Performance as the modern ideology of capitalist dynamics

Performance as the modern ideology of capitalist dynamics

The fact that there is a deep connection between the organisation of economy and the general regime of life is well known. Performance is opposed to traditional theatre as the economy of flux is opposed to the economy of the traditional stable enterprise. Modern management ideology conducts the general spirit of individuals and institutions. They are organized by projects, volatile goals, whose main ethos is continuous change and, ultimately, permanent appearance and disappearance in order to create a hallucinatory environment of change and adaptation. Discipline is being turned into performance. And, ultimately, performance is the name for the general function of society and individuals, flexible and in perpetual movement. This acceleration, increased by “intelligent” machines and networks, taking the form of rhizomes, serves as a laboratory where new forms of domination and exclusion are continuously generated. Those who can not adapt to the rules of the continuous changing of roles are increasingly insecure. The spirit of performance as the model for every action or project, including the artistic ones, is the metaphysics of modern capitalism, i. e., the general aestheticizing mood of life, which is at the heart of the metaphysics of our globalized world. Therefore, in a way, dance and performance are the very physic representation of that state of things. Everything solid melts in the air, the individual body in movement seeks the immortality and the omniscience/omnipresence of the universal body.