MIT List Center's 'Performing Conditions' exhibition explores debt and dependency through 25 artists and collectives.
'Performing Conditions' is an exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that features twenty-five artists and collectives whose works explore themes of debt and dependency. These performances reflect their unique conditions of production, circulation, and display, moving beyond the confines of traditional theater to encompass financial tools and labor. Among the showcased participants are an actor associated with a financial algorithm and hospital staff reenacting childbirth. The exhibition critiques standard portrayals of labor, highlighting the links between artistic and economic frameworks. By emphasizing performance, it encourages audiences to rethink their positions within systems of debt and dependency, fostering dialogue on the role of art in tackling social and economic challenges.
Key facts
- The exhibition features twenty-five artists and collectives
- Works formally enact debt and dependency
- Performance extends beyond theater to include ventures and financial instruments
- Labor considered includes creative production by everyone
- Cast includes an actor tied to a financial algorithm
- Submissives execute an artist's paintings
- Hospital workers perform a childbirth simulation
- Plantation workers are also part of the exhibition's cast
Entities
Institutions
- MIT List Visual Arts Center