Caries of Capitalism: A Statement

Daria Iuriichuk

The summer was brutal in Moscow. People were on the streets, protesting for the right to have candidates from the opposition run for office in the Duma elections. They were abused, physically. The protest finally ended, having claimed several political prisoners, six of them in jail, two under house arrest, and some still waiting for trial. 

As an artist I ask myself— what tactics could we use against an abuse of power? The urgency of not turning a blind eye to what happened to our peers led me from the idea of emancipatory individual practices, which now seems very inadequate, to collective direct action. I dedicated time to finding an answer. Besides a physical practice, I tried to theorise how to dance politically. My master’s paper was dedicated to Deleuzian liquid and rhizomatic practices of resistance. I use the term ‘micro-choreography’ to speak of an emancipatory choreography— one that offers opportunities; instead of conforming to it, we can use it as a tool to map our movement from an internal perspective. This inalienable choreography, where corporeality actualises ideas that are still virtual, connects thinking, seeing and movement into a single cognitive process.

Postmodernist games and modes of resistance don’t work anymore and have also been appropriated by brutal forces. For example, postmodern developments in intersubjectivity have been leveraged for the purposes of fake news by the alt-right, undermining the press. 

Olga, Daria and Alena (not in the picture) counting the votes live. The choreopraphy copies the way the votes were counted during presidential elections.

The urgency of direct action is evident. It is what united us in starting Caries of Capitalism, a desire to work collaboratively. It’s a horizontally organized group of four people. All decisions are made by consensus. We had no specific roles but used our diverse background. My focus was the conceptual part, since I decided not to deal with choreography at that time. We were also interested in direct action. We stepped over the borders of theatre to act. For this purpose, we invited four precarious theatre workers, conducted workshops to mobilise the performing arts community and worked to raise the general awareness of precarity. But a new problem arose: Should we ask for more from institutions or work with them collaboratively? As the case of Studio Seven showed, producers and accountants may well be the most vulnerable people in art. Moreover, there is no existing system to criticise. We have to build it. Should we claim support from the government? Should we claim money from oligarchs? Or should we dare to destroy capitalism?

Asya Belaya, who was the winner on the opening night, standing under the most important, most expensive and most useless thing in the performance, an inflatable golden tooth. Its production cost us 160 000 rub (in comparison, each member of us four got only 70 000 rub as a fee; the structure of the grant made us spend at least half the money we got on the production of material things).

I was actually disappointed with the nature of our collaborative work on Caries of Capitalism, to some extent. Contradictory intentions and ambitions sometimes made the work harder than I expected it to be. For example, the structure of the performance did not leave much space for improvisation. Here my aspiration for improvisation had to be balanced against the ease required by participants who weren’t skilled performers and needed a strict score. Yet, the piece was a great experience of how to act together. It leaves me with more questions. What is the theatre good for, today? Why am I going to rehearsal, instead of a protest? Is that a rehearsal of revolution?

Daria Iuriichuk is a dance-artist and researcher of body politics who practices choreographies, dance and interaction.  In her practice she researches strategies for escaping from the prescribed body-assemblies in dance and daily practices.