1. The artist explores satire and humor by occupying the "fault line" or gap between opposing ideas, themes, and social contexts to create tension and awkwardness. 2. One way this is done is by telling fictional or exaggerated stories with a straight face to hook the audience. 3. Traditionally on the Italian island of Linosa, the matriarchs of dominant families would flagellate each other with fish until a victor was decided, originating the phrase "to eat humble pie."

1. Performing Polarities:
exploiting the satirical gap
Gemma Marmalade

2. I am an artist as
entertainer,
performer, jester,
conjurer, story
teller, historical
hoaxer,
information
swindler and
conceptual
charlatan.

3. I am also a
fat,
opinionate
d female
lesbian
from
Essex.

4. Awkward:
Cumbersome, unrefined and requiring of
caution.

5. KISS
THE
BLARNEY
STONE

6. The Court Jester
Anecdotes
Story telling
Magic & Mystery
Performance
Spectacle
Provocative
• Self deprecating – laughing at oneself/laughing at others
• Responsibility of social commentary
• Context gives immunity from usual social consequences of
being provocative
• Humorous, fictitious, over exaggerated storytelling with a
poker face– the hook….

7. Traditionally, local women from the island of Linosa, Italy, have carried out a
symbolic annual ritual. In order to establish a hierarchy amongst dominant family
clans, the two presiding matriarchs meet on the feast of Saint Marina (patron of the
sea, fertility and suffering), to flagellate each other with fish until a victor is
decided. ‘Fish Wives’-- parlance for shrewish and abusive women-- takes its name
from the phrase attributed to this tradition. The winner collects the discarded,
damaged weapons and returns home to prepare a special dish with them. Later, it
is presented to the adversary who must sit and eat it as an act of contrition. This
ritual has been coined as ‘andare a Cannosa’ where the expression ‘to eat humble
pie’ originates.
Fish Wives

12. A fault line, an intersection between two or more divergent
elements
(Good) comedy is situated in this fault line
Contrasts, anxieties, contradictions, tensions, paradoxes,
awkwardness
Traditionally, satire was designed to critique two opposing themes
Unresolved, awkward elements create effective humour

13. The time is out of joint.
- Hamlet

14. In 1957, when conducting extra sensory perception trials with
animals, parapsychologists discovered that pigeons were able
to determine the sexuality of humans through visual
observation.
Strange Birds

17. But your backbone has been shattered
O My wondrous, wretched century.
with a senseless smile
like a beast that was once limber
you look back, weak and cruel,
to contemplate your own tracks.
The Century/The Age, Osip Mandelstam, 1922

18. “As each plant cell has self producing phytohormones and clear evidence of the
pheromonic properties of natural attraction, including inter-species vertebrate to
plant transference, it is not so far a step to consider that human chemical
excretions might be propitious to the stimulation of plant growth…
..the female homosexual endocrine response shows evidence that a unique
combination of progesterone derivative 4,16-androstadien-3-one and estra-
1,3,5(10), 16-tetraen-3-ol, unseen in any other mammal sexual manifestation, could
cultivate ideal conditions for pheromonal transmission, arousing both the plant
genotype and its environmental biotics to a superlative extent.”
Dr Gerda Haeckel, 1976
Green Fingered

21. Humour opposes historical/scientific/documentary/truth-
associated narrative content - The context of art and culture
assumes seriousness - Adds to the tension and anxiety
Awkwardness is the gap between two opposing experiential
polarities
‘Radical awkwardness’, a panic arising from the collision of
different social contexts for which no obvious norm of
reconciliation exists. Adam Kotsco
Humour
Truth
Seriousness
Lies
AWKWARDNESS

22. The gap, the fault line, the break in the
spine…
The occupation and investigation of the space in between these
nodal points exploit the anxieties and awkwardness of our age.
Something magical, reflective and indicative of ourselves occurs
when this territory is explored.