JACK THE PELICAN PRESENTS

November 5, 9 and 12, 9 PM-12 AM

487 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
T: (646) 644-6756
www.jackthepelicanpresents.com

Michelle Handelman, The Laughing Lounge

For PERFORMA05, Jack the Pelican Presents will show Michelle Handelman??™s The Laughing Lounge, a performance questioning contemporary culture??™s absurd aspirations towards eternal happiness by inviting viewers to sit and laugh together until they cannot laugh anymore. These hysterics are captured on camera and projected onto the mirrored dresses of three uncontrollably wailing performers situated in a rear ???Party Room.??? The ???Party Room??™ is inspired by Wolf Gremm??™s 1982 camp, cult film Kamikaze 1989, that featured a city where surveillance monitors broadcast hysterical laughter 24/7.

The Laughing Lounge, is inspired by actual Laughing Clubs in India, started in 1995 in Bombay, by Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician, where people gathered to laugh in unison as an active meditation for physical and spiritual healing.

The absurdity of competitive laughter is Handelman??™s metaphor for contemporary culture??™s absurd aspirations towards eternal happiness. What happens when an entire room full of people laughs…and laughs??¦and laughs??¦and laughs?

ABOUT
Young Brooklyn gallery Jack the Pelican Presents specializes in emerging artists whose work has a conceptual or performance-based edge.