Haven’t we all been deceived to turn our attention in the wrong direction, haven’t we all been fooled to see the forest in front of the trees. It’s a simple strategy that we all know, and we still swallow the bait; for telling jokes, producing magic or picking somebody’s pockets.

A friend recently told me how he in Moscow suddenly found him self in a setup with at least three gangsters involved, out of which one was a police officer and the deceptive object a bundle of hundred dollar bills. Excellent street theatre of the 21st century and my friend, a well trained performer, was perfectly seduced to pull out his own wallet exposing his innocence including the perfect opportunity for the gangsters to snatch his euros, dollars, travel checks and visa card. Moscow is such a show.

To what extent could the double meaning of ‘custom’ function as tool or discursive resistance to activist strategies today. Is customs perhaps a keyword in respect of a general understanding of what activism or even activating practices intend to irrigate.

Precisely the paradoxical strategies inscribed in; the necessary and excluding strategies of creating a community, i.e. to create an axis of recognizable, reoccurring events around which a group of individuals can produce identity and allegiances. Strategies that in their turn produce notions of territory. An inside and an outside are established, or in other words, a border which crossing always implies an exchange of economy, a custom.

To what extent could the double meaning of ‘custom’ function as tool or discursive resistance to activist strategies today. Is customs perhaps a keyword in respect of a general understanding of what activism or even activating practices intend to irrigate.