Chasing Your Own Tail: The Inclusive Artist’s Process in Project-Based Contemporary Dance

Abstract

In 1996, Maurizio Lazzarato defined the concept of immaterial labour as the kind of labour that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity. The production cycle of this kind of labour is not defined by the factory walls, but happens in society.1 Building on this idea, I argue that the artist’s production process does not happen between the studio walls alone, but should be considered as a more inclusive notion happening in society. The contemporary dance artist in Europe performs immaterial labour on a flexible basis within the context of temporary projects, a situation that also demands persistent networking in order to ascertain future work opportunities. For this article, it is my intention to broaden the
notion of the artist’s process and approach it from a more inclusive perspective. To fully understand creative processes today and how they are deeply interwoven with our neoliberal economy, I will concentrate on the connection between the microworld of the creative process in European contemporary dance, the mesoworld of the funded dance institutions, and the macroworld on the larger social, economic, and political level.