Provocation in Popular Culture

Provocation in Popular Culture is a study of provocative artists who use comedy and playfulness to subvert. Bim Mason draws on his decades of practice as a performer, director and teacher in the fields of street theatre and circus to inform his analysis of the work of key artists Leo Bassi, Sacha Baron Cohen, Banksy, Archaos, Pussy Riot and others. Unlike political provocateurs who are serious and confrontational these cultural provocateurs attract and animate the wider public with a lighter tone that takes an otherwise antagonistic relationship into a more creative, populist space. Mason also shows how the provocative model can be applied to teaching and creative practice, working with individuals and improvisational methods.

What role can provocation play in the process of renewal, both of individuals and of societies? Provocation in Popular Culture is an investigation into the practice of specific provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation, examining, among others:

• Banksy
• Sacha Baron Cohen
• Leo Bassi
• Pussy Riot
• Philippe Petit
• Archaos.

Drawing on Bim Mason’s own twenty-five year career as performer, teacher and creative director, this book explores the power negotiations involved in the relationship between provocateur and provoked, and the implications of maintaining a position on the ‘edge’.

Using neuroscience as a bridge, it proposes a similarity between complexity theory and cultural theories of play and risk. Three inter-related analogies for the ‘edge’ on which these performers operate – the fulcrum, the blade and the border – reveal the shifts between structure and fluidity, and the ways in which these can combine in a single moment.