Metabolizer, a free performance in Plymouth, is led by Julia Pond, expert in value and productivity, CEO of fictional company BRED, artist and researcher. Over the 6 weeks the installation is open to the public, Julia will dance-work in 37 Looe Street. An office meeting pod forms the site for dance-work; a space where anyone can enter and begin producing dance with just their own body. Only the data generated by the dance becomes visible and audible as it’s transformed into a stock-market ticker style digital display and sonified into responsive dance music.

Activities during the 6 weeks will include dancing, facilitating dancing, cleaning, inviting dancing, writing, and, increasingly, dancing – whatever it takes to maintain the growth trajectory. We’ll try to grow the dance-time by 3% each day until we reach 14 hours, echoing the target annual growth rate for GDP (gross domestic product or the total monetary value of goods and services produced) and the typical length of a working day for a sweatshop worker or cobalt miner, whose cheap labour fuels the growth economy). 

*Metabolizer refers to Marx’s concept of  “metabolism” describing how labour co-transforms humans and more-than-human materials – and the rifts caused by the accumulative process of capital. The installation is a site of continuous change & transformation, undermining established patterns of perceiving qualitative and quantitative value. 

Optimizer! A free series of Wednesday evening events with invited consultant-artists presenting eye-opening takes on related themes, with drinks and nibbles available for purchase. These are intended to punctuate and animate the installation period. Confirmed artists: Manuela Albrecht, Kyra Norman, Bryony Gillard and Heni Hale, plus a showing of the new BRED film.

Invest!

https://tinyurl.com/metabolizer

The first 100 investors contributing a minimum of £10 will have their names listed on the wall and receive an unspecified share of equity in the final amount of dance produced – plus a free glass of wine at the opening party or an Optimizer event. 

Metabolizer has been developed through Julia Pond’s PhD Research at Kingston University London, funded by an AHRC/TECHNE studentship.