ABSTRACT
This is an account of re-making the durational performance work Here to Deliver. It focuses on the adaption to technologies of digital circulation required to make the performance live, specifically its changing relationship to the online service platforms of Uber, Deliveroo, and Eventbrite. It sets out three stages in the process. Firstly, the physical impossibility of the initial work, festival cancellation and the demand for, and ethics of, gig work platforms altering. Secondly, it illustrates a failed attempt to become a Deliveroo driver. Thirdly, it describes how this led to the structure of the performance as gig economy work within Eventbrite. The chapter plays on the double resonance of the word gig reflecting on the entwinement of digital platforms for artistic labour and the wider gig economy, and how as tools for live performance, they offer both limitations and possibility for critical subversion. This chapter is an account of the re-making of a performance that took place six months after it was initially intended. Or rather, it is a comparison of two versions of the same performance, Stout Hearted Heroes, an unofficial taxi service, which was renamed Here to Deliver. As gigs in the sense of live events were cancelled or moved online, so-called ‘gig’ economy occupations were transformed, and the role of digital platforms became more central to the circulation of goods, services, and creativity. The process of adapting this piece to digital technologies of circulation in the wake of the pandemic provides a case study through which to explore the entwinement of the artistic labour of performance and the wider gig economy.
