7 days, 7 jokes

[imomus]

A Spoken Word Exhibition at New York's Swiss Institute ends today -- though the Performa Biennial it's part of continues -- so I've just emailed the gallery staff the last of the seven Bob Newart jokes they're being asked to whisper to visitors. Here's the complete set. As happens in Chinese Whispers-type games, these jokes sometimes got garbled in the telling (and they were garbled enough to begin with!). A spy I sent to the gallery told me, for instance, that the three bulls in Friday's joke became, for her, three bows. Mistakes are a way of generating the new... or sometimes just uneasy laughter.



Thursday November 1st
A man walked into a doctor's waiting room and the room blew down. "I thought you were a waiter", said the man. "I lost patients," said the room.

Friday November 2nd
There were three bulls, legging it across a field. One of them was a green bull, one of them a blue bull, and the other had to look in the mirror.

Saturday November 3rd
A mutilator was humiliating in a haystack. "Stop!" cried the resultant children.

Sunday November 4th
A king walked into a McDonalds. "Give me two women," he said to the man behind the counter. "Keep your voice down," said the man, "I'm scared too".

Monday November 5th
"Who's that seedy comedian -- the one who takes his clothes off in the gallery?"
"Acconci?"
"No, Bob Newart."

Tuesday November 6th
There were three black dwarves who lived in a tall white cylindrical house on the cliffs. One stormy night an icy winter gale whipped up and howled. The three dwarves climbed the spiral staircase to bed and switched off the light. Next morning, several hundred bodies were found on the beach. They were lighthouse keepers.

Wednesday November 7th
An English, an Irish and a Scottish pussy cat were asked their favourite prey. "Dumplings," said the Irishman.

Comments

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I like the first one. The rest kind of lost me. Was the 4th joke supposed to be entirely non sequitor?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The fourth joke was written by a machine, a joke program as imperfect as, say, Japanese-English machine translation currently is. That's what interests me about it, its failure to pass the comedy Turing Test. The machine has a template which has requirements for two characters, a location, and two lines of dialogue. The rest is random. Sometimes it produces something funny, sometimes something odd. In this case, it almost produced a Kafka short story.

[alvaroceb.livejournal.com]

«le rire […] est au bord du néant», quoted from Breton's "Anthologie de l'humour noir", quoted from P. Piobb's "Les mystères des Dieux". I'm looking forward to read your novel, though I already read the first pages / chapters you linked here some weeks / months ago and I didn't unterstand a word. Even if (I guess), for almost any existing joke, there could be found structural equivalents in different cultures, the humour in your novel seemed to me very much rooted in a linguistic and geographic environment —I guess, again, English. To me it looked more absurd than it probably should.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see these told at Brixton Comedy Club. *Shiver*

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, the whole point of Bob Newart is that he dies for us. Like Jesus, but onstage.

[(Anonymous)]

As a blogger, you can be insightful and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, as an artist, you come across as some awful parody from a mediocre comic novel from the mid-seventies.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The thing is, you can judge a blog on the internet. This is it, this is the blog, it exists here. My art practice can only be experienced in the gallery. If you get a bad impression of it, perhaps the problem is simply that art cannot be squeezed into the format of a blog.

Sure, here on your computer screen it might seem like bad conceptual art, but it's actually rather good performance art. At my Zach Feuer show in 2005 and the Whitney performance in 2006, magic really was in the air (some days more than others, I admit, and probably the Feuer show more than at the Whitney). I'd be happy to admit if it had been terrible (like my AIGA lecture). But it wasn't, it was actually rather brilliant. But you really had to be there.

The internet is the world's worst forum for art and, I'd say, getting worse every day, as art deliberately distinguishes itself from the digital -- that's one of the things it's for now. Not-being-the-internet.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt: no, I'm not experiencing your art, I'm only reading your riff of it. In which case I'll say you do a very poor job of selling your art. You make it sound like second-grade, second-hand conceptual art that might make even an undergraduate blush. Whispering non sequiturs into people's ears - I'm sure it's been done dozens of times already. Off the top of my head I can already think of sound artist Christina Kubisch who has done something similar. And as for unreliable narrators, it just sounds like 30 years out of date. I think we've all integrated the unreliability of narrators into our conceptualisation of them many years ago. But maybe, as you say, you had to be there.

