One of my peers Joel Simpson gave another very interesting and extremely well put together micro teaching session. His lesson was about finding interesting, relevant research questions for the critical practice elements of his course and was based around a slightly unnerving stuffed toy fish. Throughout the presentation there was an element of humour that was really well executed but I couldn’t help but to attempt to unpack it.

What I found most interesting was the way in which he’d designed his presentation. On every slide and even in its style the PowerPoint was laced with a kind of anti-design illustrated by memes.  

The use of memes as part of art practice is something I have become increasingly intrigued by. So often successful artists, particularly the more knowingly contemporary ones use memes and online humour religiously on their social media. So much so some artists, Gray Wielebinski being a particular culprit, post more memes than art.

I’d be really interested to know if this is now a talked about part of contemporary art practice. Or is this just a way of de-intellectualising art practice in a way that makes the practitioner more relatable to a wider audience and therefore more successful?

Zadie Xa who has had a long running solo exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery is also another meme champion. Work in progress documentation will often be interlaced with seemingly random humorous animals and tik toks about rappers.

I suppose I’d just be interested to know if this is something Joel has picked up on as a way to make his presentation more aligned with contemporary practice or he just loves a lol?