Curator’s Note
A new joke operates almost as an event of universal
interest. It is passed on from one person to another just like the
news of the latest conquest. Even prominent men who consider it
worthwhile relating how they attained fame, what cities and
countries they have seen, and with what celebrated persons they
have consorted, do not disdain to dwell in their autobiographies
upon this and that excellent joke they have heard.
The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud noted almost a hundred years ago
that the significance of humour in our daily lives cannot be
overstated. That observation is perhaps even more pertinent today.
In an age of post-structuralism and postmodernism, where sensations
and emotions have been deconstructed and reduced to political,
social and structural constructs, laughter or humour remains the
only ‘authentic’ sensation. It is one of the few sensations which
women can supposedly enjoy without guilt, as it is not derived from
male desire. As the feminist theorist Annie Leclerc wrote in 1974:
‘Laughter of sensual pleasure, sensual pleasure of laughter; to
laugh is to live profoundly.’ In the same book, Parole de femme
(Woman’s Word), Leclerc posited that the sensation of laughter is
the antipode of male sexual desire, which inevitably ends up being
manifested as violence, annihilation and extinction. In contrast,
the sensual pleasure derived from laughter is pure, it is without
memory and desire, it is pure pleasure, it is of the moment.
In fact, it can even be posited that humour is the quintessential
postmodern sensation. For while there are many variations of humour,
such as irony, mockery and ridicule, the similarity they all share
is their relationship to meaning. As Freud argued, wit – which he
equated with humour – arises primarily from the discovery of hidden
similarities. The Czech writer Milan Kundera, meanwhile, wrote that
laughter is malicious – as belonging to the ‘devil’s domain.’
Positing that the angels’ power resided in uncontested meaning, and
the devil’s from the subverting of meaning, humour derives from
‘things deprived suddenly of their supposed meaning, of the place
assigned to them in the so-called order of things.’ This subversion
of supposedly established truths and meaning is one of the
fundamental precepts of postmodernity, where the notion of truth has
itself become questioned and where nothing is as it seems.
It is this notion of challenging the expectations of our everyday
lives that the works of the artists in this exhibition engage with
and from which the source of the humour in these works derives. What
the video works illustrate is the way in which intended meanings are
subverted and displaced, and how humour arises as a result. This
functions through the use of parody, satire and ridicule within the
works in the exhibition.
Christian Jankowski is one of the most important artists to deal
with humour. Humour arises in his work from confusing the boundaries
between reality and the realms of the make-believe, mystical and the
imaginary. In The Hunt, the artist parodies the notion of hunting
for one’s subsistence in modern society, while in The Matrix Effect,
Jankowski ‘reversed’ the age of several well-known contemporary
artists who exhibited in the Matrix series of exhibitions at the
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. This resulted in
seven-year-old versions of Janine Antoni, John Baldessari, Sol
LeWitt, Adrian Piper and others, each proffering his or her view on
contemporary art. Meanwhile, in Telemystic, which was shown at the
48th Venice Biennale, Jankowski calls several
television-fortune-tellers and speaks to them on ‘live’ television
about his work, asking them to prophesise as to what he should do
for his work to be successful. Jankowski’s works therefore blur the
boundaries between reality and make-believe, often with humorous
results.
In Gelatin’s Naked Cleaning, the artists go about their daily
chores naked except for their high-heel shoes, subverting the
expected perception of household cleaning. While in True Love IV
which was made at the Kwangju Biennial in 2002, the artists
constructed a 20-foot high rocket which they planned to go to Venus
with. In this work, even though we know that the project was
ultimately bound to fail, humour arises from the effort involved in
the scale and complexity of this absurd undertaking. Saverio
Lucariello’s videos, meanwhile, involve the performance of simple
short repetitive tasks using common objects. His clown-like persona
and enigmatic actions explore the conventions and effects of
theatrical melodrama, with amusing results.
In kAI’s I can’t dig so I lick, the artist is documented licking
a signboard advertising a McDonald’s McFlurry. This work reflects
upon the prevalence of media advertising in our daily lives in a
light-hearted and humorous way. KYTV’s Lykra Lykra, meanwhile, is a
comedy of errors involving three professionals who share a secret
fetish.
P.F.F.R’s The Kid’s Show was originally made as a pilot for an
American television network, but was unsurprisingly rejected.
Parodying popular children’s programmes such as Sesame Street, one
segment consists of a puppet similar to the Cookie Monster which
goes round New York enraging doormen, while in another, a child
interviews adults coming out of a public restroom, asking questions
such as ‘did you have a good time in there?’ and ‘did everything
come out alright?’.
Michael Shaowanasai’s Eastern Wind and Dragon Tales are the first
two parts of his still to be completed Artist of the Moment trilogy,
which is a fictitious documentary series about a superstar Asian
contemporary artist. Showanasai’s work parodies and ridicules the
obsession with celebrities in our society, an obsession that is
often taken to absurd extremes. Fischli and Weiss’s The Way Things
Go, meanwhile, illustrates how humour arises not only from
unexpected human behaviour but also from the novel and unexpected
ways in which objects and materials are manipulated. Humour here
arises from the surprising ways in which the artists have
ingeniously created a chain of events using everyday objects and
detritus.
The exhibition therefore explores the serious side of humour. It
examines the basis behind the one sensation that keeps us amused and
sane in our everyday lives.
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