CHLOROQUINE JUGGALO REVIEWED & INTERVIEWED BY F.VERGIDOU / FEROCIOUS URBANITES
Foteini Vergidou reviews the Chloroquine Juggalo show at KEIV Athens and interviews Kostis Stafylakis at Ferocious Urbanites.
Excerpt from Foteini Vergidou’s review:
On the other side of KEIV, a sculptural video installation, the ‘Redneck Revolt: New Horror’, presents an overview of Chloroquine Juggalo’s activity on TikTok. Born and raised online, Stafylakis’ persona interacts with Juggalo members on the platform, duets, stitches and comments on their videos. The artist hops on the lip-syncing trend, using a speech by Paula White, Trump’s Evangelical spiritual adviser, while mimicking horror cosplayers.
In his fragmented videos, Stafylakis is manipulating the pre-existing material and his own footage, to reveal his intention of altering our subjectivity on this American undercurrent.
Since montage is all about rhythm, the rhythmic rotation of the scenes in both works brings to mind the tempo of Paula White’s incomprehensible sentence and the samples of the amateur rap music sent by Juggalos he met online. The result of this investigation is an extravagant mix of images, videos and sound.
Read the entire review here
An excerpt from the interview with Stafylakis:
F.U. : Your new body of work is in dialogue with the politics, the social phenomenon and the interrelationships of the members of a subculture in America. What prompted your investigation into the Juggalo community?
K.S. : I was thrilled by the fact that I was hitherto unaware of the Juggalos.
It’s like opening up a window to a psychedelic realm stemming from real social effervescence. The Juggalos are genuine sprouts of the American Rust Belt, and their subversive influence extends to urban areas, suburbia, and redneck America. The 90s rap duet Insane Clown Posse is responsible for providing the name, the language, and the core aesthetics of this movement. They’ve crafted an entire social mythology that empowered the neglected, the dropouts of an impoverished part of America.
Of course, the image of the avenging Joker is nowadays politically unstable, and susceptible to reactionary ramifications. But the politics of Juggalos tells us that ambivalence, ambiguity, and contingency are ontological constituents of the “political”. And this community tasted this ambiguity of when, back in 2017, Juggalos were protesting their criminalization by the FBI, in Washington DC. Trump supporters had accidentally arranged a march at the same spot. The clash between the two sides started online, with the circulation of memes picturing a Juggalo Joker assassinating Pepe the Frog, or burning the confederate flag.
The online theatrics of my Chloroquine Juggalo persona paid tribute to that moment: I staged an online grotesque execution of Pepe the Frog, which I circulated through my social media outlets.
