Painful laughter – Wieland Schwanebeck (TU Dresden), with support from the Volkswagen Stiftung, organized this inspiring symposium on the role of awkwardness and cringe comedy in media and politics at the Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover. Talks spanned from early British comedy to analyses and discussions of up-to-date cringe comedy (e.g. live interview with Robert B. Weide, director of “Curb your enthusiasm”) and its role in inserting moments of rupture into political discourses.