ISSP 2019 Publication - Photography and the World

Well, what is a joke? How does a joke work? It
connects based on something that feels bad or is
going wrong inside of you or the world. To share
a joke with someone, you have to share the same
cultural terrain, otherwise, you don’t laugh. The
joke connects with something painful, and then you
laugh—and you’re not laughing about poor people,
you’re laughing because you recognize something in
the joke that is real.
So, you must give the audience the space to think,
you don’t have to give them the answer. You can let
them figure out the punchline themselves.
What is the ultimate goal
of action like this? To raise
awareness? To provoke
action?
It’s to try to inhabit a better space. We are building
a new space with these kinds of narratives. It’s
important because capitalism doesn’t give us any
space. Through our work, we open a new space
where we can live: space where we can talk about
what has happened to us, for self-representation,
to talk about our way to see the world and how to
make a better world. We do this through images
and actions, and of course, it’s to seduce the people
and to show them that it’s possible to use art for
social change.
How did you personally come
to this approach of combining
art and activism to make
serious fun?
Art and activism are part of my life. If you take life
very seriously, you’ll be depressed or end up full of
regret. You must have a radical imagination. You
have to imagine a different way to live and write
your own script for your life.
In some ways, neoliberalism gives us the chapters
of your life readymade: you must grow, you must
study, you must get married, make a family, and of
course you must work and work and work in order
to pay your bills. We don’t accept that narrative. We
want to create a new narrative, and the only way to
make possible another narrative is to do it together,
with more people, in a collective way. And because
we work in this way and try to open this narrative,
people come to us, and we continue to grow, and
that’s the way we change things. First, we start with
ourselves, and then other people see what we’re
doing and join us.
Should the photographer
How can I make this
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intervene in the situation?
a collaboration?