Performing Polarities:

exploiting the satirical gap

Gemma Marmalade

I am an artist as

entertainer,

performer, jester,

conjurer, story

teller, historical

hoaxer,

information

swindler and

conceptual

charlatan.

I am also a

fat,

opinionate

d female

lesbian

from

Essex.

Awkward:

Cumbersome, unrefined and requiring of

caution.

KISS

THE

BLARNEY

STONE

The Court Jester

Anecdotes

Story telling

Magic & Mystery

Performance

Spectacle

Provocative

• Self deprecating – laughing at oneself/laughing at others

• Responsibility of social commentary

• Context gives immunity from usual social consequences of

being provocative

• Humorous, fictitious, over exaggerated storytelling with a

poker face– the hook….

Traditionally, local women from the island of Linosa, Italy, have carried out a

symbolic annual ritual. In order to establish a hierarchy amongst dominant family

clans, the two presiding matriarchs meet on the feast of Saint Marina (patron of the

sea, fertility and suffering), to flagellate each other with fish until a victor is

decided. ‘Fish Wives’-- parlance for shrewish and abusive women-- takes its name

from the phrase attributed to this tradition. The winner collects the discarded,

damaged weapons and returns home to prepare a special dish with them. Later, it

is presented to the adversary who must sit and eat it as an act of contrition. This

ritual has been coined as ‘andare a Cannosa’ where the expression ‘to eat humble

pie’ originates.

Fish Wives

A fault line, an intersection between two or more divergent

elements

(Good) comedy is situated in this fault line

Contrasts, anxieties, contradictions, tensions, paradoxes,

awkwardness

Traditionally, satire was designed to critique two opposing themes

Unresolved, awkward elements create effective humour

The time is out of joint.

- Hamlet

In 1957, when conducting extra sensory perception trials with

animals, parapsychologists discovered that pigeons were able

to determine the sexuality of humans through visual

observation.

Strange Birds

But your backbone has been shattered

O My wondrous, wretched century.

with a senseless smile

like a beast that was once limber

you look back, weak and cruel,

to contemplate your own tracks.

The Century/The Age, Osip Mandelstam, 1922

“As each plant cell has self producing phytohormones and clear evidence of the

pheromonic properties of natural attraction, including inter-species vertebrate to

plant transference, it is not so far a step to consider that human chemical

excretions might be propitious to the stimulation of plant growth…

..the female homosexual endocrine response shows evidence that a unique

combination of progesterone derivative 4,16-androstadien-3-one and estra-

1,3,5(10), 16-tetraen-3-ol, unseen in any other mammal sexual manifestation, could

cultivate ideal conditions for pheromonal transmission, arousing both the plant

genotype and its environmental biotics to a superlative extent.”

Dr Gerda Haeckel, 1976

Green Fingered

Humour opposes historical/scientific/documentary/truth-

associated narrative content - The context of art and culture

assumes seriousness - Adds to the tension and anxiety

Awkwardness is the gap between two opposing experiential

polarities

‘Radical awkwardness’, a panic arising from the collision of

different social contexts for which no obvious norm of

reconciliation exists. Adam Kotsco

Humour

Truth

Seriousness

Lies

AWKWARDNESS

The gap, the fault line, the break in the

spine…

The occupation and investigation of the space in between these

nodal points exploit the anxieties and awkwardness of our age.

Something magical, reflective and indicative of ourselves occurs

when this territory is explored.