Artist Statement Rainn Forrest (they/he), is an Appalachian Goth Clown and community organizer. Rainn situates their interdisciplinary work in the ways that these identities, along with how being queer and disabled, inform and shape their existence through the late-stage capitalist culture in America. This work manifests as performance, experience, video, collage, humor, and sculpture. Rainn’s art is influenced by philosophy and art theorists including Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodore Adorno. A foundational aspect of Rainn’s practice involves human connection through creative collaboration. This is motivated by a desire to challenge and discourage competitiveness between artists. Rainn, along with their collaborators, strive to build alternatives to current hierarchy based societal structures. These collaborations are experience based and often center around the concept of ritual as a means to examine and question quotidian experience of daily life. Rainn's performance and video work is inspired by Paratheatre, which is a form of performance created by Jerzy Grotowski. Paratheatre is characterized by collapsing the boundary between the spectator and performer. There is no audience as the form is entirely participatory. Paratheatre strives to cultivate a cultural space in which authentic collective action emerges between participants. The goal of paratheatrical work is to create a fluid and active culture with a non hierarchical power structure, and to blur the line between art and life. Bea Hurd has been a frequent collaborator since 2021. Both Rainn and Bea are diagnosed with ADHD and choose to not medicate, allowing it to influence the way they make work. They view aspects of ADHD such as hyperfocus and quick change of subject matter as beneficial rather than inhibitive. ADHD and queerness are tied to the glitch; they are ways of being which challenge power structures. Glitch can be compared to a mishap viewed as an “error” in the social system, which has the potential to disrupt dominant structures. Drawing inspiration from christian tradition and pagan ritual while building upon paratheatrical principles, Rainn’s work seeks to challenge the core concepts of christian nationalism and its tie to capitalism through actions of satirical spirituality. Here, clowning acts as a powerful tool to explore queerness, failure, humor, joy, trauma, and criticism of politics. Clowning has potential to undermine the expectation of constant production and perfection expected by capitalism. Through their artwork, Rainn strives to imagine the full potential of creativity without the limitation of creation motivated by profit.
