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Bassam El Baroni, curator (Egypt)

Sun, 01/04/2009 - 11:27 — editor


bassam>> What does the idea of a manifesto mean to you?

It used to be when you got together with a collective or group and you wanted to “Change” something within the wider socio-political sphere you existed in. “Change”, I think for many people that word can’t be used any more with the same currency it had before Obama’s campaign, I barely believed in it before but now for me it simply can’t exist except within a contemporary Machiavellian populist politics paradigm. You see that’s the problem right there, manifestos today are faint and tainted re-enactments, copies of past movements, ideas and affinities. We have not yet broken with our recent history, we still define political ideologies as being “Leftist” or to the “Right”; we truly believed that our ideologies were dead so we stopped upgrading them or breathing new life into them, so any one proposing anything that would cause the late capitalist nexus to do so much as to scratch without profiting would be labelled “Leftist” or “Socialist”, these words have been vacuumed out of their real implications and meanings, they have become kitsch. So what we have now are stillborn versions of leftism, liberalism, democracy, and many other ideologies that still appear to be worth the label on the outside but on closer inspection what has happened is that these terminologies have been greatly infused with late capitalist rhetoric.

>> What are some of the manifestos that you consider significant for historical or personal reasons?

Many manifestos remained significant to me for a while, but I’m currently at a stage where I believe much less in manifestos and much more in the non-textual and the unsaid.

>> Are there other forms of expression that could be interpreted as
manifestos?

I think throughout the 20th century and what we’ve experienced so far of the 21st century manifestos have been stronger when they are simple actions, actions that embrace the nature of being a spectacle and take into consideration how they will be interpreted in media and history (spectaclization), that if you can’t beat it then be it kind of thing. Maybe the 240 mile long Gandhi Salt March is a good example of what can be called a “mobile manifesto”, actions that trigger formalization but are not formalizations themselves, it seems they work better that way.

>> Do you think that manifestos still have relevance in a century where identities are constantly fracturing and societies are in constant flux?

Which century are we talking about here, the 21st? In my opinion we still have not had closure on the 20th century, the hype might lead you into believing a different story but I think day in and day out the world is proving that socio-culturally & politically it is living in an extension of the 20th century, the 20th century’s final chapter has yet to be concluded, what happened in the 20th century could not possibly be concluded in the span of a hundred years. Identities have always been fracturing and most societies have always been in a constant state of flux, so this should not be why manifestos have relevance or not. Manifestos will not have any substantial relevance beyond the level of the spectacle until people have truly new ideas that can be implemented successfully in the fields of politics, social studies and culture.

>> Do you have a personal manifesto as a curator?

A manifesto would probably limit ones ability to expand and explore many realms and ideas, open ended investigation and experimentation work better for me.

Senzeni Marasela, artist (South Africa)

Sun, 01/04/2009 - 11:27 — editor

senzen- What does the idea/concept of a manifesto mean to you?

It means that one selects a set of values and principle that will guide their aspirations and visions into the future.

- Is there a specific manifesto that you align to or that has interested/influenced you?

It will probably be the Freedom Charter and Martin Luther’s “I have a dream”. It is interesting to note that we have trekked away from these ideals embodied in both these manifestos as black people.

- Do you have a personal manifesto?

Yes I do! I believe that I do not need to wear my skin as a badge of honour as a black woman. I owe it to myself to rewrite my histories and not to apologise for it. I must be proud of the foundation that has been laid for me by many other black women. I acknowledge that it is my responsibility and privilege to build a strong identity that is not tainted by assumptions of others about who and what I should be.

- Do you think that manifestos still have relevance to society at large or groups of people in the 21st century?

They should have relevance because they give a large group a collective identity and a sense of belonging. In this present day South Africa where identities are either fragmented or denied we need manifestos for a sense of belonging.

Ntone Edjabe, journalist, respected DJ, founder and editor of Chimurenga Magazine

Tue, 03/31/2009 - 08:51 — editor

Ntone
1. What does the idea of a manifesto mean to you?

Action

2. What are some of the manifestos that you consider significant for
historical or personal reasons?

Four immediatly come to mind: Biko's "I write what I like"; Fanon's

"O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"; Sun Ra's "The

impossible attracts me because every thing possible has been done and

the world didn't change" and Bessie Head's "I am building a stairway

to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind with

me. That's why I write". All of them are very personal life-stances

with immense political power. They are also more than beautifully

worded declarations, they're summaries of these people's life-work.

