Peltz Receives Funding for “Bureau of Irrational Affairs”

Prospectus artist Daniel Peltz has been awarded a highly competitive seed-funding grant from the Swedish National Arts Grants Committee for the development of a new Bureau of Irrational Affairs within the regional government of Finspång, Sweden. Peltz has been working in Finspång since a 2007 Fulbright artistic research grant brought him to the region.

This officially authorized government office will be developed and implemented over the course of the Spring 2017 academic term. The bureau functions as one component of Performing Labor, a long-term, multi-layered artistic research project under Peltz’s direction that investigates the state of the contemporary laboring (human and other-than-human) body as well as conditions and philosophies of labor in post-industrial society. In support of this work, Peltz has now received over $100,000 of support for a range of activities spread over 2015-2017. The excerpt below from Peltz’ funding application to the National Arts Committee provides some context for this component of the project:

“Logic and rationality are often unquestioned values in the ideology of government, yet the forces that govern our internal and external lives contain significant irrational and illogical components. The Bureau of Irrational Affairs challenges the fundamental structure of government, creating an official governmental office for artist-driven proposals and programs that operate beyond the rational sphere. In doing so, the bureau attempts to address disenfranchised aspects of public consciousness and expands the ‘vocal range of bureaucracy’. It is partly concerned with what ‘irrational government’ can do for the ‘irrationally governed’ but equally concerned with the ‘ungovernable’ aspects of those charged with the task of governing.”

For this project, Peltz is on a two-year research leave from RISD, where he is a professor of Film Animation + Video. His Prospectus project can be viewed here.