Episode 124: Samantha Cheng

"Sometimes even a cup of tea can fail" In a hyper-connected world, Samantha Cheng's durational performances examine failure as a generative space. In the final episode of Comic Release Joe Jowitt talks to Samantha about time, labour and the body. 00:00: Introduction to Samantha's practice by Joe Jowitt 1.50: Joe - "There seems to be a real tension between comedy and exhaustion in your practice. Could you start by describing what draws you to humour as a material or method?" Samantha describes her masters research on failure. 3.30: Humour as a personal practice. Samantha asks Joe "What do you find funny? Where does your humour come from?" 5.00: On making the video Happy Ever After (2021). The classic film trope of a happy ending. The repetitive gesture in Happy Ever After. 7.10: Joe compares the work to classic cinema devices "the fall, the loop, the failed gag". He compares the work to Bas Jan Ader and the slapstick tradition of Buster Keaton 8:13: The 'failure of narrative' in the work. Samantha describes watching it with an audience. Joe on the Sisyphean metaphor of human striving but never getting there. 9:20: Failure as a response to the problem of a highly optimised society. On failure, paranoia and contemporary digital surveillance and data harvesting. 12:00: Humour and abstract art. Inefficiency in Samantha's practice. Samantha -  "It's not the really big failures that I'm interested in... smaller ones have more of a disruptive agency". 13:00: On the work Take a 10 (2022), work and labour. Time as money. "...making that work allowed me to kind of view what 10 minutes actually really felt like. 'Cause in a break, 10 minutes goes by so quickly doing that video felt like doing it for hours". 15:30: How does the absurd fit in your practice? Being "in on the joke". 16:30 Western academic descriptions of humour versus origins of Samantha's own humour. Family. 17:10: How important is it to perform the work yourself? 18:10: Social media as influence 19:30: On work Steep dreams (2024). 21:00: Humour found in everyday life. How do you write about the big subjects? "You can start by writing about the small ones and then maybe we'll get there". 22:00: On Passengers (2023) public event, produced for Chez Derriere. 23:30: Mass/Mess project at Window Gallery. 24:24: On spontaneity and not over-working humour. Working in a space where humour is not welcome. 26:00: What does it offer the viewer to ask questions about boundaries? 26:43: Anti-ICE protests in USA using costumes. "Autocrats hate humour". 27:30: Is humour a way to stay present in the world? Weaponisation of humour. Individual sense of what's funny versus other people's interpretation. 28:58: END

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