Joanne’s political “experience”

Joanne doesn’t bring in a picture, but a video of herself which she describes as “more experiential”, and as “a thought, a movement, an experience”.

When Greg indicates he’s going to turn away from the screen and then experience Joanne’s submission, she immediately responds with “No, you have to look at it to experience it”.

In the short video, which has been sped up, Joanne is seen slowly letting the air out of a red balloon she is holding in one hand, while staring straight at the camera. After most of the air has left the balloon, the camera adjust position and zooms in to show that Che Guevara’s face has been printed on it.

When Greg is completely unimpressed by the piece, Joanne points out whose face was on the balloon, as if Greg hadn’t recognised him, and as if it made any difference to the experience.

She then claims she thought it was important to “raise awareness of Che Guevara on a balloon”, and that, if Greg awarded her 5 points, she would donated her appearance fee to “the Cuban revolution”. Alex pipes up to claim that he’s just found out that the Cuban revolution does have a GoFundMe campaign.

When Greg pushes Joanne to explain what the political statement she was making was, she struggles to make something up to justify it, but then a member of the audience helpfully calls out “Inflation”, and she jumps on that.

She then switches tack, pointing out that the task brief hadn’t stated that the prize had to be ‘extraordinarily good’, just ‘extraordinary’, and that her submission therefore still qualified, as it was “extraordinarily shite”.

Greg finds Joanne’s political statement completely unextraordinary, and awards her 1 point.

(Written by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by David Fuller)