Yet there is something both sneaky and subversive in this performance\u2019s relationship to capital. If it responds, as the program notes observe, \u201cto the commodity-status of contemporary performance,\u201d it does so with a knowing wink, like we\u2019re all in on the neoliberal joke. In one of seven independently created, yet simultaneously performed, duets, a wonky guided meditation toys with our drive to affirm self and subjecthood, while in another, a dodgeball game literalizes competition, for limited balls and lives, as well as for the spectators\u2019 sympathies. The piece riffs continuously on the notion of scarcity, with its self-proclaimed \u201cfree-market dramaturgy\u201d and the evocative catchphrase, \u201cBecause there is only so much to go around. Or is there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their active engagement with such contemporary socio-economic phenomena, the creators of Capitalist Duets<\/em> seem linked to a growing cohort of artists keenly aware of the art world\u2019s imbrication with global capitalism, meeting its gargantuan force with a steady, sly gaze. Consider Zoja Smutny\u2019s Ros\u00e9 Porn<\/em>, with its growing array of retail-ready objects, from tote bags to perfume, Trajal Harrell\u2019s Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church<\/em>, which comes in seven sizes to suit any presenter\u2019s needs, or Cally Spooner\u2019s On False Tears and Outsourcing<\/em>, which, to cite the New Museum\u2019s online description, addresses \u201cthe production of affect, the contradictions faced by hired bodies, and the dynamics of using or being used as a human resource.\u201d These works don\u2019t go so far as to espouse an, \u201cif you can\u2019t beat \u2018em, join \u2018em\u201d mentality\u200a\u2014\u200afar from it. Rather, they make strategic adoptions and adaptions, opening conceptual space around the structures that commodify performance, and allowing us to reconsider how we relate to these vectors of late capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even so, for all the work\u2019s deployment of self-actualization and competition, perhaps the most foundational choreographic principle of Capitalist Duets <\/em>is separation. John Paul Ricco begins his book The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scenes<\/em>, writing, \u201cSeparation is the spacing of existence, and is, by definition, never solitary but always shared. It is what affirms that for anything to exist, there must be more than one thing, each one separated from each other one.\u201d These basic principles of thought are in large part indebted to French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who, as Ricco explains, makes \u201cemphatic use of the French verb partager<\/em>, meaning \u2018to share\u2019 and <\/em>\u2018to divide.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a sense, these conceptual frameworks of mutual separation, of simultaneous sharing and division, undergird the many-layered logic of Capitalist Duets<\/em>. Grant money apportioned to the production company, Public Recordings, is further divvied up into $1500 micro grants given to each artist; everyone shares equally in the available funding. Authorship is distributed among the participants as well, as two performers explain at the outset of the piece. They remark that a primary tenet of their working methodology was to create performance non-hierarchically, or, as the program notes explain, \u201cThere is no composer, no architect, no central authority\u200a\u2014\u200aonly the radical aesthetic modulation of fourteen paired-off performers, each holding tenuously to the logic of their own creation.\u201d In this process, every performer shares in the authorial function, just as authorship is allocated for each distinct duet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stage space and audience attention are similarly apportioned, not only among each of the duets, but also between each performer in them. One duet is spatially limited to a rectangle of sparkly blue carpet, which the performers inhabit alongside an array of bedazzled musical instruments. Meanwhile, the dodgeball players split the stage in half, each claiming one side of a centre line marked in white chalk. And if in capitalist systems consumers vote with their dollars, here it is the gaze that represents the audience\u2019s purchasing power. Facing the sometimes chaotic, almost anarchic, space of the work, our eyes can flit about in a saturated marketplace of gestures and actions. As one duet reminds us, however, we are not alone in this agency. Two performers spend much of the hour seated, looking back at us. They partake in our act of looking, suggesting that the vantage points from which we observe might be as disparate as they are communal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, to see Capitalist Duets<\/em> as a composite of so many separate elements is to understand that each relies on the others for their definition and delineation. Put simply, one of seven simultaneous duets would not be one of seven without the other six. We might understand the performance, then, as an exercise in composing with reciprocal separation, reminding us that even in economies intent on shoring up our identification as individual agents duking it out for our own self-interest, the space between us marks less our independence than, as Ricco astutely puts it, our \u201ccoexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public-Recordings_Capitalist-Duet2-scaled.jpg\")
CAPITALIST DUETS<\/em>, 2016.
Photos : \u00d6mer K. Y\u00fckseker, courtesy of Public Recordings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public-Recordings_Capitalist-Duet4-scaled.jpg\")
CAPITALIST DUETS<\/em>, 2016.
Photos : \u00d6mer K. Y\u00fckseker, courtesy of Public Recordings
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_CR14_Maltais-Bayda_Public-Recordings_Capitalist-Duet3-scaled.jpg\")
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