HAUSLADEN, Katharina; LIPINSKY DE ORLOV, Genevieve (eds.)
Texte Zur Kunst 31/121 (Mar. 2021) Comedy

The March issue of Texte zur Kunst, titled “Comedy,” investigates the comedic in art while also examining mass-media formats such as TV series and films. Comedy not only offers consolation and comfort by making the tragic seem comic; for the repressed, it also serves as a catalyst, addressing and thematizing repression through jokes, slapstick, or the grotesque. However, at a time when audiences increasingly demand political commitment and authenticity from art, comedic speech, which is inherently disingenuous, has fallen into disrepute: ironically distanced rhetoric is accused of turning a blind eye to social inequality. Together with Bert Rebhandl, author and co-publisher of the film magazine cargo, the editors conceptualized an issue that examines the role of the joke in art, the psychoanalytic dimension of the comedic, and the limits of satire in the age of Donald Trump. [publisher's note]

Published by Texte Zur Kunst, 2021
Art Theory / Periodicals