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Opening to "Humor"By Charles Atlas with Margaret Cho
In the opening segment of “Humor” created by Charles Atlas, comedian Margaret Cho takes on the task of educating her audience about the subtleties of humor. Unfortunately for her model pupil, Bruce, the subject of her lecture is not comedy but antiquated medicine.
Surrounded by anatomical diagrams, Cho uses Aristotle’s Theory of the Four Humors as her source material. Cho diagnoses Bruce with an excess of Blood, and covers his head with gummy worm “leeches” while praising, stone-faced, the virtues of bloodletting as a remedy.
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Charles Atlas is a filmmaker and video artist who has created numerous works for stage, screen, museum, and television. Atlas is a pioneer in the development of media-dance, a genre in which original performance work is created directly for the camera. Many of Atlas’s works have been collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and performers, including Yvonne Rainer, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Marina Abramovic, Diamanda Galas, John Kelly, and Leigh Bowery. Atlas acted as Consulting Director for “Art in the Twenty-First Century” (Seasons 2 through 5), creating the original opening programs for each hour-long segment of Season 2, as well as supervising the “Stories,” “Loss and Desire,” “Memory,” “Play,” “Protest,” and “Paradox” episodes.
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