[NetBehaviour] any thoughts about "Comedian"?

[Max Herman]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if this art work can be mapped usefully or helpfully by a network hypothesis, as I'm trying to do vis-a-vis the Mona Lisa in "The Work of Art in the Age of Network Reproduction."

It does seem that the work is fundamentally designed to create ripples across media networks and society, in myriad forms like conversation, criticism, tweets, selfies, high-fives, etc.  Maybe the price is designed to give the artist three years of living expenses.  The duct tape represents the cheapest and most obvious way to "affix" an object to a location ( or as Stevens says, "let the lamp affix its beam").

Bananas represent empire, colonialism, and injustice (as in a banana republic), mass consumption, food networks, deforestation, racism (as when thrown onto football pitches), phallocentrism, poverty, etc.

When a banana is opened and consumed, you have a waste product -- a peel.  When someone steps on a peel and slips, that's a system intervention of a comic sort (though it's also a huge danger of severe brain injury).  Comedy is a staged performance where conflict and danger are resolved peacefully, without death as in the case of tragedy, with the participants laughing and feeling relief, a rescue from disaster and absolution from the guilt of unacknowledged wrongdoing.  Comedians are people who try to make comedy, not just the ones who succeed.

Has this all already been said?  Maybe so!  Does it relate to "Distant Feelings"?  I think there is a correlation that reflects very well on Abrahams' work.  It's not so much the object, but the network flow in time in which the process indicated by the object occurs and has or doesn't have influence.  I think it also relates to the Mona Lisa, in that Leonardo is also hoping to help make better possible futures more possible.

Best regards,

Max



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