8–27 June 2021, THE ZANY – Bully Fae Collins, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Bryan Morello, Sue Tompkins, Alice Visentin et al. With a text written by Marta Federici,a photo print by John S. Barrington from the collection of Raimundo Biffi and events with Héctor Babenco, Ivan Cheng, Hope Dickson Leach, Jahān Khājavi et al.
They hop on the bus, out next stop and run down the stairs to catch the tube – next shift starts in ten minutes. Clamping the pole in the crook of her elbow, she is able to steady herself just enough to apply the make-up. It’s wobbly, but it’ll do. Increasingly hot and bothered, the make-up begins to run. It will still do, even as it begins to drip onto the pristine smock they’ve just donned.
The humor here is mechanical. It’s a laughter evoked by something about to break, a failure that is both relatable and awkward, frightening, even, when it moves towards the uncontrollable. It’s the humor of the joker, the clown, the harlequin, the zany. The joker is funny, but since being funny is part of his job profile, it is also work. His performances are often overzealous or tip into the ridiculous, and always touch upon a moment of exhaustion through exertion. Like seeing someone trip and pretending nothing happened, or fluffing a punchline and feigning laughter, or over-doing what was supposed to be friendly banter, or witnessing someone having spinach stuck in between their teeth and not being able to say anything.
In the works in this exhibition, the zany expresses itself by way of mimesis, distortion and/or exaggeration, in themes of discordance between expectation and reality, in shrill spectacles of classical narratives, in the performative, in a cacophony or even in pleasured discomfort. The zany is non-stop, strenuous, shrill, abundant, and triggers a dizziness that acts as a reminder of one’s own uncertain state, bringing the possibility of keeling over, that haunts every comfortable situation, to the fore. The artists span the zany across the genre of comedy, harnessing the ambivalent mechanism of the joke, in which one narrative runs counter to another, requiring large amounts of energy to make us laugh.
These thoughts are linked to the aesthetic category of the zany developed by Sianne Ngai, who understands this figure as a hysterical expression of a society that must constantly perform. In her book Our Aesthetic Categories. Zany, Cute, Interesting from 2012, Ngai explores the zany as an aesthetic style, judgement or experience defined by contemporary conditions of affective labor – transformed by performance-driven ambitions that ought not just to be labor but also play, pleasure as well as duty. The zany produces affect (laughter), bringing abilities to communicate and socialize to work, a task that seems at first to be lighthearted but conceals a potential for injury. For the zany’s situation is an increasingly precarious one: demands to take on a job at any moment mounting, real wages decreasing, soft skills making sure the rating is right. This is all not new, yet it is still getting worse.
In contrast to more traditional aesthetic categories such as the beautiful and the sublime, the zany (and cute and interesting) are weak, trivial categories (connected to the ominous era of p. directly following modernism). The zany does not suspend power but marks its deficit, one usually connected to humiliation. It is, therefore, not overwhelming (in Rome the beautiful is everywhere) but creeps in. Not shock or awe or revery and such mighty feelings are being sparked here – here it’s never quite clear whether the effect is positive or negative, but rather twisted. “Like me because you feel sorry for me / patronize me / play with me”. But! Ngai emphasizes, there is also something inherently destructive in the zany, and in this destruction is the refusal to be productive. Calling attention to their own weakness, the desperate frenzy of the zany “point to a laborious involvement from which ironic detachment is not an option” – here, even the attempt to make failure effective fails. Others response to zaniness, therefore, is often one of caution – a spectacle to be enjoyed at a safe distance so as not to be directly affected and, worst case, be dragged down with it.
Yet the zany is by no means solely a contemporary category. From George Seurat’s pointillist paintings of circus scenes to Pynchon characters to Jim Carey and Steve Urkel, the zany has been reappearing in different forms and contexts with various political implications since its arguably original expression as Zanni in the sixteenth century Italian masked theatre Commedia dell’arte. Based on social stereotypes, the characters in Commedia dell’arte make up and play with a concentrated representation of power dynamics between the Innamorati – young upper-class lovers – the Vecchi – wealthy, greedy old men – and, amongst others, the Zanni – tricksters modeled after peasants seeking temporary employment in wealthy Venetian households, roles that could today surely easily be transferred to the likes of the entrepreneur, the single, the temp worker and so on. The carnivalesque reigns Commedia dell’arte, and with it the constant emphasis as well as transgression of social positions and categories. Scandalous unacceptable behavior, flesh and the body are celebrated, postures exaggerated, piety mocked and denounced.
* Image: Commedia dell’arte, 1936 by Zygmunt Waliszewski, who copied and mocked genre paintings of old masters such as Titian, Velazquez or Delacroix.
Read Opening Night by Marta Federici (text in Italian) here.
OPENING TIMES & PROGRAM:
8 June, 7–10 pm
OPENING
9 pm: Ivan Cheng, Confidences Baseline, reading
23 June, 7–10 pm
8 pm: Hope Dickson Leach, Dollywood / Héctor Babenco, Kiss of the Spider Woman, screenings
27 June, 7–10 pm
CLOSING
8 pm: Jahān Khājavi, poetry performance
& open by appointment, contact info@lateralroma.eu
8–27 June 2021, THE ZANY – Bully Fae Collins, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Bryan Morello, Sue Tompkins, Alice Visentin et al. With a text written by Marta Federici,a photo print by John S. Barrington from the collection of Raimundo Biffi and events with Héctor Babenco, Ivan Cheng, Hope Dickson Leach, Jahān Khājavi et al.