3. Are there other forms of expression that could be interpreted as
manifestos, a song, a work of fiction, a movie?

I think every form of expression can be used to publicise personal or

collective aims. I think of Fela's song "No Agreement" or even Boom Shaka's

hit "Its About Time" which became the manifesto of what Thandiswa Mazwai

called the kwaito generation; or the Black Audio Film Collective's

"Handsworth Songs" or Abbas Kiarostami's film "10 on Ten". Again examples

such as these where words and deeds coincide only work retrospectively, as

these artists spent more time in action than declaration - or rather, they

became one. Lets not forget Biko actually wrote what he liked.

4. Do you think that manifestos still have relevance in a century where
identities are constantly fracturing and societies are in constant flux?

For as long as there are personal and collective struggles, people will

dedicate their life or work to fighting them. And sometime they'd let us

know about it (and in this era of facebook and myspace, we're sure to hear

about it).

5. Do you have a personal manifesto as a DJ, cultural critic, writer, editor, etc.?

Yes, am busy doing it.

Elvira Dyangani Ose, Art and Architecture Historian, Chief Curator Arte InVisible 2009 Project (USA)

Sat, 01/03/2009 - 20:38 — editor

elvira What does the idea of a manifesto mean to you?
A manifesto is a statement, a public declaration of aims. A proclaiming for breaking silence or bring into light silenced events. I’m not just talking about declarations addressed to a crowd in a public space, but about powerful thoughts that could be read in a book in the intimacy our own room.

What are some of the manifestos that you consider significant for historical or personal reasons?
There are many of then that has special significant in History, to name a few, Martin Luther King's “I have a Dream” speech for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, any Steve Biko’s speech during his most active period in 1977 or his book I write what I like, as well as Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call me woman, Angela Davis’ Women, Race and Class, or other writings of author as Toni Morisson or Jamaica Kincaid.

Are there other forms of expression that could be interpreted as manifestos, a song, a work of fiction, a movie?
Music has been the vehicle of many manifestos. You can consider also Fela Kuti in this sense. Nonetheless, paraphrasing Grant Farred in talking to the intellectual vernacular, those rescuing popular culture to subvert dominant discourses or oppressed regimes are also creating manifestos. I would love to use his words to include the work of many visual artists, filmmaker and as I said before writers or poems. Examples are out there, decolonization and postcolonial period has produced many of them: Cahier d'un retour au pays natal or Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism Aimé Cesaire, Les Damnés de la terre, or Peau noire, masques blancs, Franz Fanon, and writings (and poems) of many others as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad’s, Forugh Farrokhzad, etc…

Do you think that manifestos still have relevance in a century where identities are constantly fracturing and societies are in constant flux?
Yes, they still have relevance nowadays. Moreover, considering manifestos as different forms of expressions, which form part of education and culture. It is not only for the consumption of an individual human being, but to his or her community.

Do you have a personal manifesto as a curator?
My main aim as curator can’t be consider a manifesto. In different projects I have conceptualized or collaborated, and those what are in progress now, I always aim to create a particular scenario -setting up a topic or a thesis- in which my figure disappear, leaving an open space to the dialogue between artist, art and audience.

Veronique Tadjo, academic/artist/writer (Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa)

Sat, 01/03/2009 - 20:43 — editor

tadjo- What does the idea/concept of a manifesto mean to you?
When I think of a manifesto, I see a group of like-minded people getting together to draw up ideas and beliefs on a burning issue. It usually contains a protest element in it.

- Is there a specific manifesto that you align to?
No.

- Or that has interested/influenced you?
Historically, the best known manifesto is in my opinion that of the Communist party. It is required reading. But I can’t say that I am a particularly avid reader/seeker of manifestos.

- Do you have a personal manifesto?
No and I would probably never have one because I am all too aware how transient things are. But I guess manifestos are valid at one point in time if you really feel strongly about an issue.

- Do you think that manifestos still have relevance to society at large or groups of people in the 21st century?
The question is to know whether people can still listen. The information overload makes it hard to have an impact if you don’t control the media or know the right outlets. Your message can easily get lost. The all point about a manifesto is to disseminate ideas. And that’s where politics and censorship come in.

