In this duo, I wanted to embark on this “exploration in alchemy” by starting more precisely from the figures of the idiot and the clown, examining their vulnerability, inadequacy, absurdity, and ridicule. Not in order to represent them, rather to locate them within ourselves, and use them almost as a subversive weapon. A weapon whose explosions can be a means to openly explore laughter and comedy.

Personally, I find nothing more enjoyable or powerful than to feel an audience laughing, making noises, shaking, contracting, “dilating”... A physical, or even orgiastic sensation. Pure, extravagant, excessive energy.

Though in some of my work I was able to experience this Dionysian sensation of making people laugh, it was not something I ever sought to achieve: laughter was a consequence, rather than an objective. In this duo, I wanted to target this fantasy of the “comic” more directly.

Italian philosopher Angelo Fortunato Formiggini posits that laughter is what makes men unite in fraternity, and that humor is the highest manifestation of philosophical thought. In any case, it cannot be denied that laughter is contagious, and that it calls on fundamental phenomena of empathy. This is the sense of laughter I am interested in exploring, rather than mocking, exclusionary laughter.

— Ayelen Parolin