work

In April 2011, Valentina Desideri and Stefano Harney met at the Spring Seminars of the Performance Art Forum (PAF) in St Erme, France. Desideri, a dancer and performance artist, and Harney a university professor in strategy, shared an interest in the work of Suely Rolnick and Lygia Clark.

While self-management has emerged as a robust way of getting things done in present-day work life and organizations, it also presents itself as a conception of considerable multivalency and ambiguity. In a broad sense, self-management seems to require that employees think, feel and act in ways that contribute to the realization and improvement of the individual worker, but only insofar as they concomitantly anticipate and contribute to the various needs of the organization (Manz and Sims, 1989; Thomas, 2002; Costea et al, 2008).

There is something unquestionably good about feeling good. When the body is not screaming from pain and when the head is not seized by ill-spirited daemons we can concentrate on what seems most meaningful to us, whether this is to spend time with family and friends or indulge in pleasurable activities like yoga, French cooking or sex.

The poet does not participate in the game. He stays in the corner, no happier than those who are playing. He too has been cheated out of his experience – a modern man. (Benjamin, 1940: 332)

From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while not all artists are chess players, all chess players are artists. (Marcel Duchamp, handwritten note, reprinted in Fuchs and Strouhal, 2010: 144)

I’m bored
I’m bored
I’m the chairman of the bored
(Iggy Pop, ‘I’m bored’)

Introduction