Funny and feminist : performing the comic anti-hero

This research project aims to explore humour as a strategy for feminist performance practice and to examine women's relationship to household labour. The research utilises repetitious gesture and the performance style of slapstick in order to echo Freud's notion of humour's ability to "elevate and liberate" one from one's situation. A series of performances for video are exhibited in a disparate range of sites in the Melbourne CBD as a public art project depicting a female subject liberated from the labour of the everyday. The research project contributes to the ongoing interest by feminist artists in utilising humour as a strategy in critiquing patriarchy and effecting social change.