Redas Dirzys, artist (Lithuania)

Thu, 01/15/2009 - 10:36 — editor

redas

Make Biennial Yourself - Manifesto

(Highly recommended to self-referential artists)

1. First you have to do is to overcome your own ego and to realize that Biennial is to be organized to show somebody else’s but not yours artworks and also to realize that there are some more artists in the world.
2. The format of the Biennial and priorities should be arranged in order you would like to participate in it yourself.
3. The topic of the Biennial should be based on the real problems you’ve faced in the last few biennials you’ve participated in.
4. Choose the site never used for such kind of events and not inhabited by your family and /or you parents.
5. Collect and spread around the funny and absurd stories about the site.
6. Carefully choose the target people to be hit during the event and the main PR campaign to be organized for.
7. Invite the people you would like to work with. Use all personal contacts you ever had.
8. Never invite the stars only because of their status. That never will work for you even if you’ll get more funds because of their names – all the profit will be finally absorbed by the forces standing behind them.
9. Never trust to advises of the institutions – only one form of compromise is acceptable – to use their money which should be twice or much bigger then to cover the presentation of their promotional part. And to arrange the counter part to it.
10. Try to avoid presentation of their theoretic discourse in whatever form: lectures, texts; or at least neutralize it by your own commentaries.
11. Remember, you are working for them and you’re the one to receive thanks from them. Don’t worry about their discomfort – they’ll never pay you enough to demand you to listen at their reproaches.
12. If you tend to receive municipal recourses you should promise spectacle to them.
13. If you tend to receive money from the State – promise press coverage and especially international one.
14. If you want to receive international funds - you should hide yourself under the institution and to prove its loyalty.
15. In all these three cases would be very helpful your lobbyist abilities.
16. If you have some more ideas to persecute with the topic of the biennial – that will work to gather the artists around. That does will be perfect if that ones would contradict to the previous three.
17. You should trust the artists invited and to let them do things they’re planning to do and they’ll do their best. Never point to the work, but discuss the strategy.
18. The catalogue of the Biennial points to those who hold the power – either you adoring them or criticizing.
19. The catalogue is the necessary point to attend the history for the biennial. Remember, people mostly remember the opening parties and catalogues.
20. The catalogue is the first step to the next Biennial.
21. Try to be sincere as only you’ll be able. And try to avoid really professional texts in the catalogue.
22. If there is nothing remaining to say – better remain silent. But that doesn’t means that there is no need to arrange one more Biennial in two years. At least there is a good opportunity to oppose to those who chattering too much.
DO YOU REALLY WANT SOMETHING TO SAY? WHOM FOR?

[Redas Diržys, 2005, Alytus]




>>http://www.alytusbiennial.com

h.arta group (Romania)

Wed, 01/07/2009 - 08:40 — editor

harta


To-do list
(a manifesto in progress) by h.arta group


• to struggle to achieve our independence (in the sense in which independence is one of the ways of acknowledging our dignity as women) but never to forget that this independence is not possible outside the networks of solidarity, friendship and love that ties people together across different places and different living conditions.

• to train our imagination so that we can envision possible spaces outside the existing norms and to believe that these spaces could be at some point reachable to any of us; to always let room for change.

• to read, see, discuss, learn more and add more nuances to the ways we see the world; to try to put into practice in our own lives the ideas that we found valuable.

• to try to find ways in which art, which although is many times taken over (partially or completely) by the neoliberal system, can still be used as a valuable, self-reflective and honest tool for analyses, critique and creation of alternatives.

• To learn how to ask the right questions.

• to use critique not for putting down people, but for creating ways to change what is wrong; to recognize our own mistakes.

• to learn more about herstory and to find models of people of any gender who resisted, in the course of history and in the entire world, to the pressures of racism, sexism and heteronormativity.

• to never be anyone's oppressor!

• to avoid passing by the unfairness around us with indifference.

• to map the borders between labour as compromise and alienation and labour as creation and self- determination and to find ways of expanding the territories of the latter.

• to analyse our interiorised capitalism, to sort out the real needs from the ones that are only consumerist chimeras and to change our ways of living accordingly.

• to see and acknowledge in our lives and in the lives of those around us, the small, everyday ruptures in the capitalist order and to use these anonymous, ephemeral facts as case studies from which to draw conclusions about possible ways to escape that order.

• to pay more attention to what we eat, drink, wear.

• to ignore sometimes the idea that “time is a commodity” and to allow ourselves in full peace of mind to spend a sunny afternoon in the park.

• to use our condition of being in the same time individuals and also members of a group that share so much of their time, ideas, work, affection with each other, to use these situation of being an “I” whose life is so inextricably linked to the lives of the others, in order to fight against the idea that society is moved forward by individualism and competition; to use the processes of constant negotiation that are constructing our friendship as a political statement.

• to discuss more with our families about the things that we believe in, even if this means discussing in contradictory.

• to dominate our fears, to avoid letting our fears of failure, our fears of not fitting into the values and structures promoted by the patriarchal order govern our lives.

