Two cows are standing in a field. One says, “Aren’t you afraid of mad cow disease?” The other says, “Why should I be? I’m a squirrel.”
That pun is essentially what U.K.-based artist Sophie Lindsey is looking for during her five-week “Art Space is Your Space” residency at Wave Pool. She’s setting up a mobile joke booth for the project, titled Funniest Joke in Cincinnati, to be stationed mainly in the Camp Washington art gallery with the goal of collecting jokes from around the Queen City. It kicks off with a soft opening Saturday (Jan. 26) from 6-9 p.m.
Pop-up comedy events and workshops are slated throughout next month, culminating in a “chicken crossing the road” parade and closing reception Feb. 23.
“I believe jokes can be very localized,” says Lindsey in an e-mail interview. “While there are often given structures — people walking into bars or chickens crossing roads — the variations demonstrate the different priorities, concerns and contradictions that exist within a place. I’m hoping this project will allow people to reflect on the identity of the city, and maybe discover perspectives they weren’t aware of.”
On the hosting side, Wave Pool is the natural choice to present Funniest Joke in Cincinnati. The organization was founded in 2015 with the stated goal of connecting artists with each other and the communities in which they live and work through experimental, thought-provoking projects.
The gallery’s Art Space is Your Space residency launched in 2015. When Lindsey applied last year, the joke booth concept struck a chord with the gallery and its jurists.
“We loved the idea of having something that was easily accessible and understood, but also kind of cutting edge and contemporary for an art gallery,” says Cal Cullen, Wave Pool’s executive director and co-founder. “It was unusual, so that’s why we selected it. Art galleries take themselves way too seriously.”
Though Wave Pool will serve as Funniest Joke in Cincinnati’s hub, Lindsey will move the booth to various locations. Context, she says, is key. To glean a greater understanding of Cincinnati’s identity through humor, she says it’s important to explore different neighborhoods in order to build an image of the community. And while the concept itself has been established, the execution is remaining fluid.
“I’m focused on gathering jokes from people and passersby, so I’ll position the joke booth in different situations,” Lindsey says. “This could be on the street, in supermarkets or any other public spaces where people are present. I am also considering how to input jokes collected back into the city, however this will develop throughout the project.”
Lindsey is well-suited to the project’s task: She holds a B.A. in critical practice from the University of Brighton and she’s currently pursuing her master’s in performing public space from Fontys University in the Netherlands. Lindsey’s experiences include photography, performance and video art and, like the joke booth, site-specific installations. Her body of work in her brief but impressive career is evidence of an insatiable curiosity to find answers to societal questions through art.
Still, Funniest Joke in Cincinnati is a large leap for her. She calls it the most ambitious project she’s ever taken on as an individual.
“I’ve been involved in lots of social projects led by other artists, through the Scottish arts organization Deveron Projects,” she says. “While I’ve begun to explore this approach within my practice, it has been on a much smaller scale.”
Lindsey remains open to the process of how the jokes themselves will be collected.
“The joke booth will mainly collect them through people writing them down,” she says. “These will be presented each day in the gallery to create an evolving map of the city. I also have posters going up around the city that have a number for people to text or leave a voicemail of their jokes.”
Want to contribute your own joke? Text or call 415-490-8495. Or, you can search for Lindsey’s booth in person. If people sharing their jokes want it to be recorded (versus written), she’s open to that, too — later on, videos of the project could be a possibility.
The map mentioned will be on display at Wave Pool’s gallery space, which will be open to the public during scheduled drop-in events.
“I’m also interested in how people interpret what a joke is,” Lindsey says. “Could memes be considered jokes? How has social media changed the way we see and experience jokes?”
As internet culture becomes dominant, the traditional formats of how humor is shared has shifted, she points out. Instead of flipping through a joke book, for example, we might scroll through a Twitter feed. She wants to explore this evolution throughout her residency.
Cullen notes that a small publication of the jokes collected during Funniest Joke in Cincinnati will be released after the project’s conclusion.
“It would be great if the project is able to make humor more visible in the everyday and can reveal something new about (the city’s) identity,” Lindsey says.
Cullen echoes that, saying she hopes for a citywide connection and understanding to be established.
“I would love for people to find humor in each other and be open and find connections through this joke booth that they otherwise wouldn’t have had,” she says. “Especially in this super divisive political climate, humor is often a way to cut through the biases and alienation.”
Funniest Joke in Cincinnati will be stationed at Wave Pool Gallery (2940 Colerain Ave., Camp Washington) through Feb. 23. More info: wavepoolgallery.org.
