Deathclown DEMO(N) group

“developing the deathclown”

You can’t spell demonstration without demon.
 

from: Etymology of Demon - Demon Facts
”Around 1200 CE, the meaning of the word demon as "an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil" started to emerge out of the Latin daemon, meaning "spirit." The Latin evolved from the Greek, which itself evolved from the Proto-Indo-European.

• From the Greek daimōn, meaning "deity or divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit or tutelary deity (sometimes including souls of the dead)"

• From the PIE dai-mon-, meaning "one's genius, lot or fortune"

• From the PIE root da-, meaning "divider or provider (of fortunes or destinies)"

The word took on a malignant sense because the Greek daimōn and daimonion were used in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate for "god of the heathen; heathen idol; unclean spirit." Jewish authors had previously employed the Greek word in this sense, using it as a translation for shedim, meaning "lords; idols."
 

In the Septuagint, Matthew 8:31 contains daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, and as feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, meaning "knight of hell," or more literally, "hell-knight."
 

The usual ancient Greek sense, i.e. "supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god; ministering spirit," is attested in English from the 1560s onward and is sometimes written as daemon or daimōn for purposes of distinction (i.e. Latin vs. Greek). The ideas of demons being "destructive or hideous persons" or "evil agencies personified" emerged around the 1610s and 1710s, respectively.”

Some general principles and guidelines of the cohort

• participants agree to step into the primary role of “artists as art makers, artists helping other artists make art”

• it may be therapeutic but it is NOT therapy

• participants take radical self-responsibility for what happens during the artmaking process

• the method views everything as material

• “Every phenomenon can be played with and delighted in; I just have to figure out how.”

• emotions are not what you think they are

• we work on allying with pain, fear, hunger as wisdom forces

• we learn to be coached and corrected from an “impersonal” place

• we learn to manage the interplay between impulses and impacts in better ways - via play, theater, artmaking, deathpractice (nondual meditation, etc)

• a high level of participation is expected and required, with multiple ways to participate

• a strong focus on post-traumatic growth
   

Areas of Study

We recognize there is a limit to what can be done in three months online, and subsequent rounds and years of practice may be required to advance. Each artist has their own path and must deal with what needs dealing with on it. What is required is personal determination and dedication to the craft, amidst all the collapsing towers and stress of our short human lives.

 

The following are all areas of interest and study that inform how I design the deathclown curriculum. This is not the curriculum itself nor is it a comprehensive list of everything that will be explicitly focused on.
 

• critical inquiry and critical response frameworks - learning to ask better kinds of questions and give better feedback for the purpose of artists making art

• how to craft new/personal forms of artmaking with a socially-just and pedagogically informed approach

• impro-devising method(s)- an integration of improvising and devising methods and approaches that work together

• using many forms to cross pollinate - poetry, writing, drawing, collage, crafting, puppetry, movement, song, speech, etc etc etc

• my aphro-poietic method of call & response “writing-devising-dialoguing”

• Vital Space Work: nondual meditations and emptiness training (various methods and lineages)

• dream yogas and real tantra (not sexual but yes “erotic”)

• deep listening training (ala pauline oliveros), collective presencing style communicating

• acting and theater training: clown/bouffon, partner work, dialogue, monologues, improvisation, devising, basic meisner, physical theater, biomechanics, breath and voice health, viewpoints, moment work, sketch comedy, satire, parody, sincerity, realism, surrealism, pulp/genre fiction, etc

• immersive theater concepts, ceremony, ritual, trance, non-trance trance

• game design, table top role playing gaming, Larping, sports as games/games as sports

• addiction rehab framework: begin or continue to rehab your addictions to narcissism, dissociation and codependency with various propagandist and dualist/materialist worldviews, the ways you sense and perceive, and the way you relate with other bodies, your own body, language and communication.

 

Death Practice Group Recordings

The historical and cultural anthropological pedagogy of death practice as learned and framed by dare can be purchased as a lecture series with supplemental study material at this link https://www.animistarts.art/the-death-practice-group

These lectures may constitute a “part one” or a “prologue” to the ongoing deathclown training.