uk/resources/4F/4F002B79-3728-B9F3-171F-CB1E8DE3618D/08-05-15-catalyst.pdf, accessed 20 April 2018.
49 I am also drawing here on Ernst Bloch's reading of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach where, as Bloch explains, Marx's “concept of activity … developed in the new bourgeois age … . pre-supposes as a base a society where the ruling class sees or wishes to see itself in activity, i.e. work. However, this is only the case in capitalist society in so far as work, or rather: the appearance of work around the ruling class, in contrast to all pre-bourgeois societies is here no longer a dishonour, but is respected.” Ernst Bloch, “Commentary on ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ from The Principle of Hope,” Marxist Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/archive/bloch/hope/commentary-theses.htm, accessed 7 May 2018; emphases in the original.
50 Fleming, Tom and Erskine, Andrew, Supporting Growth in the Arts Economy (London: Arts Council England, [July] 2011), 15Google Scholar, https://ccskills.org.uk/supporters/employer-advice/article/supporting-growth-in-the-arts-economy, accessed 20 January 2020.
51 Harvie, 70–4, quote at 74.
52 Ibid., 73, 76–9.
53 Ibid., 71.
54 Fleming and Erskine, 24; cf. Harvie, 73.
55 Gray, Robert, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 53 n. 3Google Scholar.
56 Green, David R., From Artisans to Paupers: Economic Change and Poverty in London, 1790–1870 (Aldershot, Hants, UK: Scholar Press, 1995), 73Google Scholar.
57 “Daniel Brine's Top Tips for Artists,” May 2010, https://vimeo.com/12101228, accessed 1 May 2019.
58 Eric Hobsbawm, Worlds of Labour (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), 196.
59 Fishman, William J., East End 1888: A Year in a London Borough among the Labouring Poor (Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 2005), 10Google Scholar.
60 Ibid., 11.
61 Ball, Michael and Sunderland, David, An Economic History of London, 1800–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Koven, Seth, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Fishman, 383.
64 Koven, 236.
65 Rev. Barnett, quoted in Fishman, 384.
66 See Jackson's, ShannonLines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001)Google Scholar, which brings aesthetics and performance into conversation with social history to tell a story about the social activism of Chicago's Hull House.
67 Koven, 240.
68 Kaiser, Matthew, The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 13–19Google Scholar.
69 Toynbee, 152, 24.
70 Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1976), 14Google Scholar.
71 The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions, which were a regular event at Toynbee Hall, would eventually spawn what would become the neighboring Whitechapel Gallery.
72 Hobsbawm, 227. In addition to Hobsbawm, Raphael Samuel and Lenin were among those thinking through the problem of the labor aristocracy.
73 Ibid., 237–8.
74 Gray, Labour Aristocracy, 2.
75 Ibid., 137.
76 See the excellent work of the Precarious Workers Brigade, Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability & Reclaiming Education (London: Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press, 2017), http://joaap.org/press/trainingforexploitation.htm, accessed 1 February 2020.
77 Butler, Tim and Hamnett, Chris, Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration: Understanding London's New East End (Bristol: Policy Press, 2011), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Charles Landry, The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators (London: Earthscan, 2000), 137, 233.
79 See “Poverty and Inequality Data for Tower Hamlets,” Trust for London, https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/boroughs/tower-hamlets-poverty-and-inequality-indicators/, accessed 20 January 2020.
80 “Spitalfields, E1,” London&City brochure, October 2018 (posted 2019), 5–6, londonandcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/London-Square-Spitalfields-Brochure-002.pdf, accessed 20 January 2020. Cf. “Spring in the City—London Square Spitalfields,” 27 March 2019, https://londonsquare.co.uk/news/detail/spring_in_the_city, accessed 20 January 2020.
81 See Levin, Laura and Solga, Kim, “Building Utopia: Performance and Fantasy of Urban Renewal in Toronto,” TDR: The Drama Review 53.3 (2009): 37–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
82 Jasper Bernes, “Shop Talk 2 Respondent: Jasper Bernes,” SFMOMA Open Space, 25 April 2011, https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2011/04/shop-talk-2-respondent-jasper-bernes/, accessed 7 May 2019.
83 McKeon, Olive, “Oh What a Mess I've Made: On Aesthetics and Political Praxis,” Journal of Aesthetics & Practice 8 (Winter 2011–12)Google Scholar, www.joaap.org/issue8/mckeon.htm, accessed 9 May 2019.
84 Lorey, Isabell, “Virtuosos of Freedom: On the Implosion of Political Virtuosity and Productive Labour,” trans. O'Neill, Mary, in Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and Resistance in the ‘Creative Industries,’ ed. Raunig, Gerald, Ray, Gene, and Wuggenig, Ulf (London: MayFlyBooks, 2011), 79–90Google Scholar, at 87.
85 Both Shannon Jackson's reflections on props and social works and Laura Levin's writing on camouflage and environmental art consider the maintenance art of Mierle Laderman Ukeles. For Jackson, Ukeles's work exposes the vital but often devalued systems of support that ensure the ongoing functioning of institutions, artistic creation, and human welfare. Jackson, Shannon, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), 75–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Levin draws out the ways Ukeles's maintenance aesthetic, by appearing as domestic labor, formalizes a material relationship of care between artist and environment. Levin, Laura, Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 110–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently the term “maintenance,” and practices of repair, have been of interest to contemporary scholars and activists seeking to counter capital's contemporary emphasis on innovation and growth. Sharon Mattern, “Maintenance and Care,” Places Journal (November 2018), https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/, accessed 30 July 2019. My use of the term draws on these related strands of inquiry, moving beyond specific artworks to consider the social reproduction of sectoral economies and how these sites might be reimagined as places to organize against capital.