Laughing is a lot easier when the sun is shining. A little summer show Sorry for Laughing with artists Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen and Raphael Abrams, which I co-curated with Onika Simon, is opening on Wednesday August 6, at 7pm at KN, Berlin. I myself had the pleasure to participate in Ditte's piece Laughter, it was very funny, and here you can read my account:
"Laughter - Rooftop of Tobu Building in Tokyo", photo: Kenji Oomori, 1956, in Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Laughter, video, 2010-2014. |
Like a ritual enacted again and again, the photo Laughter made its appearance on several occasions, each with at least five persons present. It didn’t happen, however, at random events. The settings had to be cordial, with friends or family of the artist Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen. Being Ditte’s roommate, I participated in the “happening” during a dinner at our Berlin home in 2011. The original photo served as guidance: Laughter is a depiction of four women and one man laughing on a rooftop in Tokyo, 1956. Mystery always enhances ritual. The exact circumstances in which the picture was taken are unclear. Ditte’s friend, Yoshiko Okuzawa, Ditte's friend who is depicted in the photograph, doesn’t remember. And the photographer Kenji Oomori refuses to dig up the past. So we will never know what was so funny that day on the roof in 1956. Was it a laughing with or at? And was it real fun, laughing out loud? Or was it staged?
Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Laughter. ZK/U Fellow Residents, Berlin, 2014, video 2010-2014 |
Me on the left in Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Laughter. Christmas Party, Kottbusser Damm, Berlin, 2011, video 2010-2014 |
Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Laughter. Christmas Party, Kottbusser Damm, Berlin, 2010, video 2010-2014 |
Laughter therapy encourages people to laugh at things that hurt. The photo Laughter seems to induce this kind of rebellion: "The greatest enemy of authority,” Hannah Arendt said, “[…] is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.” Laughing out loud is considered inappropriate - not only in traditional, but occasionally also in modern Japanese society - and is especially disgraceful for women. This custom of discreetly covering the mouth with the hand is often interpreted by Westerners as shyness or as an oppression that asks for liberation. In 2013 the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity awarded the Japanese fast food chain Freshness Burger for their “liberation wrapper”. The wrapper, with a closed mouth (“ochobo”) depicted on it, allows Japanese women to chew down a gigantic burger and still look lady-like. Behind the paper wrapper she can now open her mouth wide for a big bite. That the commercial was so appealing to Western critics and media might be because of their belief that for women, liberation begins with the body.
The laughing fit captured by Ditte in 2011 had no particular reason – and maybe the same counts for the 1956 one. Smiles in art history are enigmatic - the ironic self portrait by Rembrandt or the legendary Mona Lisa being the most famous examples. There is something in these smiles that can never be fully grasped - a mystical truth that stays out of reach. Yet laughter is rarely attributed this power in art history. It is reduced to jokes or to a coping with distress - a laughing in the face of death. Also in daily life it is hard not to feel excluded in the presence of people having a laughing fit: from the outside the unreasonable laughter makes no sense. However, if one has that laughing experience, which becomes so rare in adulthood, then there is a kind of bliss that envelops you until the ecstasy fizzles out. Is it this bliss that shimmers in Laughter, Top of Tobu building roof in Tokyo, 1956?