[(Anonymous)]

Although not to be too negative, I should say the Zach Feuer event sounds like it might have been interesting.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A quick google suggests that Kubisch's work involved electro-magnetic fields and that any whispering was done through headphones, not using a live person who actually speaks into your ear.

But I think the question "Has it been done?" is actually one of the least interesting in art, only marginally less boring than "How long did it take you to do that, then?" The question to ask is "How is it being done?" Notice the difference? "Has it been done?" focuses on the past, and seems to see no merit in anything beyond some kind of pioneering originality. And the trouble with pioneers -- people who plant a flag on the North Pole, for instance -- is that they fail to consider the North Pole a place worthy of exploration. Getting there first -- or dying in the attempt -- is all.

Again, I'd say, think of this not as a winner-takes-all rush into virgin territory, but somebody working in a recently-established genre. And ask the adverbial question: how?

[(Anonymous)]

The "what" and the "how" questions are really not so different as you think, Momus. The ur-question is 'are you doing something interesting?', whether it's developing a new convention or using an old one in an original way. I'm personally not getting the feeling that whispering non sequiturs into people's ears is that interesting - it simply sounds like some sort of generic conceptual work. The non sequitur slogan is such a staple of conceptual art, you almost come to expect it, even if only in the title of the work or something. It might have actually been more surprising to tell an actual stand-up style joke, good or bad. But you sound more like you want to 'fit in' with what the other artists are up to. You want to be part of the glamour, even if you have to partake in its clichés. But it's all subjective I guess. Good luck with your work nonetheless.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Why is it, in your view, conceptual rather than performance work? Having someone whispering something right into your ear is super-sensual. In fact, I've found that gallery staff (in both London and New York) have been very reluctant to do it. Spies sent to both places told me that staff were voicing their whispers and standing back from visitors. The degree of intimacy a whisper imposes on strangers is very challenging for both parties, and (as I was saying last week) breaches the barriers galleries erect between their admin areas and their performance/exhibition spaces.

As for being "part of the glamour", you're dead right. I am totally chuffed to be in a show with heroes like Vito Acconci, Lawrence Weiner, Yoko Ono, Gustav Metzger, Genesis P. Orridge (who apparently gave an amazingly moving performance the other day relating to the recent death of his partner)...

[(Anonymous)]

"It was over before it even began"

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't this just a really tired version of Tino Sehgal (who is himself beginning to near the self-parodic)?

Sam

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's definitely got something in common with Sehgal's work, which I think is good and not self-parodic. It's funny, whenever anyone starts a new genre (and here I mean women artists like Andrea Fraser and Janet Cardiff, who really started this 20 years ago) there's a tendency to focus on the validity of the genre rather than the work being done within it. Later, when enough work in the genre has accumulated, the focus shifts to what makes each piece more or less interesting or original.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean accidentally self-parodic, in the sense that the bite or surprise that his work depend on has been done to death. Instead of being under the impression that the gallery attendant is suddenly talking about obesity in the UK (as with the current group show at Tate Modern), the reaction is more like, 'Oh... that's Tino, right?' I can't see bad jokes being judged outside the genre of one-trick institutional critique.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, can you explain the thinking and the theory behind your Bob Newart character? So far I get that he's supposed to be an unfunny comedian, but why? Is he some sort of parody of the art scene as well? Or a parody of the idea of parody? Or what? Are you exploring the idea of the uncanny?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

He comes out of what happened during my last two major shows, the Zach Feuer one in 2005 (making up stories from scratch daily in the gallery) and the Unreliable Tour Guide at the Whitney. As those three months at the Whitney went on, I found the character of Bob Newart, a comedian, emerging from somewhere inside me and taking over the tours. I decided to "give him his own show". That show still hasn't happened -- I was originally going to appear at Performa as Bob Newart, in person. But what eventually happened was this phoned-in version, which is really a kind of pre-publicity for the real Bob Newart Show: a kind of John the Baptist to his dying-for-us-onstage Christ.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but why are you interested in a dying-for-us-onstage Christ? Is he some kind of Beckettian absurdist character?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

First, death is a fascinating subject. So is unsuccess. A comedian "dying" on stage (failing to connect with his audience) is -- for me, anyway -- vastly more interesting than a comedian succeeding and winning the crowd over.

