A master of deadpan humor, Krõõt Juurak asks what is the bare minimum we can expect from stand-up comedy or, sometimes, from life, in a precarious world.

“The Bare Minimum” began on a beautiful day when my partner suddenly accused me, rather reproachfully, of offering them only the absolute bare minimum. Although I firmly disagreed, I knew and felt that this accusation had to become the title of my next performance. I have always worked and wish to continue working as close as possible to the absolute minimum in my artistic practice. Stand-up comedy also fascinates me precisely because of its minimalist form (and budget).

“The Bare Minimum” draws on the format of stand-up and elements of comedic entertainment, positioning itself somewhere between conceptual comedy and comedic conceptualism.

Keywords: nothing, something, less, more, expectation, reality, precarity, self-sabotage, performance art, psychoanalysis, minimalism, conceptualism, stand-up comedy, sustainability

Krõõt Juurak, born in Tallinn, Estonia, is an artist, performer, and stand-up comedian based in Vienna. They studied choreography at ArteZ and Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. In their inter-disciplinary and immaterial work they have taken moods and inter-personal conflicts and turned them into performances, performed for pets, and assigned the role of theatre directors to children. Recent exhibitions and performances include the Baltic Triennial 14, Vilnius (2021); You’re So Busy at Shedhalle, Zürich (2021, 2022); Thinking Like an Octopus at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, (2021); Art for Animals: A Perspective Change at Opelvillen Stiftung, Rüsselsheim (2020, 2021); Dancing with at Tanzquartier Wien (2025); Codomestication at Perform Europe (2025, 2026).