The universal basic income idea is, overall, profoundly performative, in that it attempts to model the ultimate pragmatism of wider social nets of generosity, and does so by representing the embodied conditions that might be brought into being by such generosity. In this way, the utopian heuristic of an unconditional, guaranteed income is said to be an ‘instrument of freedom’ and a ‘device for economic sanity’. The question is though, as is often the case: freedom and sanity for whom?
Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).
Newspaper accompanying the performance installation which focuses on how policy change directly affects low income families through austerity measures that sanction welfare claimants and push people into vulnerable positions. Includes interviews and performance script.