“My part time job is to dance in a shop window for five days, from Monday to Friday. You cannot buy anything in the shop. My dancing four hours daily is a performance, a spectacle, a kind of service.”
(VASS Imre)
“Seen positively a person without character is someone flexible, someone who can take on any form, role or function. This shapelessness – or felixibility – goes hand in hand with serious economical efficiency.” (Byung-Chual HAN: The Burnout Society)
According to an American study out of the twenty most physically demanding jobs being a dancer is number one. Taking fitness, stamina, flexibility and physical coordination into account a dancer is subject to greater physical stress than a construction worker, an oil rig worker or a fitness instructor.
A performance is intangible, as opposed to a loaf of bread or a building. But the artistic product – be its original goal to entertain, to raise awareness or simply to be art in itself – becomes a commodity, and enters the marketplace and circulation of such products.
Who profits – and to what degree – off of a dancer’s physical muscle work? Is being useful for a society a necessary or sufficient condition for a product being present in the marketplace, for exchanging their creative energies for money? This new performance by VASS Imre tries to answer these questions.
Performed by, Concept: VASS Imre
Visual: MOLNÁR Anna
Time: 10 AM – 2 PM daily, 28 September – 2 October 2020
Venue: 1052 Budapest, Károly krt. 10.
Special thanks for providing the venue: Manufactory Kft.