rebel clowning
“CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society.”
The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) started somewhere between London and Leeds between 2003 and 2004 when a gaggle of clowns shut down an army and navy recruiting office by trying to enlist in any of the services. It was a genius plan and was the start of many such interventions and actions on the part of activists who were tired of the same protester-authority binary dynamic that surfaced at every demonstration, who were tired of feeling burned out on anger, negativity and lost causes.
Developed for people to creatively engage in social change, rebel clowning is a form of radical political activism that brings together clowning and non-violent direct action. It aims to transform and sustain the emotional life of those engaged in social change - seeing the personal as political - as well as being an effective tool for direct action. At the core of this approach is the notion that innovative forms of creative street action are crucial for inspiring and building movements, and simultaneously involve a deeper process that “liberates people with weapons of love and laughter” (from CIRCA website, now defunct).[1]
The rebel clown goes out of herself, interrupts her everyday self and assumptions, preconceptions and instead of merely confronting his/her opposition, s/he acknowledges their physical presence and gives them respect as fellow human beings. Here are the beginnings of disruption of power relations. By blurring this boundary between protester and authority, the boundaries that give authority its power disappear; the rebel clown inhabits a place outside these power relations. In a way s/he becomes untouchable.
The rebel clown is the shaman and trickster, healer and fool, working at the margins of their cultures, expressing the opposite of their cultures’ expected norms. Since the beginning of time, they’ve had a fundamental critical social function that critiques and heals through disruption.
By parodying authority the rebel clown at once temporarily identifies with and assumes an identity of authority. It falls short of contempt and mockery by the fact that the clown looks stupid and out of character. S/he allows fun to be made of her and her actions, no longer always having to say no in a directly binary confrontation.
Kolonel Klepto writes: “Because the clown loves failure, even acts of repression can become spaces to mock and play with. Whenever the police put us into pens, we jump in willingly, turning a ‘police pen’ into a ‘play pen’, but then we jump out again (or get stuck trying to get out) and plead with them to throw us back in, because we so enjoyed it the first time. In order to mock the stop and search terrorist laws, which are regularly used to intimidate protestors, we fill our pockets to the brim (which often makes CIRCA members seem more portly than they actually are!) with stupid things – strings of sausages, underwear, rubber ducks, pink furry stuffed pigs, sex toys, miniature garden gnomes, old bones, small tanks, rubber ducks, plungers and more, which all have to be layed (sic) out on the street during searches. Dozens of police officers searching an army of clowns is a weird enough sight, but when members of the public see all the objects being taken out the absurdity of the situation overflows.” (Kolonel Klepto, Making war with love: The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, Alternatives)
The rebel clown ruptures the pattern of making demands and threats that can be blocked. Instead, she asks permission and offers the opportunity for collaboration; having set themselves up in physical opposition to the clowns, the “authorities” have become a captive audience and are complicit in the clown's actions. They are caught in the uncomfortable position of being coerced to be part of the “show.” They are working with the clowns who are thus in a powerful position since the clown thrives on attention. This is most obvious when clowns are being searched by the police. Police and army strategy is built around predictability and knowing what the “enemy” will do next - but how can the police know what will happen when they decide to strip search a gaggle of rebel clowns? How can they know that half of them are likely to dissolve in hysterical giggles because they are ticklish while the other half have so many layers of clothing that it will take all day before they are down to their stripy underwear?
Rebel clowning turns the world of violent direct action on its head. It turns fear of authority and arrest into a game of tag or grandmothers’ footsteps. Instead of resisting, the clown collaborates; instead of obeying, the clown offers an alternative order or directive, instead of hating, the rebel clown mocks and slips away