DOES HUMOUR BELONG IN PERFORMANCE ART?

by Robin Deacon

"WOODY ALLEN WAS FUNNY BEFORE THE ALLEGATIONS. LENNY BRUCE WAS FUNNY AND JEWISH. PETER COOK WAS FUNNIER THAN DUDLEY MORE. TOMMY COOPER WAS FUNNY BECAUSE HE HAD BIG FEET. MARTY FELDMAN WAS FUNNY BECAUSE HE HAD BIG EYES. KENNETH WILLIAMS WAS FUNNY, BUT HE WAS DEPRESSED. TONY HANCOCK WAS FUNNY BECAUSE HE WAS DEPRESSED. BILL HICKS WAS FUNNY BUT HE DIED OF CANCER. SID JAMES WAS FUNNY BUT HE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC. ANDY KAUFMAN WAS FUNNY BECAUSE HE WASN'T FUNNY. STEVE MARTIN USED TO BE FUNNY. RICHARD PRYOR WAS FUNNY EVEN THOUGH HE WAS BLACK. PETER SELLERS WAS INSANE. ROBIN WILLIAMS WAS FUNNY UNTIL HE WENT TO HOLLYWOOD. STEVE COOGAN IS NOT AS FUNNY AS ALAN PARTRIDGE."

From 45 Performances (2002)

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that no matter how funny you may think you are, there is always the possibility that the people laughing aren't necessarily laughing for the same reasons that you think they are. They may be laughing at something completely unrelated to you, or even something that you may not be aware is happening. Anyway, I have come to a few other conclusions. Firstly that humour does belong in performance art and secondly that being 'obvious' isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Does Humour Belong in Performance Art? The Attack of the Killer Cheese (1995) is the only performance I have ever done at a straight comedy evening. My turn came having sat for an hour watching a variety of stand up comedians (i.e. twenty something white men talking about masturbation and smoking dope) going through their motions. Gauging the success of Killer Cheese was very much based on the quantity (and quality) of laughter, so in a comedy club this was fine, despite it's incongruity relative to these other acts. But in other contexts - a gallery setting for example - you can be made to feel that these reactions in some way diminish the possibility of the work being 'taken seriously'; that by extension, the po-faced performance art cliché's of nakedness, the use of bodily fluids and protracted duration are always in themselves of merit. Using this rule of thumb, I am not a 'performance artist' at all. So how do I account for the amount of bare flesh on this website? Granted, certain items of clothing are often removed during my performances, but I always endeavour to do this in an amusing manner.

Being obvious: It seems there are certain stock techniques for inducing laughter - bottoms for example - see Double 0 (2001). So often the things that do work, for whatever intangible reason, are the dumb, silly and absurdly basic things. The mechanics of how humour works is a recurring interest of mine. Like why is it, in the case of The Attack of the Killer Cheese (1995), that a cheese grater angled to look like a sharks fin, moved left and right behind a table, coupled with a short burst of music from the film Jaws, is 'funny'? Perhaps the humour is in the recognition of the filmic reference. Or maybe it is in the personification of an inanimate object - there is a part of the performance where I attempt mouth to mouth (well, mouth to hole) resuscitation a piece of Emmenthal cheese that 'worked'. This is starting to give an indication of the kinds of lateral thinking required - the grater at a 45 degree angle as shark fin, the sharpened edges as sharks teeth ripping to shreds the poor lump of blue stilton, a cheese with 'veins' (hence, blood); the 'suffocation' of a slice of Emmenthal with cling film - hence the idea that cheese can breathe. We are now dealing with extrapolations - levels of abstraction that take things further away from the obvious, but I feel that if you concentrate, then path is completely logical.

Is this the search for some kind of magic formula or overarching theory? Maybe the use of humour in such circumstances would be cynical and manipulative - if it becomes as easy as pushing a button, the challenge for the performer disappears. Of course, there is always the possibility that the boot is on the other foot. There is the idea of laughter as an aggressive act - the collective 'us' versus 'them' (or in my case the singular 'him'). In these circumstances, the idea of a difference between laughing at or with somebody melts away. Who is truly on the receiving end? People laugh for all kinds of reasons, and not necessarily the ones you would like. These ideas were explored further in the performance Bobby Valentine (1995).