COMEDY/ART

From an interview with Bishop;

jbw: Twice you mention BDSM as an alternative paradigm for thinking through this issue. Can you say more about how you see BDSM as a framework for differently processing both pain and pleasure, and how that might extend to participatory art?
 
cb: Ha! Well spotted. For me, BDSM and comedy provide two other frameworks for thinking about what bodies can say/do in space. There is a lot of moralistic discussion around contemporary art, but comedy also manages to say, very sharp, poignant, transgressive, politically acute things in a way that is highly pleasurable. And in a different way, the 'scenes' that people get into in BDSM are also (for them) highly pleasurable, even though they have no relationship to their actual desire to be dominated (for example) in daily life. Both are areas of experience that suspend the everyday, but also participate in it—they have the double ontology that I see as crucial to participatory art.