A bad comedian is an incredibly eloquent and economical way to communicate the ideas of death and unsuccess. There's lots of emotion on both sides. We feel awful for him, he feels awful about the whole thing.

But there's a whole other side -- for me the most fascinating part -- which goes back to the Feuer piece I did, and to Saul Bellow's phrase "the primitive prompter". Bob Newart will have no "material". His jokes come ab nihilo, out of nothing. He makes them up (as I made the stories up at Feuer) on the spur of the moment. And this is the "Christ"'s miraculous side. He can produce -- not loaves and fish, but words and phrases -- out of nothing. The "primitive prompter" allows him to do it. Sure, he can't make funny jokes, he can't make people laugh, he can't quite communicate (though he can't quite not-communicate either -- all words mean something). But he can do this, and for that reason he's not dead yet. And yes, the Beckett comparison is totally apt for that reason. While we speak, we aren't dead yet.

[(Anonymous)]

Christ, writing your own press releases?

You'll be pleased to know that 'Beckettian' just about trumps 'Sisyphean' so far as misunderstood/overused cliches go in this field.

[(Anonymous)]

He tried to get Christ to write his press release - but He was hung up at the time.

[atarashi.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure whether these bob newart jokes are meant to be deliberately unfunny nonsensical ones. are they supposed to be? because i actually find that some of them make sense and are quite funny.

[alvaroceb.livejournal.com]

To me, this Bob Newart dying thing sounds like a sadomasochistic version of Klaus Kinski's "Jesus Erlöser"! Uooooo!

[(Anonymous)]

Of all your efforts in the various media - blogging, journalism, music, etc. - I have to say I find your forays into the art world the least compelling. Your upthread commentary on the genesis and meaning of the Bob Newart project actually sound more interesting than the project itself. There's a disconnect there somewhere. I have a feeling that at heart you're a "tell not show" kind of guy. Or perhaps it's your obvious desperation to be part of the art world that's part of the problem. Some people work better in a medium they're a little bit alienated from.

L.M.

[(Anonymous)]

Failed musicians should be wary of hope of recuperation in the art world. The practice of fine art needs to be nurtured, looks easy to the non participants but as you have found Momus conceptualist rhetoric borrowed from the internet can not cover up mundane ideas and barely sublimated technique.
There is a cynical pointlessness (sameness)and not absurdity that you seem to court in wanting to embarass yourself in an age of narcissistic no shame.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm not a failed musician, asshat!

you´re lucky momus_lolz got deleted

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

O RLY

[(Anonymous)]

these jokes remind me of jack spicer the poet, bits of him can be downloaded from here: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Spicer.html
I recommend "the holy grail" for starters

with these jokes and spicer's work, you always have material for arguing for his high seriousness or mundane jokiness, and are always aware he seriously and jokingly meant both.

It would be fun to wander ignorant into a commonplace gallery, enjoy the pictures, and then have a joke whispered upon you.

I think the mcdonald one is best, but I don't know why

- from matthew

[(Anonymous)]

A spy I sent to the gallery told me, for instance, that the three bulls in Friday's joke became, for her, three bows.

I visited the gallery on Saturday. They told me the wrong joke!

The Spy

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I sent the joke late a couple of days, that may have been my fault!

The best kind of jokes

[kevisannasdad.livejournal.com]

I laughed at each. I didn't make any sense out of them and I don't want to. A joke is full of surprises and the non-sense in each of yours is always surprising. I would laugh even more if they were whispered to me, out of two types of embarrassment (touched by a stranger and being confused) and the above stated joy of surprise.

