Ponge – a definition

Now and again I ask myself to define the nature of ‘Ponge’. It’s a curious thing is Ponge, but I think it lies somewhere between rhetoric and bathos. For example, i’m holding an exhibition of recent work in February in Swindon and have been thinking about titles for the event. The work is inherently childish and overtly sexual, but kind of thoughtful and zeit-geisty and primal, so I was thinking of calling the show ‘Life through a lens, covered in sperm’. This for me is a pongey kinda title as it alludes to Swindon’s love of ‘wacky’ averageness and cliches (the life through a lens bit) and subverts it by tacking on the rather childish ‘covered in sperm’ bit, thus creating narrative friction and at once mocks the audience for being lame and cliche’d and me for being a childish cleverdick. And that for me is ponge – the glorification of failing and winning all in one fell swoop of rhetorical pseudo-intellectual posturing.