Exhibiting Performing Subjects : Curating Outsourced Performance Labour in Museum Settings

Abstract: The thesis examines challenges museum curators face when outsourced performers – whose role it is to embody the work of other artists – are included in exhibition projects. The research questions are: What are the practical, juridical and ethical challenges that come with situating outsourced performance labour in the museum setting? What does the inclusion of live performance in exhibition projects mean for the role of the museum curator? Two exhibition cases in Stockholm are studied in the thesis: Marina Abramović – The Cleaner (2017) at Moderna Museet and Dora García, I Always Tell the Truth at Bonniers Konsthall (2018–19). The material consists of digital surveys that were sent out to employed performers from each exhibition case as well as interviews that were conducted with both performers and curatorial staff. The material was examined using theories on affective labour and the theoretical notion of de-skilling and re-skilling of acquired competences.  The thesis shows that the practical challenges include the architectural conditions of museum buildings, insufficient prior knowledge on what working with performers entail, short project timespans and limited exhibition budgets. The juridical challenges include a lack of union recommendations for performance in museums and the difficulty of situating reperformances of historical works that in its form and duration may go against national labour regulations. The ethical challenges include commodification of performers’ subjectivity through instances of affective labour and mechanisms of objectification. In turn, both the outsourced performer and the museum curator turned performance curator inhabits a precarious working situation. The role of the performance curator is highly administrational and organisationally tedious in its positioning between curatorship, performing arts production and human resource management. Additionally, it entails a prodigious amount of affective labour in the reproductive mode – of emotional investments, conflict resolution and social liaison.