BRED: Dough-ing embodied research into value and productivity / Julia Pond (2021)

BRED: Dough-ing embodied research into value and productivity

Author: Julia Pond

Course: MFA Creative Practice

Year: 2021

Abstract

BRED is a practice-as-research and performance-as-research project exploring paradoxes in the discourse on value in the capitalist system. It asks how politics happens in performance, and, secondarily, what practice and performance are able to contribute that theory is not. It is realised through a durational, participatory performance installation in which participants are ‘hired’ into a fictional company called BRED.

This document traces and reflects on the practical and theoretical research leading to this installation. Beginning with an overview of relevant economic and political concepts, it then covers theoretical and practical research along with methods through the lens of thematic areas of play, power, value, time, and expanded-body materials. Practices which are inherently resistant to capitalism by virtue of the temporalities they inhabit or the way they do (or do not) demonstrate their value publicly generate a performative embodiment of the same system they resist, yet manage to embed a critique within the performance. The document considers a particular iteration of BRED: an 8 hour installation where BRED’s headquarters opened its doors for a full working day, ‘hiring’ four groups of arrivals into a curated experience of training, working, and attending to a Powerpoint presentation. Drawing on political and performance theory from Paolo Virno and Peggy Phelan, the document relates work to traits of political action, politics to change, and change to the temporality of ‘now’, which is a defining trait of performance, thus opening a space for performance to be the site of political action.

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Metadata

dc.contributor.author
dc.date.accessioned 2021-12-13 09:00
dc.date.copyright 2021
dc.identifier.uri https://researchonline.trinitylaban.ac.uk/oa/thesis/?p=2371
dc.description.abstract

BRED is a practice-as-research and performance-as-research project exploring paradoxes in the discourse on value in the capitalist system. It asks how politics happens in performance, and, secondarily, what practice and performance are able to contribute that theory is not. It is realised through a durational, participatory performance installation in which participants are ‘hired’ into a fictional company called BRED.

This document traces and reflects on the practical and theoretical research leading to this installation. Beginning with an overview of relevant economic and political concepts, it then covers theoretical and practical research along with methods through the lens of thematic areas of play, power, value, time, and expanded-body materials. Practices which are inherently resistant to capitalism by virtue of the temporalities they inhabit or the way they do (or do not) demonstrate their value publicly generate a performative embodiment of the same system they resist, yet manage to embed a critique within the performance. The document considers a particular iteration of BRED: an 8 hour installation where BRED’s headquarters opened its doors for a full working day, ‘hiring’ four groups of arrivals into a curated experience of training, working, and attending to a Powerpoint presentation. Drawing on political and performance theory from Paolo Virno and Peggy Phelan, the document relates work to traits of political action, politics to change, and change to the temporality of ‘now’, which is a defining trait of performance, thus opening a space for performance to be the site of political action.

dc.language.iso EN
dc.title BRED: Dough-ing embodied research into value and productivity
thesis.degree.name MFA Creative Practice
dc.date.updated 2021-11-08 02:50

Coming soon: dc.type thesis.degree.level dc.rights.accessrights
APA
Pond, Julia. (2021). BRED: Dough-ing embodied research into value and productivity (Masters’ theses). Retrieved https://researchonline.trinitylaban.ac.uk/oa/thesis/?p=2371