FLUXLIST: Willing to play!

[Jennifer Sheldon]

Dear AK,

True enough. I guess I got a little grumpy in response to a push from several fronts that seemed to dis anyone on this list who wants to do more than talk about their own art. That and the suggestions that art history was specificlly bad, regressive, counter-revoluntionary, etc., irked me. If ArtnAnts meant it as a joke, I might have read the message wrong given the context. Anyhow, you're right.

I guess there are as many art historians with a sense of humor as there are people in other fields. The problem is that humor is often localized within a culture or subculture, and that makes it invisible to people from other cultures. To me, this seems to explain why some very funny Fluxus activities simply seem weird seen from the outside. And it probbably explains why some serious Fluxus activities, including meditative performances, seem like jokes to people who own cultures have no place for those kinds of activities.

A friend who studies psychology was talking about life in her department a few weeks back. They have a group of behaviorists there who are devoted to what they call "dry humor." My friend has one professor who deliberately misplaces one comma in every paper he has ever published. People at that department thinks this is hilarious.

Academic life is different than the rest of life. But that's the way for any group with a strong culture built over many years. My boyfriend's medical school colleagues have their culture, and my dad's lawyer colleagues have theirs, and all the guys who work in my uncle's carpentry shop have their own. Having had plenty of summer jobs in some places quite remote from art history -- including one summer working on a construction site -- I notice everyone has a way of laughing at life, and I observe that many people believe that people who live and work in other cultures do not have a sense of humor.

For me, most jokes are OK if they seem to be made with good will. My reaction to the material ArtAnts put forward had as much to do with context as with content. My apologies.

Jenny



Ah Jenny, art history would be a more popular discipline if its
practitioners acquired both more humor and greater willingness to play! The
diploma mill ad was at least as much a joke on the sender as on the
recipient.I don't think you need take it as any sort of insult. As a slavey
in the fields of academe currently, long long after one could be expected to
have any ability to sing "I did it thei-r-r-r-r way" with any kind of gusto,
I need all the self-mockery I can muster just to smile politely at the
department chair every day. If I could get the dang paper from a diploma
mill I would.

AK

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