The Performance of Labour In, As and Beyond the Image

Abstract: Within post-Fordist economies, work has been theorised as increasingly performative, relying on communicative faculties even at the menial level of call centres and carework. In popular discourse, automation has been presented as a threat to this model. However, since the extraction of value can only happen in relation to labour rather than machines, this fantasy continues to function in the way it has historically, as a disciplinary means of lowering wages. Within performance art, liveness has been fetishized in opposition to mediation. However, performance, like all art today, results in the documentary image, which becomes the commodity produced by artistic labour. The circulation of such images in turn relies on yet more performative labour, including the sharing of the image and other discursive practices. As a consequence, the more it tries to present a critique of mediation, the more artistic performance draws nearer to non-artistic, extractive labour practices. Instead of seeing liveness as external to mediation, then, we argue that it is more productive to explore the critical potential of the mediated image of living labour.