Whether due to the structural instability of the gig economy, the oppressive finitude of temporary work, or the ever-present threat of imprisonment and deportation imposed on undocumented workers, precariousness has become the defining characteristic of a growing number of modern workers. This nascent economic class, the precariat, is more susceptible to economic coercion and therefore less given to self organizing around a politics of solidarity; in other words, it is the cowed and pliable labor source of which capital dreams. Precarity Songs confronts this economic/temporal regime through words and musical time.
Precarity Songs was premiered by Quince (Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Carrie Henneman Shaw, Liz Pearse, Kayleigh Butcher) at New York’s DiMenna Center on March 9th, 2019.