• to expose the unfairness and the danger residing in the ideas which present the heterosexual nuclear family as the only space where women can have a fulfilled, meaningful and economically secured life and to find alternatives to these ideas; to acknowledge examples of communities which organize their lives outside these norms; too try to live according to our ideals, no matter how difficult it is.

• to look for solutions

• to find energy

• to look for inspiring examples

• to give back our support!



h.arta is a group of three women artists, Maria Crista, Anca Gyemant and Rodica Tache. We work together as h.arta group since 2001, when we founded h.arta space, a not-for-profit space in Timisoara. H.arta is sometimes a physical space, but many times its projects are taking different formats, changing contexts and locations. Our group is based on our friendship, on an everyday negotiation of the differences between us. We use friendship as a way of learning together how to acknowledge the different nuances of each situation, as a safe space, as a political statement about the power of solidarity. We are interested in topics ranging from knowledge production and (re)writing histories to gender issues in global capitalist times, all these in the context of working in various collaborations with persons and groups with different backgrounds.
http://www.hartagroup.blogspot.com/

Magdalena Moreno, Director South Project (Chile, Australia)

Sat, 01/03/2009 - 20:41 — editor

moreno • The idea/concept of a manifesto is like a double edged sword for me. On the one hand, the ability to articulate a particular belief, manifest a collective urgency is something that I find is an inspiring and uplifting moment of collective and public action and conviction. On the other hand, it does in many cases generate extreme viewpoints that do not allow for it to be in flux. And this is my concern. Situations are fluid, living culture is not static. Therefore manifestos can seem to date very quickly and once dated they can be meaningless unless they framed of that time, for that time.

• CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte) was a collective of 2 visual artists and 3 writers in Chile that emerges as a response to the dictatorship in the 70’s in Chile, when there was no freedom of speech and all galleries and museums became official “art spaces” where works endorsed by the military dictatorship could only be shown. This meant that a majority of the arts community (those that had not been killed) had to rethink how they would present their work and engage the public. CADA presented a series of actions in the public domain – at times these would no last more than 5 minutes – until the police came and dismantled it. The artists were usually alerted on time – and they ran... The manifesto I have submitted comes from an action CADA performed. They accessed a four military places and flew over the streets of Santiago releasing 400,000 pamphlets into the air with their manifesto. This action has stayed with me forever.

• I believe there is a time and place for manifestos, the most effective are those that come from grassroots and respond to an immediate situation – not those that are heavily ideological...

Preston Merchant, photographer, writer (South Africa)

Sat, 01/03/2009 - 20:34 — editor


Merchant.jpgAt the risk of spoiling the party, I will say that I am anti-manifesto. Manifestoes are creeds, statements of belief, lists of political or artistic positions, loyalty tests, exclusionary devices, frontal challenges, stiflers of debate, rallying cries, ideological touchstones, political entrenchments, club memberships, weapons against dissent, wilful provocations.

An artist's loyalty should be to his or her own integrity, to the intellectual and creative challenges, and to the work itself and not to a set of bullet points on a sheet of paper – which are political positions. Great art works against conventions, entrenched ideas, and grand pronouncements. It subverts expectations and creates new ones. It is the triumph of individual expression over groupthink.

You photograph (or paint, sculpt, write, carve) with all your ideology. It's there in what you create, unavoidable. It's unique. Embrace its fluid and ineluctable beauty in your work. That's your manifesto.

James Reed, artist (South Africa)

Sat, 01/03/2009 - 20:31 — editor


…‘The soul learns less in psychology than in psychologizing….It learns by searching for itself in whatever ideas come to it; it gains ideas by looking for them, by subjectivizing all questions, including the How? To give any direct answer to How?, betrays the activity of soul-making, which proceeds by psychologizing through all literal answers. As it gains ideas by looking for them, the soul loses ideas by putting them into practise in answer to How?’……
(Hillman, J 1989: 54)

I am looking for a method of engagement with the rich value of a dynamic currency which emerges in the world through conversing, listening, caring, and thinking between all living beings.
When the value of this currency can be declared publicly, I can imagine experiencing this as an invitation for all concerned living beings to join into this kind of relationship.
How can this valuable currency, between all living beings, manifest and sustain the full potential of this evolutionary force in these times of ecological crises?

How do we develop a wider personal and philosophical framework that cultivates a deep sense of personal and shared meanings?

How can we begin to realize our full potential as human beings and work as transformers of the materialist thought systems that shape our world?

How do we grow a culture of transforming our mode of consciousness?

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