Non-Event

What’s on? Not’s-On!

Celebrate April Fool’s day with the best not-happening event in town!

Non Event is a comical performance art event taking place in the New Adelphi Building, full of the absurd and the unexpected. Experience the strangest café ever with Kurt Zarniko, have a gallery visit you’ll never forget, and enjoy live music which is, very literally, “beyond words”.

Non Event is open to all at the University and will be encouraging audience participation with its improvised clowning.

You’ll never-not-won’t want to miss this!

Non Event is a Fluxus inspired event exploring Comedy and Performance Art.

We intend to curate a Fluxus inspired comical performance art event. This is a face-to-face event. It will be infra-disciplinary and therefore suitable for staff and students across the whole university as well as external guests. It takes place on April Fool’s Day 2022.

The style of this event and its promotion hinges on the prefix Non. A non-sense none-thing! The Fluxus movement interrogated the status, nature and performativity of the art event. If comedy is something and nothing – all illusion, tension and hoax then the promise of this (non) event will be elusive or miss-able.

Video artist Martin Creed suggests, ‘comedians seem to look for the absurd and ridiculous, for things that are silly, in the same way that artists do’.

Can Performance Art be funny?

Funny as in ‘odd’, ‘uncanny’ or ‘weird’ and/or Funny as in that which is aimed to provoke laughter as its primary object?

Can we generate genuine and novel interaction across boundaries of comedy and Performance Art and so lead to advances in understanding?

What critical frameworks can be devised to analyse this activity?

We will focus upon comedic techniques within art and raise the question of whether the practice of exhibiting these works considers comedic methods apposite to the curation of the art. We want to instigate an event but also an-after-effect: a subsequent network.

Hosted by the New Adelphi Theatre.

Please note this event will be filmed. 

“How do I book for this event?”

This event needs no booking!  The free event will start in the New Adelphi atrium at 1:30pm.

Admission: Free!

Warnings: Suitable for ages 18+. May contain improvised strong language. Will contain some emotional triggers such as figures in costume/face paint/masks, and strong audience interaction.

Richard Talbot website  ¦  Kurt Zarniko Twitter  ¦  Kurt Zarniko Instagram