The Use of Uselessness

Within a modernist economic framework, there is a lot of inconvenience that needs
to be minimized in order to maximize profit and to secure the desired outcomes.
In economic terms, production is what it’s all about, or, as Peter Sloterdijk would
say, the production of productivity (Sloterdijk 1989). This chapter describes the developmental process of a performance practice that seeks to resist this modernist credo of production and wealth creation. Performance, it seems to me, should not be part of this machinery. Instead the work presented here advances a deliberate deployment of the notion of uselessness as an antidote and as an attempt to challenge the ubiquitous imperative to work and to always be useful. The chapter also explores how the research material, circumstance and moments of inspiration, became part of that which is performed.