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Stand Up Fall Down: The Politics of Irony and the Irony of Politics — Available Now!
From satirical plays of antiquity to Duchamp’s potty prank on The Society of Independent Artists, artists have always realized the potential of comedy. Whether through parody or camp or political cartoons, activist street theater or postmodern “trojan horses,” culture jamming or meme curating, artists look to the stealth cloak of humor to sneak a little poetry or transgression into the everyday. But when power realizes the effectiveness of absurdity and shock to divide and capture attention, and when we only seem able to respond to the horror of it all with the distance and plausible deniability of irony, how can we maintain humor’s critical edge? In a society sick with context collapse, where any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken for a sincere expression of those views, how do we take back the memes of reproduction without letting irony calcify into ideology?
For Montez Press Radio’s second series, Stand Up Fall Down, we’ve invited artists, activists, students, and thinkers to make radio about humor and irony in times of personal and political failure. These conversations, radio plays, audio works, and performances loosely ask how artists and activists can employ the aesthetics of humor to political and poetic ends.
We’ve also invited The Bad Side to curate a special series within Stand Up Fall Down exploring the history of the political Left as characterized by conflict, contradiction, and defeat—interpreting “irony” as a hallmark of both tragedy and farce. The Bad Side’s carefully considered program includes its own editorial introduction which can be heard and read by clicking on the track titled “Introducing the Bad Side.”
All segments will be up for free until the next series is released in October. Thanks to ICA London and La Americana, a bookstore in Mexico City, for hosting some of the live performances in this series, and to Gobby for the stingers. And a huge thanks to Julien Ceccaldi for making the drawings on this series’ graphics. (More on those below.)
Featuring:
🙂 Artist Joel Dean with “Still, Falling,” a radio drama that traces the spectral logic of collapse through the city’s architecture and twin towers.
🙂 Writers Ben Davis & Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, on the essay “Culture Has No Name for This Cursed Vibe. It’s Everywhere” and brainrot horror as symptoms of a society in the middle of a collective psychotic [removed];
🙂 Poet Courtney Bush with a call-in show in which she solves problems [removed];
🙂 Artist Andrew Norman Wilson with all of the Rolling Stones covers you never knew you wanted and maybe don’t.
🙂 Painter and musician Luke Calzonetti airs Blue Voice, his record of “tone-poems” that sample his side hustle as a voice actor for popular [removed];
🙂 Chicago-based nonprofit organization ESS Creative Audio Archive brings us sounds from the collection of activist and recording engineer Malachi Ritscher, who died by self-immolation in an act of protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
🙂 Liz Magic Laser and her Columbia University performance art students stage a darkly satirical radio play, framing the classroom as a congressional hearing on her teaching methods and current events–until the class itself turns into an ideological [removed];
🙂 Musician and jester Jazz Lambaux presents a radio play about a Parisian and an American who lose their shoe soles and souls in the city.
🙂 Performance artist Isa Spector featuring Sophie Becker and Bobbi Salvör Menuez with a live reading + sound design from Ben Shirken.
🙂 Artists Diane Severin Nguyen and Laszlo Horvath with a conversation about the role of music in uncertain times and a live performance of war songs.
🙂 Live performance from duo Callahan & Witscher in which they try to figure out what makes good [removed];
The Bad Side presents:
🙂 An audio editorial essay from The Bad Side on irony as history, history as irony, and disappointment on the political Left.
🙂 Houston-based collective Otabenga Jones & Associates present audio from the Watts Rebellion, originally played from the radio of a flipped-over police car as [removed];
🙂 Prison abolitionist and prison scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore speaks to six students who have faced suspension, official censure, rescinded admissions, and physical violence for their involvement in the Palestine solidarity [removed];
🙂 A musical response from Bobby Beethoven (FKA Total Freedom).
🙂 A slow burning “Voyage to Atlantis” from 7038634357.
🙂 An interview with Alberto Toscano, author of Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis.
🙂 Writers Against the War on Gaza present readings from the New York War Crimes.
🙂 The Bad Side reads Bertolt Brecht’s essay “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties”.
Live from The Institute for Contemporary Art in London:
🙂 Darren Cullen aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives (Museum of Neoliberalism) in conversation.
🙂 Louise Ashcroft reads from a script about the intersection of Nana Violet’s hobbies and climate protest tactics (jigsaws, tinned soup, and walking slowly).
🙂 A presentation from artist Adam Gallagher/LULU THE TOOL.
🙂 Artist Hannah Sawtell invites Zein Majali and Anne Duffau to engage with a single digital image—through sound alone.
🙂 Ruth Angel Edwards and Chloée Maugile present excerpts from The Wall, a surreal take on the problems of housing inequality and its psychological effects from medieval times to today.
Live from La Americana in Mexico City:
🙂 Filmmaker and musician Santiago Cendejas takes us on a hallucinatory journey through religious fervor.
🙂 BABA (Octavio Gómez Rivero and Bayo Alvaro) on fascination, fiasco, and idiocy.
🙂 Centro de Estudios Anti-Anticomunistas present a sonic montage that blends interviews, satire, live performance, and archival footage to consider how solidarity with Palestine is experienced, censored, and sustained from Mexico and its diaspora, featuring Irmgard Emmelhainz, Viviana Macmanus, and Ema Pardos.
🙂 Come Hueso presents Julia Barrios, Caralavada, and La Sirenne for a night of queer cabaret!
→ Listen to Stand Up Fall Down for free here
→ View the schedule for upcoming live events here |