The flip side of the sublime is the grotesque, and while the form is praised in artwork, materialism is considered vile. These twined oppositions are often the raw goods in which Scatology trades. Said in the vulgar, ?toilet humor? has been used as a literary trope to spin the pious on its head, and have it land, face first, on the altar of the absurd. During the eighth and last Causerie, writer and artist Alexandre Singh will explore these twists, and means, from the materiality of excremental studies, to the conception of the grotesque body.
Alexandre Singh will push out these ideas through theories of cultural sociology with David Inglis (Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter) and the works of Sigmund Freud with Iki Freud (Psychoanalyst).
About the Causeries
As part of the realization of Alexandre Singh?s ambitious play The Humans,
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art presents the Causeries. Taking its title from the French verb causer ? to converse or chat ? the Causeries are set up as a series of discussions in which Singh expands on The Humans? key themes, ranging from cosmology and cosmogony to pictorial satire, dance, drama and religion. Rather than discursive events in the well-known format of a conference or a symposium, the Causeries are conceived as informal conversations between the artist and an expert in a given field. It is not only the edification of the artist himself that is pivotal in this alternative kind of exchange, also the audience is offered an insight in the underlying themes of The Humans.