Authors

Discussion

The paper presents two female stand-up comedy artists from Vienna: Malarina and Toxische Pommes whose South Slavic backgrounds form the center of their artistic expression. Both artists’ comic performances (on stages and on Tik-Tok) work with self-exoticizing Balkanisms and (neo-)avantgardistic motifs of ‘Balkan-vitality’ when staging a South Slavic migrant subject in Vienna. They employ similar strategies in multilingually confronting Austria’s majority culture in ‘authentic’ self-performances, often staging Balkan rurality in order to subvert Viennese cultural imperialism. The paper explores the legacy of novi primitivizam in contemporary Balkan Stand-up Comedy in Austria and ‘comic’ strategies of identity-building in post-migrant societies.