The most fun part is feeling my mind trying to make sense out of something that is said with the right pace, the spacing and wording to reveal something, but knowing that there is nothing to get to. To really enjoy the initial surprise of non-sense, you have to admit defeat. That there is no connection to be made and nothing further to be gained for greater effort.

I could read 101 of those and still laugh. After that, I would probably need something to eat or drink. Maybe both.

Re: The best kind of jokes

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A stiff glass of egg, perhaps?

Re: The best kind of jokes

[(Anonymous)]

knick knick.
Who's there?
knick.
Knick who?
Knick everyone, apparently and happily, as everything has been done already in word form by itself...oh yeah, and Jesus is here too. Can we come in without being erased?

laugh riot by:
John Flesh/ F.F.

[(Anonymous)]

Reading the comments I think the problem of posting things here is there is no context for the piece to work and it sounds disembodied. The gallery space and the interaction with the staff will add a lot to the experience and enstrangement. Real jokes sometimes can be cryptic or unfunny precisely because they are structured around a punchline and often I think the laughter is hollow or mannered due to one's reception of the payoff. It is a no different here except that the joke is in the ear of the beholder.

Having said that I do feel that had you performed and created these on the spot then it would have been much stronger piece. Having attending the Zach Fuer show, the thing that made it work was witnessing the stream of consciousness approach of the work happening on the spot. The hits and the misses of that approach made it more interesting then something planned in advance. Perhasp in the case of the Swiss Institute piece the work has been somewhat diluted by the non-appearance of Bob Newart. Still thanks for letting us eavesdrop,

Richard

[snosage.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with Neil Hamburger?

intelectual but not funny

[robertdye.livejournal.com]

Jokes are for those persons who are not funny, so I can't understand the reason for the book.

What about the funny you told me early January? When I asked why you put your wig back on to walk home after the late night in the 10 Bells opposite Spitz, you replied "to keep warm". Now THAT was funny!

[shadowshark.livejournal.com]

The second one was really funny. I like these because they put really neat images into your head. I don't mean to bring out Cage to impress you, but it really very much reminds me of the first section of Indeterminacy, when Cage tells that joke about the Zen monk who sees the Hindu walking across a river and cries out "Hey! Stop!" The Hindu monk turns around, and the Zen monk says, "That's not the way to cross the river," leads him downstream, and they wade across. Your joke just put this great and very human image of this bull, pausing in the midst of excitement, and looking in a mirror that just happens to be there, widening its eyes the way we do when we're making sure everything's okay. I like it because it makes me laugh out of love... same for the "I'm scared, too!" interaction... just a love of man the ape. I like them a lot better than most jokes, which prey more on insecurities about otherness of some kind or another. I don't mean to gush; I just thought I'd review the actual art itself and say that it's nice, maybe offsetting all these folks criticizing its concept and context outside of the most important part of the concept and context.

[(Anonymous)]

You've mentioned Bob Newart and number of times in your blog and I've never really understood the point. Deliberately telling people bad jokes seems akin to deliberately cooking a bad meal. We can appreciate your conceit but what do we do with what you have served up?

Perhaps, as you say, you have to be there. It sometime seems though, that you get more fun describing what you are doing than anyone actually gets on the receiving end. When you first mentioned Bob Newart, I was reminded of Trevor Griffiths' play "Comedians" where the centrepiece on television was Jonathan Pryce's deeply uncomfortable stand-up routine. A number of other commenters have mentioned their own examples of performers deliberately being unfunny. If you are doing something different to all these people then I wonder what that is exactly. Or inexactly.

The only reason to write this is not to be snide but to recognize that you are a wonderfully creative person but this particular avenue seems like a dead end. In the best case, the rest of the world will embrace you and this comment of mine will be remembered along with the bloke who didn't sign the Beatles and also thought Picasso must have been drunk when he painted.

[(Anonymous)]

You might like Barry Yourgrau's ultrashort fiction, e.g. "A Man Jumps Out Of An Airplane".

I'm heading off to Edinburgh next week (for the first time) - any personal suggestions for visitors? Ta!

[ewok-sister.livejournal.com]

All the jokes work as a charm for me. Mostly since they seem suspiciously like my comic scripts. I can't wait for the book.