“How usually has it been mentioned that the fuller the theatre, the extra uncontrolled the laughter of the viewers!”
—Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the That means of the Comedian, 1900¹

Humor performs many features, chief amongst them is to ease emotional stress. But if we’re to just accept that feelings exist on a spectrum, additionally it is straightforward to detect slippages between emotional states—between excessive spirits and despair, as an example—on condition that they’re relational and corresponding, and a part of the identical emotive vary. Presumably, most individuals expertise giggles turning to sobs—or vice versa—a minimum of as soon as in life. The ambivalence of humor and what it elicits is taken into account in After Laughter Comes Tears, the present group exhibition at Mudam in Luxembourg, its title borrowed from the 1964 R&B single of the identical identify by Wendy Rene. In her tune, Rene croons about soured romance and holding again tears when a person disappoints her. At Mudam, the title is tailored to attest to using humor as a method of dealing with or comprehending bigger societal ache, and, to an extent, questioning whether or not humor is sufficient to genuinely abate existential anxieties.

The breadth of After Laughter is broad. It contains thirty-four artists whose contributions illuminate varied facets of the curatorial framing, and the exhibition is devoted to a number of themes directly. It’s in a single occasion involved with bridging a perceived hole between the worlds of efficiency and institutional exhibition-making, citing the latter context as missing an ample infrastructure via which to middle ephemeral artworks in museum show. Though efficiency is outlined broadly right here—there’s a program of stay interventions, together with the self-care therapeutics in Taus Makhacheva’s ASMR Spa (2019) during which guests are invited to obtain facial therapies whereas listening to whispered ASMR triggers, but in addition sculptural installations and video works which might be conceived of as “performative objects”—there may be an especial focus on European traditions of theatre and staging. This contains an aesthetic and dramaturgical technique of segmenting the show into 4 acts, plus a prologue and an epilogue, punctuated by an audiovisual transition that appears designed to evoke intermission. It’s a intelligent manner of coping with the boundaries of house—the exhibition is unfold throughout two galleries, with a small collection of artworks, principally stay efficiency, occupying the central Nice Corridor—to not point out that artwork objects are very often inanimate. For the sake of changing-over 4 acts, the works stationed between fewer rooms require a sort of activation. But regardless of the curatorial intention to “broaden the definition of efficiency”² inside the boundaries of the normal artwork museum, this framing nonetheless assimilates extra experimental types of performative gesture into the acquainted construction of classical theatre, containing them inside the logic of narrative arcs that develop sequentially. 

The opposite major conceptual strand explores collective disillusionment below the situations of late-stage capitalism, in addition to the model of sardonic millennial humor that arises from this impotent anger. For this, the exhibition is dependent upon a form of wry pop whimsy that flirts with each political satire and severe abjection. The Mother and father’ Room (2021) by Diego Marcon—a part of Act One, entitled “Sick, Unhappy World”—is a short however looping video that completely demonstrates this sinister camp. The work begins, nearly imperceptibly because of Marcon’s seamless modifying, with the mild trills of a blackbird alighting on a windowsill. Backed by an orchestral accompaniment and the chicken’s melodic twittering, a household of 4 narrates the circumstances of their murder-suicide via tune. Shut-up pictures of particular person faces reveal their flesh to be manufactured from rubbery silicone, irregularly utilized to the pores and skin of the stay actors beneath, rendering them like life-size puppets which might be directly human and never. The uncanny impact of their costuming additionally exaggerates the tensions at work within the perturbing but sentimental ballad, which seeks to fold collectively distinct theatrical and cinematic conventions with the intention to pervert them.

