The Brussels Dance Swarm on the Move: Precarious Bodies (not) at Home

Assche, Annelies Van; Pewny, Katharina

doi:10.1353/fmt.2013.0015

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Canadian-born dance artist Liz Kinoshita, for example, addresses these matters when singing, “I need time, without this rhyme, only 45 minutes, all to myself,” in her dance production VOLCANO (2014). The production title refers to the multiple eruptions of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which initiated a mandatory mobility pause in the accelerated and mobile work regime in which freelancers are constantly traveling for work (Van Assche and Pewny 2018). Kinoshita's work suggests that the contemporary dance profession is mobile in a twofold sense: the dance artist's body is continuously moving (i.e., dancing) and constantly on the move (i.e., traveling).…”

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The roots of this guest-edited special issue run deep in our ongoing research that focuses on "the precarious" in the performing arts. As a way of introducing the issue's theme of "Work With(Out) Boundaries: Dance and Precarity," we set out by briefly outlining the genesis of the discourse on "the precarious" that has informed our understanding of the concepts of precarity and precariousness. This early discourse has prompted a much broader literature on precarity in dance and performance studies that has established the groundwork for the featured articles. Since the recent turn of the millennium, the concepts of precarity and precariousness gained wide usage in activism, philosophy, sociology, and art theory in Western and Middle Europe. Shortly after Europe, the discourse also emerged in the United States. Within activist and sociological discourses, the notion "precarious" embraces multiple meanings. In one definition, it denotes the human and bodily vulnerability arising from unsecured working conditions in contemporary economic contexts. One influential discourse on vulnerability as a human ontology of precariousness comes from Judith Butler (2004). Drawing on an essay on ethics by Emmanuel Levinas (1986), Butler uses the concept of the precarious (or le précaire in French), emphasizing that the notion also indicates mutual dependence. In turn, Butler's ideas have been referred to in theater and dance studies and in performances that deal with war and other traumatic events (see e.g., Pewny 2011). In Butler's reading (and ethics) le précaire denotes the vulnerability and, consequently, the mortality of humans. It should be considered as different from the economic aspects of life and work but is at the same time intertwined with these: a person subjected to changes within her working and living conditions that she does not control, can be considered to be living under precarious conditions-so this is a matter of dependence, power, and powerlessness. To put it in Butler's own words: "precariousness [is] a function of our social vulnerability and exposure that is always given some political form, and precarity [is to be seen] as differentially distributed, and so [as] one important dimension of the unequal distribution of conditions required for continued life" (Butler in Puar 2012). Closely connected to political activism and anti-globalization networks, precarious subjects have extensively produced representations of themselves and of the fictive saint San Precario on the Internet and during public demonstrations, such as the annual Mayday! protests on May 1, which started in 2001. When travelling through Europe in 2001, Lauren Berlant witnessed these protests, which had an impact on her own ideas on precarity and precariousness. Berlant compiles her ideas under the notion of "slow death" (2011, 95). As she puts it herself, "Precaritization. .. [is] an ongoing process, so that we do not reduce the power of precarious to single acts or single events. Precaritization allows us to think about the slow death th...

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