Eggsodus

On our last day together in Athens, the three of us revisited the project and reflected on: - 2 days collaborating with others - the whole project and the lessons we can draw - what we want to do next Group cohesion and complicity  Compared to the first day, the second day with collaborators brought a higher level of cohesion and group complicity. This probably arose from having a group organization, with tasks assigned from the beginning of Day 2, as opposed to Day 1 when each individual could set their own tasks. Particularly on the return to the workspace, there was much more group work than on the journey from the workspace to the designated place of action on Day 2. However, valorising this is not an easy task. Some collaborators, in the feedback, valued the individual freedom of Day 1 over the group cohesion of Day 2. The feedback of others was the opposite. In general, this valorisation was related to the fun that the person reported having. This raises another question: how...

From the beginning of this project, we knew that one element of our research would be a self-examination of our own practices and histories. Over the past two years working remotely, we had all in some way come up against the problematic assumptions in much contemporary clown performance and pedagogy. These cover a number of areas, such as: - the individualistic vision of clowns as personal: depoliticises clowns - the binary of inner/outer, where the inner is supposed to hold the truth: ignores societies structures - clown as self-help and life-coaching: presents specious claims to relieve anxiety and suffering - the notion that clown is an invariable and definable thing: ignores non-European cultures and also our own European history - the assumption that clowns appear in training under duress/shame, whether playfully or cruelly: leads to the dominance of clown teachers, mostly white cis het men - the assumption that clowns appear when you show vulnerability: ignores the structural vu...