Elsewhere, Omer Quick’s CNN Concatenated (2002) screens as a part of the identical act. The work splices collectively hundreds of momentary clips of CNN reporters uttering single phrases to type one extremely private monologue that checks the friction between the intimate expertise of a person and the broader world occasions that people apprehend. A few of the most placing moments are when the correspondents pause to attract breath, interjecting sudden breaks into the stream of phrases, and the viewers is reminded of diaphragm workout routines utilized by actors earlier than projecting their voices onstage. These pauses in supply certainly emphasize the efficiency of reports media as one thing akin to different theatrical genres, calling consideration to the potential for tales and invention in broadcasting. As effectively, CNN recollects a interval of maximum Islamophobia that has led unquestionably to the current political second, and urges the viewer to contemplate how fictionalized narratives, misinformation, and partisan politics posed as goal reality (printed via the ostensibly nonfiction style of tv journalism) might be lethal. Though the work was conceived of and produced inside the early years of the American “Warfare on Terror,” Quick’s observations within the early aughts bear closely on the present geopolitical local weather.

Masks, avatars, and prostheses are conceptual fascinations shared by a number of artists within the exhibition. In Act Two—ominously titled “Disaster mode: on,” however apropos what explicit disaster stays undefined—the uncanny surfaces once more, most notably in Kate Cooper’s Symptom Machine (2014–19). Right here, the meticulous element of CG animation exposes the uncomfortable artifice of rendered photographs; minor particulars like tear ducts and flyaway strands of hair is likely to be seen, however the mind nonetheless refuses to just accept this illustration as fleshy, embodied matter. The figures in Cooper’s works are enticing, white and female (they’re known as “surrogate” performers within the exhibition literature), their options undoubtedly adopted from the surfeit of latest promoting which nonetheless promotes an unattainable best of racialized whiteness as the target customary of magnificence. These beliefs are shortly distorted or forged into doubt within the three movies that type Symptom Machine, because the characters regularly turn into sick, bruised, and bloodied, or else endure weird physique modifications (one female avatar wears a translucent go well with that inflates and deflates at random to simulate a stereotypically masculine brawn, making absurdist comedy of one other gendered cliché). In impact, Cooper emphasizes bodily limits, which set up room for pondering alternatively about in another way abled and sick our bodies, in addition to types of care.

Lukáš Hofmann’s Lengthy story quick (2023) is the primary of the stay efficiency program, and it begins with a blade slicing via a taut skein of cloth mounted on a standing assist. First limbs, then faces, then full our bodies emerge, as if passing between realms via a membrane, however the motion can be a reminder of framing and illustration. What follows descends shortly into abjection, during which any humorous expression is acerbically cynical. The piece is additional dramatized by a sequence of provocative musical numbers sung a cappella. Most of Hofmann’s compositions are developed from a lexicon of potential performative gestures, which in Lengthy story quick are executed like manic, impulsive spasms. One performer is vulnerable to spitting on the ground, whereas one other bursts into abrupt and frantic speeches. Sooner or later, a pair ascend the constructing’s very grand staircase, and proceed to spill water onto the slippery marble flooring beneath. In one other memorable tableau, a scowling performer takes a blow torch to an ice sculpture within the form of an ear, fondling it with one hand and melting it with the opposite, whereas the remaining ensemble press their our bodies in opposition to a glass balustrade, pulling faces and streaking its polished floor. What makes Hofmann’s staging notably thrilling is the mingling of viewers and forged, and, given the seemingly unpredictable actions of the latter, one isn’t positive what boundaries between spectator and performer is likely to be crossed.

Act Three, “Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera (Heaven helps those that assist themselves),” extends a give attention to the physique to a twisted rhetoric of self-care, and one which uncovers the confining situations of magnificence beliefs and consumerist options to betterment. Some works emphasize the promotion of individualist routines for correction and optimization, like health and autoeroticism, however it’s Mika Rottenberg’s Dough (2006) which stands out as essentially the most fascinating problem to the wellness paradigm. In claustrophobic manufacturing facility rooms, a number of ladies sit or stand at stations alongside the manufacturing line for an unlimited, barely sickening size of uncooked dough. They finger the substance, perspire and sneeze on it, feeding the gooey matter via small gaps within the partitions and flooring to their fellow staff. Rottenberg is guided by Marxian ideas of labor and the female human physique, utilizing a style she has dubbed “social surrealism,” during which she examines the resonances and discordances between natural (bodily) and industrial processes, drawing parallels in Dough between manufacturing and digestion/excretion. The work additionally options actors whose bodily traits are inclined to fall outdoors normative classes, and whose traits start to be curiously mirrored within the malleable and nauseating bread combination.

