Work Body

Michael Turinsky is one of the most important disabled choreographers in the German-language region. In “Work Body”, his uncompromising physical commitment questions our current relationship with the working class. Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poem “Gramsci’s Ashes”, which was addressed to the mortal remains of the equally physically disabled communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, Turinsky outlines a critical and empathic response to the prevalent right-wing populism in working class environments, a phenomenon that is informed by masculinity and can be observed beyond national borders.

Building, singing and dancing, Turinsky not only subverts the separation between intellectual and manual work – he also undermines the boundaries between performative intervention, concert and political agitation. “Work Body” thus reveals resonances between the “disabled” and the “working body”, moving physicalities into centre stage that are usually pushed to the margins of representation. Turinsky reveals an equally clear and unsettling perspective on the identity-building value of work beyond all alienation and exploitation.

Michael Turinsky is a Vienna-based physically disabled artist and theoretician who works at the interface of contemporary dance and performance, disability as well as political and aesthetic theory.