“In the classic tradition of slapstick Van der Werve’s films are fuelled by the creative possibilities of aural and visual dislocation, or, more simply, by an awareness of how simultaneously lonely and absurd life can be and how much solace can be found in abstract forms of expression.”
— Frieze
Mark C. Taylor asks:
Kierkgaard was one of the first to identify the importance of irony as a form of life as well as an aesthetic phenomenon. He always drew a sharp distinction between irony and humour. While irony is the boundary between the aesthetic and ethical forms of life, humor is the form of consciousness that most closely approximates religious awareness. Much so-called postmodern art involves an irony bordering on cynicism. Your work is often quite humorous but is not precisely ironic. How do you understand the difference between irony and humour and how does this difference inform your art?
Vito Acconci replies:
Irony is know-it-all; I prefer slapstick. Irony is laughing at something, or someone, from above; I want laughs from within - laughing at oneself, and laughing with someone. My models are Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers. Let’s say there are two views of life, the tragic and the comic. In the tragic view, the protagonist travels along a pathway, a channel, towards a goal; call that goal transcendence, or God. Nothing gets in the way of that trajectory; the viewer’s attention is single-minded, the viewer is numbed by the relentlessness of that trajectory. In the comic view, there’s the same protagonist, the same pathway, the same goal. Now, halfway along the pathway, the protagonist slips on a banana peel: suddenly the goal doesn’t seem so important anymore - the protagonist’s mind is on other things, and so is the viewer’s. What humour does is allow a second thought, a reconsideration. Humour questions judgment - it ridles holes into the idea of a Last Judgment - while irony judges. Humour leaves a mess - who cleans up afterward? who cares? - while irony is pointed and clean. Humour is carnival - it’s enjoyment from making a fool out of oneself; irony is enjoyment from making a fool out of others.
— pressPLAY: Contemporary Artists In Conversation
