I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On.
I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On (2016) is a video artwork that examines the conventions of televised stand-up comedy routines. The work includes two recordings, each of a comedian performing alone in an empty performance space for 40 minutes.
The work was commissioned by the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston. Part one, Dave was exhibited at the Harris in Nothing Happens Twice: Artists Explore the Absurdity of Life (2016). Part two, Karen, was then exhibited in Double Act: Art and Comedy at The Bluecoat, Liverpool (2016). Brown undertook the work as part of the artist’s group Common Culture artist, and in equal collaboration with its other two members, David Campbell and Mark Durden.
- Submitting institution
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Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 2478
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, UK; The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- -
- Year of production
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- I Can’t Go On … examines the television technology involved in creating a comedy performer’s public presence, and in using that presence as a focal point to capture and co-ordinate an audience’s attention. The two recordings use disruptive conditions and video-editing techniques to identify the familiar structures and audience-participation mechanics involved in televised stand-up comedy performances. The works then explore how these components contribute to the televised comedy performance being a technological ritual that aims to define and then address a collective social identity. In part one, I Can’t Go On… (Dave), two separate screens show different shots of the performer. All other editing is removed. The viewer ‘edits’ the video by moving their gaze between the screens. When they do this, they are made to address the uncommonness of editing media and consuming media as a combined activity. By contrast, I Can’t Go On… (Karen), involves an editing process that is mechanistic and indifferent to the actions of the performing subject, addressing the alienation of the subject in the context of commodified television culture. Eventually, the unfamiliar context overwhelms the performer, who stops the routine and transitions from a controlled commodity to an uncontrolled individual. The work underlines the limits that broadcast conventions can put on the performer’s potential to be subversive or individual. It shows that a broadcast’s processes of television editing, acts of collecting people into an audience, and commodification of the performer have no necessary link back to the performer’s presence or subjectivity.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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