If I Can't Dance is immensely pleased to announce the special Reading Group programme 'Objects and Economies of Performance'. 

For this four-session programme we have invited critic, curator, theorist and poet Rachel O'Reilly to devise a critically linked set of 'working readings'  responding to our theme 'Appropriation and Dedication'.  The sessions will progressively lead towards our major end of edition programme, 'If I Can't Dance Days' to be held in Amsterdam November 27-30, 2014. 

We are seeking practitioners (artists, curators, writers, theorists) who wish to collaborate on all four sessions to register expressions of interest.

These sessions will explore "The rise of interest in poetry in contemporary art is part of a larger re-investment in performance, liveness and collectivity projects that take specific interest in ‘readerly’ practices and ‘figural’ experiments, including with political and aesthetic autonomy in general. [… ]The sessions are  open to any participants interested in coming to terms with not just the context but the material intentionality and tensions informing performance production decision-making, commissioning, and criticism. It gives special attention to technocultural and economic transformations of the figural demands of artisthood, in a culture of generalized performance imperatives, with the aim of exposing this expanded aesthetic regime to artistic subjectivization and conceptual traction." writes O'Reilly. 


1. Introduction: Figural aspects of Contemporary Performance 

• Hito Steyerl, Art As Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life
• David Rodowick, Introduction, Philosophy After New Media 
• OPTIONAL: Jean-François Lyotard, Lyotard ‘Desire’s Complicity for the Figural’ from Discours/Figure