Art performance as research, friction and deed

Abstract

To extend and enrich the debate on critical performativity, this paper proposes that critical management studies should create a strategic link with organisational aesthetics through an alliance with critical artists doing interventions in organisations. These artists produce social change at the margin of organisations and our task as critical researchers is to give a voice to their artistic action in the field of management. Art performance is presented as a research method and a political action able to give critical performativity a new impulse. Two dance performances in a bank are described and analysed: while the first one is a failure the second produces confusion and embodied tension in the bank’s lounges. The aesthetic tactics used in this art performance are counter-performative: dancers introduce slowness and hesitation of bodies in a context of extreme closure and discipline. Art performance is described as a deed: its only value is that it could be done, which calls for more artistic action in corporate everyday life.