“Tears dry on their very own” is the identify of the fourth and closing act, a sentiment courtesy of Amy Winehouse that means an ostensible resolve, a decided bucking-up. Reliquary (for and after Felix Gonzalez-Torres, in loving reminiscence) (2022) by Jesse Darling is displayed right here, and its stillness hums quietly with a special form of vitality than that of the louder and extra outstanding works. The set up is an homage of types, made similarly of amassing and assemblage that Gonzalez-Torres practiced in his personal artwork; additionally it is a young token of affection for a misplaced good friend. The work options two side-by-side vitrines three-quarters stuffed with ephemera and leftover fragments from the late artist’s profession, giving prominence to discarded materials as a method of conjuring a life. It’s a potpourri of an archive, which incorporates a lot of the printed matter and addenda belonging to lots of Torres’ exhibitions, torn to items. Solely a handful of the bigger fragments supply any legible perception to the vitrines’ contents; the majority is a confetti of shredded paper. Not removed from this tribute, and in decidedly brazen distinction, is the exhibition’s shouted epilogue, a gaggle of hanging banners: materials fragments of Chris Korda’s anti-natalist activism between 1995 and 1996 below her personal Church of Euthanasia. The messaging is loud and clear: people are the lone supply of the planet’s imminent destruction, its already devastated ecosystems, which not solely owes to humanity’s contemptible financial buildings, its corrupt and tyrannical politicians, its perpetual recourse to warfare and desolation, but in addition to the naked undeniable fact that human tendencies skew towards greed and corruption. Korda’s provocative and ironic, presumably cultish campaigning endorses important pondering even at its most inanely camp. But it’s maybe nowhere extra clear than with the inclusion of statements like “EAT A QUEER FETUS FOR JESUS” and “SAVE THE PLANET KILL YOURSELF” that this exhibition doesn’t aspire to offer a straightforward out or a cathartic decision.

Humor in After Laughter is cynical and heavy, and no matter chortling it generates would doubtless be of the manic and unsure selection. The viewers isn’t invited to be amused, a minimum of not completely, however affected, since humor isn’t activated for its personal sake, however as a response to the world’s entangled and ongoing crises.³ But whereas darkish types of humor anchor the exhibition conceptually, the scope of its group may be very broad, on condition that capitalism writ giant is the central antagonist. Definitely, particular person works, even clusters of works, have been thoughtfully chosen and communicate effectively to most of the exhibition’s sub-themes: the cynicism of web tradition, crises of care, and rampant individualism. However all through there’s a lingering impression that the varied conceptual threads run in parallel, moderately than productively weave collectively to assist and draw out a cohesive subject material, and that efficiency and theatre as creative classes are considerably collapsed. What it’s in regards to the gadgets of theatre exactly, greater than efficiency broadly, that make it an appropriate format by which to look at a few of the proposed leitmotifs is left under-explored, even when the 2 dramatic varieties pose an fascinating problem to the stuffier paradigms of museum show. However, and despite the challenges that accompany such a complete subject, After Laughter Comes Tears is true to its identify, rightly figuring out a shared, pervasive, and anxious emotional register that each captures and is a consequence of the extreme realities of latest political and social life.

at Mudam – The Up to date Artwork Museum of Luxembourg
till January 7, 2024

Sarah Messerschmidt is a author enthusiastic about artwork, literatures, and demanding principle, in addition to interdisciplinary approaches to the (shifting) picture. She is predicated in Berlin.