OFLUXO

Kostis Stafylakis presents videos, social media posts, tiktok acts, amateur rap music, interviews, online cosplay, and sculptural installations that document his slow immersion into the culture of American Juggalos. Juggalos are followers of the ICP (Insane Clown Posse) rap duet and of other horrorcore bands. The name Juggalo stemmed from ICP’s 1992 song “the Juggla”, and represents an urban subculture of inclusion and acceptance, governed by the contradictions of a mass social and cultural movement. Juggalos have described themselves as “scrubs” – the sprouts of the deindustrialization of former industrial zones. They speak of serial killers, fantasy, and class-struggle mixed with magic and acceptance. They carry tattoos with the hatchet-clown, paint their faces up, greet each other with “whoop whoop”, share “much mother-fucking wicked clown love” and spray themselves with Faygo. But, beyond this quasi-folk depiction, their social perception of the world is inspired by the Dark Carnival, a mythology/ethical system developed around the characters of six jokers, introduced by ICP. In 2017, ICP and friends organized the Juggalo March in Washington DC to protest their criminalization by the FBI. Accidentally, Trump supporters were rallying at the same spot, on the same day. Clashes between juggalos and the alt-right were reported.

Chloroquine Juggalo is the persona forged by Stafylakis to socialize online with the communities of this diverse American subculture. Chloroquine Juggalo has a favorite horror gimmick: he consumes chloroquine cocktails. He’s “heard a lot good stories about it”. Throughout the quarantines, Stafylakis indulged in infiltrating distant, mostly American, subcultures from afar. Today, conspiracy theories like QAnon owe their popularity to the collective enjoyment in horrific fantasies, to the excitement offered by conspiratorial mythmaking. The awkward ideas of Pizzagate and QAnon, materialize fantasies with global reach. Stafylakis thinks with the Juggalos to view horror as navigation through the dark imaginary that apparently mobilizes our fractured reality.