When jokes are cracked, the seriousness of the situation temporarily takes a back seat. Either that or things get really serious. A hearty laugh confounds the normative and can, at least for a time, relax or heighten tension and mix up the familiar.

In a series of essays, conversations, poems, pictures and commentaries, the Jokebook addresses topographic markings in areas of this amusing resistance. It is about self-deprecating complicities, about becoming unreadable, about the absurd and the dysfunctional, about responsibility, but also about the entertaining and its seductive power.

Ed.: nGbK

Work group: Anna Bromley, Michael Fesca, Suza Husse, Teena Lange, Jana Sotzko

With contributions by: Jonas Engelmann, Elisabeth Fritz, Eve Massacre, Gin Müller, Monika Rinck, Oxana Timofeeva u.a.