play|ground: the musical
what is rotpunk?
Rotpunk is rooted in the idea that the chthonic - the underworld - is the subterranean. It is the ‘sub-human’, the natural, the rhizomatic, the mycelial - the space where we have been tending to the roots of our communities for years.
Astrologically, it is a time to review the ways in which sacral power has been colonized and desecrated - including gender, sexuality, sensuality, and creativity - and rid ourselves of the weeds constricting the expansive systems of care we have been growing.
We do not need to destruct anything at random - we are deconstructing in order to cultivate rebirth under new suns.
why tinker-tale?
We don’t need a hero, we don’t need an anti-hero, but maybe a tinker bell. A siren who alerts us to what is eugenic in our core structures, because they have been getting their hands dirty tinkering - a la crip technoscience - in the carburetor of functionalist structuralism for a while.
In the 1920s, Disney’s Cinderella (and other films of the same name) reversed the Arlecchino archetype’s story.
The Arlecchino, or Commedia Dell’Arte’s Harlequin, would appear after a fairy showed up on the stage - like Midsummer Night’s Dream, and provide comedic (critical, killjoy, satyr, meta) entertainment after all of the operatic escapades and tragic exposition. For more, watch this video:
Cinderella took that story of transition, transformation, and rebirth and replaced the Harlequin with the perfect little goody-two-shoes princess under the monarchy.
If I know anything, it’s that little Pan, who wanted to stay in Neverland, spent his teen years as a f*ckboy and grew up to be the Devil; the little Prince was also forced to leave Neverland and spent his teen years as the class clown before he had to grow up and be the Emperor; and the little Princess in Wonderland who spent her teen years as the goody-two-shoes grew up to be the Empress.
All of these characters, however, comprise the Three Stooges standing at the foot of the Ash Tree of the Norse creation myth, wanting to create anarchist, abolitionist, nonbinary, trans*, satyrical worlds. Before the Ash Tree (and all other trees of life common among creation myths) was colonized by eugenics, they could.
Laughlin, Harry H. 1923. The Second International Exhibition of Eugenics Held September 22 to October 22, 1921, in Connection with the Second International Congress of Eugenics in the American Museum of Natural History, New York (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Company)
This is why we need the Internet Archive!
This is a picture of the drawing of the tree of Eugenics, which reads “Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution. Like a tree, eugenics draws its materials from many sources and organizes them into a harmonious entity.”
The roots read: “Anatomy, physiology, biology, psychology, genetics, mental testing, anthropometry, history, geology, archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, geography, law, politics, statistics, economics, biography, genealogy, education, sociology, religion, psychiatry, surgery, medicine.”