YOSHUA OKÓN

Canned Laughter was created as part of an invitation to Ciudad Juárez in which artists were asked to create works based on their experience in the city during a period of extreme violence. The piece focuses on Ciudad Juárez as a maquiladora site and on its role within the context of global capitalism. It is a detailed construction of Bergson, a fictitious factory that produces canned laughter for sitcoms. For it, dozens of ex-maquiladora workers were hired both as part of the research process (maquiladoras are highly secretive and it is very hard to know what happens inside) and as performers. Canned Laughter alludes to mechanized processes and to slavery in the age of globalization as well as to the impossibility to translate and reproduce true emotions though technological means.