Everybody Counts: The Aesthetics of Production in Higher Artistic Education and Performance Art Collectives

An economic rationality, dating back to the early days of capitalism in the 18th Century, has since the financial crisis 2007-08 reached new dimensions: across work and life, we are counting hours, optimising our profiles, investing in an uncertain future. In the arts, the production conditions have changed due to austerity policies, a thorough reform of artistic education – the Bologna Process – and an increasing number of professional artists in the field.

The dissertation departs from an analysis of how, since the implementation of the Bologna Process, young artists in Denmark and its neighbouring countries are educated to become workers of the future. Based on a reading of assessments, schedules and documentation of ECTS-points given at higher artistic educations, the dissertation displays a rationality of self-accountancy and economisation of life, but also an expanded notion of what we can perceive as artistic work.

Furthermore, the dissertation interprets the way performance artists currently organise in collectives as a form of response to increased economisation and individualisation. Artists restructure their everyday together: make schedules for freelance lives, include ‘private’ maintenance work or redistribute money beyond the nation state. These art workers are here understood as both living in precarity and on the same time being politically agile subjects - especially when signing ‘in concert’.

By synthesizing theory from both historical materialism and feminist theory about unrecognised work, the dissertation contributes to Cultural Studies with its own theory on a materialist aesthetics of production; it proposes that the artwork is co-created by economical, temporal and social circumstances. On the same time, the dissertation affirms that production conditions within the arts are performative; that artists are powerful worker subjects who do have influence on their own conditions.

En økonomisk opmærksomhed, der kan dateres tilbage til kapitalismen i det 18. århundrede, har siden finanskrisen i 2007-08 antaget nye dimensioner: på tværs af arbejde og privatliv tæller vi timer, optimerer profiler, investerer i en uvis fremtid. I kunsten har nedskæringspolitik, en gennemgribende reform på kunstuddannelser – Bologna-processen -, samt et stigende antal færdiguddannede kunstnere, skabt prekære produktionsforhold.

Afhandlingen tager afsæt i en analyse af, hvordan unge kunstnere i Danmark og Tyskland siden implementeringen af Bologna Processen trænes til at blive fremtidens arbejdere. Gennem en læsning af eksaminer, skemaer og dokumentation af ECTS-point-givende aktivitet på kunstuddannelser, fremlægges en rationalitet baseret på opmåling af tid og økonomisering af liv, men også en udvidet forståelse for, hvad kunstnerisk arbejde er.

Desuden belyser afhandlingen performancekunstneres kollektive organisationsformer som en reaktion på den stigende økonomisering og individualisering. Kunstnere omstrukturerer deres hverdag sammen: laver faste skemaer i freelancetilværelsen, inkluderer ’privat’ omsorgsarbejde eller fordeler penge uden for nationalstatens grænser. Disse kunstarbejdere bliver fortolket som på en gang udsatte og samtidig politisk forandrende subjekter – især når de signerer i flok.

Afhandlingen trækker på historisk materialisme og feminismens begreb om usynligt arbejde. Den bidrager til kulturforskningen med en teori for en materialistisk produktionsæstetik: her co-produceres kunstværket af dets økonomiske, temporale og sociale omstændigheder. Samtidig foreslår afhandlingen at kunstens produktionsforhold er foranderlige; at kunstnere er magtfulde arbejdersubjekter, der har indflydelse på deres egne betingelser.