Say you host a late-night talk show

Say you host a late-night talk show (2020)

‘Say you host a late-night talk show’ stretches out a punch line until there isn’t one (or perhaps there never was one to begin with).

I read a profile about the British late-night talk show host James Corden in a February 2020 issue of The New Yorker magazine. In it, Corden is described as a kind of ‘Mr Happiness, spreader of joy’. And yet, the writer of the story, Michael Schulman, profiles him with a restrained kind of cynicism and indifference that hints at dislike. Michael Schulman certainly never says it outright, but you get the feeling Mr Happiness is bit of an arsehole. ‘Say you host a late-night talk show’ questions whether morality is principally a matter of belief or action, or whether it’s a consistent yet hazy balancing act of both, and touches on ecologies of attention within media culture, gossip, the cult of celebrities, and in reading between the lines.

The video continues my ongoing research into choreographic essayism, subtitles as a literary genre, and the displacement of text and image in order to create new relationships and new associations.

Video, 14 mins. You can visit the work HERE.

This work was commissioned by Bit Teatergarasjen for Working Encounters, a Create to Connect > Create to Impact project supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union and the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.