*laughter*

Georges Bataille once wrote of laughter as beyond the extreme limit of knowledge; the headiness and uncertainty of laughter in the moment it erupts:

"There is something intoxicating in tears, as in laughter. One would, I think, have no difficulty in showing that tears can be considered as related to laughter, to the invasion of the unknown, to the elimination of a part of this world which we consider as the world known in all the parts generally seen as a whole."

To laugh is to make spontaneous sounds and movements of the face and body. We think we know laughter, ubiquitous as it is, and usually associate it with humor or mockery. But, as Bataille speaks of it: "that which at first seems so accessible has constantly eluded investigation." presents, with the works of five artists, laughing as an ambiguous and involuntary mode of communication: a contagious, paradoxical, destabilizing, and corporal language. It is considered here apart from the joke and instead as an action or object itself; a passionate response with the ability to unsettle (ourselves, others, social order).

An Unsolicited Proposal Program winning exhibition.