They hop on the bus, out next stop and run down the stairs to catch the tube – next shift starts in ten minutes. Clamping the pole in the crook of her elbow, she is able to steady herself just enough to apply the make-up. It’s wobbly, but it’ll do. Increasingly hot and bothered, the make-up begins to run. It will still do, even as it begins to drip onto the pristine smock they’ve just donned.
The humor here is mechanical. It’s a laughter evoked by something about to break, a failure that is both relatable and awkward, frightening, even, when it moves towards the uncontrollable. It’s the humor of the joker, the clown, the harlequin, the zany. The joker is funny, but since being funny is part of his job profile, it is also work. His performances are often overzealous or tip into the ridiculous, and always touch upon a moment of exhaustion through exertion. Like seeing someone trip and pretending nothing happened, or fluffing a punchline and feigning laughter, or over-doing what was supposed to be friendly banter, or witnessing someone having spinach stuck in between their teeth and not being able to say anything.
In the works in this exhibition, the zany expresses itself by way of mimesis, distortion and/or exaggeration, in themes of discordance between expectation and reality, in shrill spectacles of classical narratives, in the performative, in a cacophony or even in pleasured discomfort. The zany is non-stop, strenuous, shrill, abundant, and triggers a dizziness that acts as a reminder of one’s own uncertain state, bringing the possibility of keeling over, that haunts every comfortable situation, to the fore. The artists span the zany across the genre of comedy, harnessing the ambivalent mechanism of the joke, in which one narrative runs counter to another, requiring large amounts of energy to make us laugh.
These thoughts are linked to the aesthetic category of the zany developed by Sianne Ngai, who understands this figure as a hysterical expression of a society that must constantly perform. In her book Our Aesthetic Categories. Zany, Cute, Interesting from 2012, Ngai explores the zany as an aesthetic style, judgement or experience defined by contemporary conditions of affective labor – transformed by performance-driven ambitions that ought not just to be labor but also play, pleasure as well as duty. The zany produces affect (laughter), bringing abilities to communicate and socialize to work, a task that seems at first to be lighthearted but conceals a potential for injury. For the zany’s situation is an increasingly precarious one: demands to take on a job at any moment mounting, real wages decreasing, soft skills making sure the rating is right. This is all not new, yet it is still getting worse.
In contrast to more traditional aesthetic categories such as the beautiful and the sublime, the zany (and cute and interesting) are weak, trivial categories (connected to the ominous era of p. directly following modernism). The zany does not suspend power but marks its deficit, one usually connected to humiliation. It is, therefore, not overwhelming (in Rome the beautiful is everywhere) but creeps in. Not shock or awe or revery and such mighty feelings are being sparked here – here it’s never quite clear whether the effect is positive or negative, but rather twisted. “Like me because you feel sorry for me / patronize me / play with me”. But! Ngai emphasizes, there is also something inherently destructive in the zany, and in this destruction is the refusal to be productive. Calling attention to their own weakness, the desperate frenzy of the zany “point to a laborious involvement from which ironic detachment is not an option” – here, even the attempt to make failure effective fails. Others response to zaniness, therefore, is often one of caution – a spectacle to be enjoyed at a safe distance so as not to be directly affected and, worst case, be dragged down with it.
Yet the zany is by no means solely a contemporary category. From George Seurat’s pointillist paintings of circus scenes to Pynchon characters to Jim Carey and Steve Urkel, the zany has been reappearing in different forms and contexts with various political implications since its arguably original expression as Zanni in the sixteenth century Italian masked theatre Commedia dell’arte. Based on social stereotypes, the characters in Commedia dell’arte make up and play with a concentrated representation of power dynamics between the Innamorati – young upper-class lovers – the Vecchi – wealthy, greedy old men – and, amongst others, the Zanni – tricksters modeled after peasants seeking temporary employment in wealthy Venetian households, roles that could today surely easily be transferred to the likes of the entrepreneur, the single, the temp worker and so on. The carnivalesque reigns Commedia dell’arte, and with it the constant emphasis as well as transgression of social positions and categories. Scandalous unacceptable behavior, flesh and the body are celebrated, postures exaggerated, piety mocked and denounced.
* Image: Commedia dell’arte, 1936 by Zygmunt Waliszewski, who copied and mocked genre paintings of old masters such as Titian, Velazquez or Delacroix.
Read Opening Night by Marta Federici (text in Italian) here.
OPENING TIMES & PROGRAM:
8 June, 7–10 pm
OPENING
9 pm: Ivan Cheng, Confidences Baseline, reading
23 June, 7–10 pm
8 pm: Hope Dickson Leach, Dollywood/ Héctor Babenco, Kiss of the Spider Woman, screenings
27 June, 7–10 pm
CLOSING
8 pm: Jahān Khājavi, poetry performance
& open by appointment, contact info@lateralroma.eu