Thursday 24 January 2008

The Neo-Futurist Manifesto (1st draft)

hello fellow futrists,

here is my first draft for your perusal, as joe requested its less political rhetoric/swagger/heroics and more dada absurdist than the original. hope i've captured enough of the right flavour of both for you ...
P.S. REMEMBER FORMATTING ISN'T EXACTLY HOW IT SHOULD BE, plus titles should be in bold, but couldn't work out how to do it!


1. THIS CELEBRATION IS FOR USE BY THE ADDRESSEE(S) ONLY. IF YOU ARE THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, PLEASE NOTIFY US IMMEDIATELY
In the dead of noise all we can hear above our heartbeats is the screaming silence of the
swarm.
Lull.
Mutation and recombination.
Every throng is all and constant.

2. SPEEDDATING
We have crawled sclerotically into the near present. Terrorised by our own futures, denying our own song.
Commoner.
Reproducer.
Feverish cities.
We must embrace the virus. Disease and risk. Multiply. Feed the urban appetite for collapse.
Mass.

3. BY THE LOOK OF THINGS FROM THE GROUND
We intend to proclaim our failures, celebrate self-loathing, and joyously affirm our lack.
We will set ourselves up to fall – blissfully.

4. CHOOSING PAINT DRYING; THE END IS POSSIBLY IN SIGHT
Our barbarous beauty is swathed by a utility fog – the artist must throw up the hard yellow veil of health & safety: Danger’s song will be sung. NOW, now we intend to holler our passion for vigorous incompetence. We have pre-put ourselves. Clamour for the irregularised space of unaccountability, where we are free to open ourselves up to dreams and deliriums.

5. GLITTER OF KNIVES; CONSENSUS
Do not tolerate. Nothing should be tolerated. Repressive tolerance leads to stress, stress leads to conflict. Tragedy, pain a human becomes or peril Unrequited, further enduring.

6. OFFROADING
Deals await you or your Gold. We are all disabled by our lust. Be inspired by the dysfunctional consumer. He cannot help himself.
We don’t know what we wished, we have no vision, we only see the searing colours.
We reject the quest for redemptive purity in this age of environmental apocalypse,
and magnificently wrestle our own filth in the wet labs of executive swamps. Ours is a dirty revolt.

7. NEXT UP
We will enchant the passage of the dragging route.
Delight the creeping pace of travel.

8. PACIFIER DELIVERABLE KITS
Art will not save the world.

9 comments:

  1. Fantastic job!

    My first thought is that there needs to be one or two more statements at the end. I can see why you would think that "Art will not save the world" is a good ending, but intuitively it feels incomplete. Can't tell you why...

    Maybe just one word will do it?

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  2. do you mean more statements under heading 8? or make it up to 10 bullets?

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  3. I mean make it up to 9 or 10 headings.

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  4. how about this for the penultimate bullet?!


    8. MAYBE JUST ONE WORD WILL DO IT?
    Niche-sexuality.
    Sound-Bitten.
    Creative-Quarter.
    Architectural-vanity-project.
    Each-gesture-serves-to-commemorate-the-last.

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  5. Bloody brilliant.

    I love "Art will not save the world" as a parting shot.

    Somehow I read 'pacifier deliverable kits' as 'pacifier delivery kits' which sounds like one of those zeitgeist-definitions from Generation X.

    M

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  6. Hello t'is Harry here.
    I love the opening section with its references to swarms and the throng, it really sums up the modern city for me, countless individual bodies seem to act as one gradually mutating/evolving mass. In our own individual world/space but somehow connected to this larger mass of activity.
    I also really like the talk of the virus and feeding the citys appetite for collapse, seeing the city as some all consuming, inexhorable beast that leaves in its wake a vast amount of debris and destruction, but which we can use as the material for creation.
    I think it works really well compared to the futurists manifesto where they were excited about new technology, speed, modernisation but here we are at a point where this progression has maybe gone too far and we are now celebrating its failures...? Possibly. I must admit I had to read it a few times and get the old dictionary out as I'm not the most articulate of chaps but, I hope my comments make sense and are of some use!!
    Harry

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  7. thanks harry, its good that it is understood in the right way - the futurists were celebrating the mechanical and we have now moved on to the nano / biotechnical, so i wanted to give a sense of that.

    i also wanted to allude to the fact that our inner-lives are getting ever-more attention, the pathology of it.

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