Critical Dance in/as Contemporary Art: Labour, Commodity and Value in Alexandra Pirici’s Encyclopaedia of Relations

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, dance has increasingly been presented within contemporary art exhibitions. Whereas some have interpreted this trend primarily as a symptom of capitalism’s tightening grip on art and its institutions, this article argues for understanding dance in the exhibition space as a novel critical artistic form. It does so by drawing on a long tradition—from Baudelaire and Benjamin to John Roberts and Sianne Ngai—that views art as in a dialectical relationship with capitalism, and thus with categories such as commodification, labour, and value. Departing from Marx’s concept of value as a specific historical social form, and from what Patrick Murray has described as “practically abstract labour,” the article argues: a) that dance in art exhibitions should be understood dialectically in relation to the commodity form; b) that this specific status must be mediated through each dance work’s particular artistic form; and c) that this does not exclude the possibility that dance works presented in contemporary art exhibitions may still contribute to an experience-based capitalist economy, or that the labour conditions of the dancers may be questioned.