Found Object Street theatre Impro

 You find discarded things and think. This is great!

Trump is in fact a Clown, but not in the way you think.

 Trump is often described as a Clown.

A Clown myself I feel qualified to tell you that he in fact is a Clown, but not in the way you think.

The American Clown has a very shallow tradition. The Circus Clowns of the Barnum and Bailey and Ringlings days were predominantly modified English variety hall acts initially and they had a specific role to play.

They were distractions.

The Elephants are being led from the ring, their large props tipped and rolled towards the other exit.
Above riggers are lowering the flying trapeze and deftly deploying the safety net.

The Clown stumbles into the light.
All focus falls at the new distraction.

That's Trump, global economic pratfalls, hamfisted military japes, his character lives in his own perpetual fourth wall, an excessive kinetic element to him and he barely tries to conceal his malevolence, Exhaustingly captivating for a decade.

So if he's the Clown I say he is then the question is, what have the riggers been doing the last decade?
What props have been wheeled out?
What has happened while we all fixated on the Clown?

Well Gaza and Ukraine are providing the usual suspects with unrelenting profits.
The US State mechanism's been DOGE'd, dismantled in part and looted via multiple fiscal corridors.
The child raping for sport and phycological empowerment aristocracy remains opaque in plain sight.
Security industries remain a growth industry. Ice and border control now have $183 billion available.

Most importantly the worlds population has now been firmly conditioned, without consent, to be subsumed by the attention economy,
About 54% of the worlds population owns a smartphone and of that 54%
An unknown percentage are effectively subservient to its wiles.
Lost digital reactionaries, third party nodes. Barely sentient navel fluff.

That's roughly the last decades main developments in a chunky soup but the new artificial flavour is AI which, along with the attention economy is barely digested and simply consumed whole while the largest emergent factor in obscurity is the bowl itself.

The planet we live in unfortunately seems to be broken beyond repair and our extinction is far more credible than the ravings of smelly men who live under bridges might suggest.

Tribulations of an order wherein crops fail, systems collapse, fires rage, people choke, cities drown, populations surge towards pointed guns. The increasing mixture of carbon dioxide in the air will retard us so that as a species we'll expire with minimum contemplation. If you take your eyes off the Clown you can see it already.

In the face of that, of everything plankton and above exiting the food-chain and fires and floods and famines and plagues and tipping points
-and those bunkers for the rich.
They won't be sheltering, they'll be suited up and pushing out the perimeters and preemptively organising raiding party's for sport and blood ritual.

Don't you think we might look back at this last decade, say 20 years from now when the populations halved and think with as wry a grin as we can muster.

'That Trump guy, snort...Clown!'

and revel in the memories of being outraged at his child-raping while we chew luxuriously on the limb of someone else's kid we swapped for an axe .

Trumps a Clown, he eats attention while scenes change in the background.

In this hectic world you need sometimes to simply pause and take the time to smell the stench of death. :)

 Did a lot of work on Rumples Crypt this week.

I think it's funny that I took my original idea of an actual Clown Tomb that consisted of an actual clown car inside a crypt that successive dead clowns ashes were added to upon their deaths and found a way to make it happen from my laptop.

[If anyone's got some high end, unused lap or desktops lying around.....*waves enthusiastically*]

For about ten years I'd canvased Clowns at festivals pestering them for possible permission to be given a portion of their ashes for my project. At one point the whole thing was going to exist in Toledo, I had a downtown block of land potentially on offer.

Knowing the director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center [Greg DeSanto] I knew I'd have no trouble sourcing a vehicle.

Then my own premature imminent death eclipsed the project .

Thanks to my families general sense of optimism and some deft knife-work over nearly 9 hours on the table by a surgeon with bad knees who still goes on skying holidays! [we had a comically acrimonious relationship]....I'm now 8 years later, prepared to pick up the project.

The world has changed and my powers with it so I'm going with a digital Mirth Mausoleum.

Other old men devote their time to gardening or a favorite pet or virulent right wing opinions at volume.

I'm potting about creating crypts for dead clown friends, and also, in the background, creating precursors for some of my living clown friends.

If this gets fully out of hand I'm going to have to set up a fund-me to interview people and create poised prefabricated crypts, my own included

[WHICH I BET A THERAPIST WOULD TELL ME IS THE WHOLE POINT]

Anyway...before I excuse myself to go outside and shout at clouds as those my age are want to do I'd just like to say.

It's nice to have a hobby. Rumples Crypt

Martin's Mirth Mausoleum-Dead Clowns

 

I can't say it's finished because...well..people die.

[And Pepe and Pat Cashin are unfinished and I refuse to be rushed]

But here's my personal collection of dead clowns

Mirth-Mausoleum-Dead Clowns

How busking fits into the Placemaking movement Pt 2

 

Pt 2 of Nick Broads interview with with Ethan Kent, Director of PlacemakingX, an international network of urbanists

..talks about the political situation in which busking exists,& how we can convince cities that enabling informal busking should be one of their goals

Informal buskings urban advantages 

How busking fits into the Placemaking movement

 Nick Broad: Who created busk.co which is the most cohesive online tool for street performers providing a one stop QR code / stripe banking account solution to our increasingly evolving cashless society.
[Plus other lesser things]

Well anyway he consistently explores buskings potential and contemporary role in society and publishes articles and interviews.

I like the size of the net he uses to cover the topic. Below is his latest and an example of the potential street theatre has in finding, increasing, developing and integrating in more granular ways with current and future urban design.

 

 

How busking fits into the Placemaking movement 

Passive Aggressive?

Sometimes I lack patience. I’m sometimes irked by those who for reasons known only to themselves...or should I say THEMSELVES..want to engage in conversation or direct me to help stage the epic movie they are starring in every mundane millisecond of their lives.

Why yes I am passive aggressive thanks very much that’s very perceptive of you.
Pretty much passive yeah.

Active would be galvanising mobs to drain the throats of govt and corporate leaders across the steps of their various institutions.

I think sardonic panto’s letting everyone off lightly and furthermore I should be remunerated generally with a little more gusto considering my restraint.