Chrisoula Lionis - Comedy in Crises: Weaponising Humour in Contemporary Art

Comedy is part of the cultural landscape as never before, as older manifestations such as performance (stand-up, plays, etc.), film and TV have been joined by an online industry, pioneered by YouTube and social media. This innovative new book series will help define the emerging comedy studies field, offering fresh perspectives on the comedy studies phenomenon, and opening up new avenues for discussion. The focus is pop cultural, and will emphasize vaudeville, stand-up, variety, comedy film, TV sit-coms, and digital comedy. It will welcome studies of politics, history, aesthetics, production, distribution, and reception, as well as work that explores international perspectives and the digital realm. Above all it will be pioneering there is no competition in the publishing world at this point in time.

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The title of this manuscript was originally Laughing in an Emergency, sharing its name with an EU Horizon2020 research project that began at the University of Manchester in 2018. A key part of this research project was a conference due to take place in Manchester in April 2020, and the chapters in this volume began as papers due to be presented at this event. The pandemic however had other plans, and the outbreak of COVID19 meant that the conference was postponed and eventually cancelled. With that, the name of this research project suddenly took on a different valence. Rather than a few days of artists talks and conference presentations, the contributors to this volume wound up working together at the strangest of times, sharing humour during a period of global emergency the scale of which none of us had before witnessed. The humour of this is not lost on me.

This book was therefore made possible through the hard work and patience of many people working together through a period of great uncertainty.

My thanks first and foremost go to the contributors to this volume for their trust and enthusiasm. Working with each of you has been a tremendous privilege. To Jenna Altomonte, Erica Cappecchi, Denise Carvalho, Uros Cvoro, Alkisti Efthymiou, Eugenia Flynn, Chloe Julius, Nicola McCartney, Anastasia Murney and Emma Sullivan, it has been a pleasure to laugh with you. Thank you for taking me with you on a deep dive into artistic strategies from around the world.

Sincere thanks to the artists in this book Richard Bell, Io Chiavara, Paul Jones, Larissa Sansour, Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Sary Zananiri. You are the funny bones of Comedy in Crisis. Thank you for your generosity in sharing insights and images, it has been a joy to hear how humour cuts across your works, personal histories, and practices.

My hope is that our work in this volume contributes to the growing field of humour studies. To Palgrave Studies in Comedy Series Editors Sharon Lockyer and Roger Sabin, thank you for supporting this project. As leading humour scholars, your endorsement and trust are invaluable to me. My thanks also to the anonymous peer-reviewers whose feedback exemplified collegiality critical friends that were as astute as they were helpful. My thanks too to Publishing Editor Lina Aboujieb, and to the production team at Palgrave for patiently supporting me in putting together this volume.

The Horizon2020 project that instigated this volume offered me the opportunity to move from Sydney to Manchester through a Marie Curie Fellowship. My thanks to Ana Carden-Coyne for her mentorship and support finding my feet at UoM. My thanks also to the dear friends I met in Manchester Kathleen Easlick, Izabella and Piotr Goldstein, Katarzyna Nowak and Davide Porzio your openness and love are gifts I carry with me always.

Thank you to Stefanos Tsivopoulos for the cover image of this book, a still from the wonderful work Lost Monument. This work, and in-turn this research project, instigated friendship, collaboration, and partnership for which I am forever grateful.

Finally, to my family Alexandra, Penny and Peter thank you for your love and trust. These are the foundation stones that allow me to always find my way.