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If laughter was the earthquake alleviating the tension of the joke, then Pope.L's don't really relief its valve. A refusal that turns humor into a weapon where misunderstanding the joke might have risks. "Swiss Are People Lonly." "White Peo abstr ation." Pointed fingers. What are the stakes of misunderstanding? The generalized artworld fear of misinterpretation someone's artwork becomes conflated with the generalized fear of Blackness, of one's foot in one's mouth, of white spaces suddenly filled with an innuendo that doesn't confine itself to safe quotational space of art, the usual polite holding patterns of white walls, and art mumbo treating its signifiers as some archaeologic thing, subject to whatever formalist schooled things that can be thrown at it - the whole Richard Prince affect - but Pope.L's are living breathing wet things, crawling towards a floor near you.
