Coming across Sanja Mitrovic’s description of her new show A SHORT HISTORY OF CRYING as a “stand-up tragedy”, I remembered this thing, a bit of text written for BESTIARIO URBANO but not eventually used:
“…What was needed was something like an anti-joke, some phrase or story or situation or whatever that would make people cry. It would have to be something anybody could tell, something where anybody could call together their friends or family or whoever and say “hey, I heard a good one today…”, and then tell it, with everybody in earshot by the punch line crying together, uncontrollably, tearing hair and pounding furniture etc etc. Something sure to work, something that would remind us for certain that we were not so so far away from whoever was left outside in the street. We tried one about a sinking ship, and one with talking animals. We tried one that required a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, that wasn’t quite logical with the laws of time and space. We tried one about and Englishman, a Basque and a Madrilleño. We tried every combination of people and places that we could find in what books and photos we still had left from the outside world. But in the end we had to admit that we didn’t ever know whether to laugh or cry, that we couldn’t really tell the different in any case. That we could no longer really tell one sound from the other.”
We did an interview with DIAGONAL a couple of months ago where we ended up talking about the possibility that THE SIRENS might be “a bit like stand-up comedy, except instead of trying to make people laugh we’re trying to make them cry”. It’s an idea more poetic than literal, but I like the way in which it suggests a function for the work. Creates a new space for it, presents it as a choice.
“What are you going to do tonight?”
“We’re going to go see something sad…”
