The pluralistic societies resulting from globalization of the 1990s produce ever-growing opportunities for artists and viewers to encounter a wide variety of cultures. As well as needing to understand different peoples, cultures and beliefs, individuals are gaining greater awareness of their own cultural backgrounds. Laughter and humor play a substantial role in facilitating cross-cultural understanding, as artists take light-hearted swipes at their own cultures and the communities to which they belong.
The artist and works we found by now are TOOLS we can use to illustrate our ideas that still have to be developped in the frame of our thematic seminar.
Following selection of artists is a pool that will be useful once we know in which direction we want to guide our researches.
We focused on contemporary visual arts only, as it seems to bet he most appropriate tool due to ist interdisciplinarity and because it is experimental & innovative
Hyungkoo Lee
Mauricio Cattalan
Roman Signer
Piero Golia
Gianni Motti
Santiaggo Sierra
Martin Kollar
Martin Zet
Primoz Novak & Nika Oblak
Tamy Ben-Tor
The Blu Noses
Robin Rhode
Sisley Xhafa
Aida Makoto
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
Carlos Amorales
Tim Lee
Aldo Giannotti & Stefano Giuriati
Jesper Alvaer
We will present more details of the artist’s works during our next meetin on Cyprus.
Further on, we found two probably very useful exhibitions and publications about the topic:
-MORI ART MUSEUM, All About Laughter: Humor in Contemporary Art (2007)
http://www.mori.art.museum/english/contents/laughter/index.html
-Kölnischer Kunsverein: MIGRATION (2000-2006)
http://www.koelnischerkunstverein.de/migration/
For the further work in the thematic seminar it would probably make sense to find a specific case study to focus on, like for example the turkish rooted community in Germany (Berlin?), or the maghrebine one in France (Marseille?), migrants from the very new EU-Countries in Slovenia... etc.
Also, as a remark: with all the interesting research we have to do, and already did, we should keep in mind that our basic subject is/was: Intercultural Dialogue. So, even resarching on humor or/and contemporary art, it still should be connected to cultural diversity, dialogue, migration, living better together, sustainability... ;-P
Nevenka & Suzanne
Larnaca, October 14th
