Local Comics

Abstract

This 3-screen video projection forms part of an extensive series of films that each consist of regional comics being filmed in conditions of duress as they perform their stand-up routine to an empty club. Playing to an imaginary, absent audience, the performers trawl through the complexities of everyday life, finding temporary solace and accommodation in the witty anecdote and the 'joke'. But unconnected to any audience response, their carefully timed performance spills into the void of the club. The spectator of Common Culture’s Local Comics witnesses the comics’ struggle to balance the rehearsed control of the professional with the panic of someone who knows all too well the routine nature of their 'entertainment'. The work explores how humour is able to facilitate reflection and analysis of the world of human relationships with the comics’ performance articulating a specific view of social experience; informed by a sense of who they are and how they relate to a world they share with their audience. This articulation of the 'local' view on the 'big' issues of 'relationships, sexuality, race, class and politics, is what marks their stories as funny and potentially insightful.

'Local Comics' has also been shown in solo shows at The Third Space, Belfast, 7 Dec. – 11 Jan 2007, and Q Arts, Derby, May 2004, and the following group shows: from text to hypertext. medi@terra, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens, Greece, 2004; Video Weekend Nonstop, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, Sweden, curated by CRAC, (Creative Room for Art and Computing) April 2006; VIDEOTASTIC, Atelier als Supermedium: Artists Space for Contemporary Art, Den Haag, Holland, September 2006; Joking Aside, Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery, 5 May – 16 June 2007. Local Comics— Crewe, a 3-screen video projection was purchased by the Arts Council of England collection in September 2006.