01:00 - 02:00 AEDT | 00:00 - 01:00 JST/KST | 23:00 - 00:00 SGT | 18:00 - 19:00 EET | 17:00 - 18:00 CEST | 16:00 - 17:00 BST | 11:00 - 12:00 EST | 08:00 - 09:00 PST

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Dance as a modern art form emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, against the backdrop of consolidating industrial capitalism.

Just as the body and movement of masses were becoming subjected to the dictate of backbreaking machines, modern dance constituted itself around the choreographic exploration of body and movement, liberated from that machinic coercion.The history of modern dance can thus be read as a dialectical opposite of the transformation of commodified labour. Over the last hundred years, that opposition between the coercive and the liberated has crumbled and transformed by the growing flexibilisation and precarisation of labour relations.

The labouring body is increasingly enjoined to be free and enterprising, while the dancing body is increasingly demanded to show itself labouring to justify its privilege to free artistic exploration.

Our opening keynote will retrace the entwined historical trajectories of dance and labour and speculate on what dance portends for the understanding of the contemporary, algorithmically-commanded, on-demand forms of labour.

Speakers

Tomislav Medak, BADco., Croatia

Ása Richardsdóttir, IETM, Belgium

Ivan Medenica, Bitef Festival, Serbia
 

This session will be captioned and broadcasted online.