Spirit Labour

Kunsthall Trondheim invites you to presentation of Spirit Labour (2016) by Hugo Glendinning and Adrian Heathfield. The presentation is in connection with Multiplié Dance Festival, and can be viewed until May 16.

What kind of labour is it, to work communally with the bodies, movements, expressions and affects of others, to dedicate one’s lifework to the othering that issues from these relations? Is a life – especially a life spent making, learning, giving and transforming oneself with others – a kind of infrastructure? How might we better understand and value the social and artistic force of such practices?

These questions are at the core in Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning’s work Spirit Labour, which traces and connects some exemplary artistic figures (Anna Halprin and Hélène Cixous) of the late 20th and early 21st century. Articulating the artists’ work as a form of what Heathfield calls ‘spirit labour’, the film acts as a powerful counter to notions of art as subservient to the spirit of capital.

The presentation is in collaboration with Multiplié Dance Festival (April 10 – April 14). Since the late 1930s Anna Halprin (b. 1920) has been creating revolutionary directions for dance, inspiring artists in all fields. Through her students Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and Simone Forti, Anna strongly influenced New York’s Judson Dance Theater, one of the seedbeds of postmodern dance. Defying traditional notions of dance, Anna has extended its boundaries to address social issues, build community and foster both physical and emotional healing.

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41 minutes
Featuring: Janine Antoni, Anna Halprin, Hélène Cixous
Directed and Edited by Hugo Glendinning og Adrian Heathfield
Original Music and Violin by Aisha Orazbayeva
George Philipp Telemann, Fantasia No. 10 for Violin Solo, Largo, performed by Aisha Orazbayeva
Voice: Sophie Gueydon
Camera: Hugo Glendinning
Text: Adrian Heathfield

Spirit Labour was commissioned by freethought for the Bergen Assembly 2016.

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Adrian Heathfield is a curator and writer, and works mainly with live art, performance and dance. He co-curated Live Culture (Tate Modern, 2003), Performance Matters (2009-2014) and a number of other performance and durational events in European cities over the last sixteen years. Heathfield is a part of the collective freethought (with Irit Rogoff, Stefano Harney, Massimilliano Mollona, Louis Moreno and Nora Sternfeld), which curated a program with exhibitions, discussions, screenings, publications and commissions for the Bergen Assembly, September 2016. Heathfield is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton in London.

Hugo Glendinning is a photographer. His output stretches across the cultural industries from fine art collaborations in video and photography, through production and performance documentation. Glendinning has worked with the leading British theatre and dance companies, and his work has been published and exhibited internationally.