For An Epidemic Resistance

For An Epidemic Resistance, 2009
Twenty-five channel sound installation
approximately 500 x 600 x 300cm

An unexplained laughter epidemic disease-phenomenon occurred in central Africa in 1962 is used here as a conceptual framework in which to situate the installation For An Epidemic Resistance. The social malady commenced on 30th January, 1962 at a mission-run girls’ middle school in the village of Kashasha. An explosion of laughter took place over the course of six months and contaminated several hundred people in the infected community and neighboring villages. I encountered this incident while listening to the WNYC, the New York Public Radio, Radiolab program the episode on laughter. Ellen Horne, senior producer of Radiolab, investigated on-site and her search for an explanation brings us to the idea that laughter is a social mechanism that responds to more than comedy, and it communicates more than mere merriment. According to cultural theorist Marjolein’t Hart, it functions as a true “weapon of the weak.”