The beginning of the end. My journey at Norwich University of the Arts has just two more units and then I will have finished a six year period as a mature student, starting in Year 0, all the way through my BA, Graduation and now a Masters. I have found it quite an examination into how my mind works creatively and an exploration into expressing ideas through the medium of art. It has been tough at times, tough balancing everything and trying to understand what is expected of me but also what I expect of myself. It has also been a lot of fun too. As I near the end I want to bring back more of the fun and joyfulness I experienced at the beginning and this is something I wanted to express through my Manifesto. A revised version of the one I wrote at the beginning of my Masters last year.
Having set out at the beginning of last year with a 10 point Manifesto, I really wanted to try to keep to the various points I had highlighted. So when it came to this year it was an opportunity to revise the list and define even further what I felt was important to me creatively and as a way to approach this final year, and hopefully beyond. The list is below:
Manifesto
_noun_
A public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.
1. Continue exploring methods of and nuances of language and communication, in particular non-verbal communication, including some of the following methods; semaphore, sign language, smoke signals, Morse Code and Braille.
2. To NOT know what I am going to do.
3. To have FUN in creating. Bring some 2Faulty to my MA.
4. To try and learn/research through making. Not spend too much time in front of a screen.
5. To explore areas of creativity I have shied away from through my BA. ie Print, whether it be screen, intaglio, etching, woodcut, drypoint, etc.
6. To PAINT MORE. Look at previous workshops - Projection and painting/overlaying
images - Painting a detail of a larger painting or detail from Instruction led 3D items.
7. To find out WHAT I WANT TO SAY and how much I want to reveal.
8. Look to combine my knowledge and experience of communication in a new way.
9. To push myself.
10. To be braver, to question, to be exposed.
I wanted to very much retain the fun and enjoyment element. And make that happen more. But also I wanted incorporate what I feel is something that I have realised is a key part of how I am wired, playing with language and using it in a way to communicate, understand, question and confuse. I also wanted to distill these points down to slogans and show them as statements printed on T-shirts. By doing this I can make the point more succinctly and also it uses my Art Direction skills to make them statements or 'Truisms' as created by Jenny Holzer, originally in 1978.
Holzer began creating these works in 1977, when she was a student in an independent study program. She hand-typed numerous "one liners," or Truisms, which she has likened, partly in jest, to a "Jenny Holzer's Reader's Digest version of Western and Eastern thought." She typeset the sentences in alphabetical order and printed them inexpensively, using commercial printing processes. She then distributed the sheets at random and pasted them up as posters around the city. Her Truisms eventually adorned a variety of formats, including T-shirts and baseball caps. (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63755).
Although these were originally created as 'one liners' the meaning is very much up to the reader and how they interpret them. Holzer's Truisms have over the years been applied to all manner of items and displayed in various ways. Each positioning of a statement creating a new meaning when applied to a signifier, whether it be a neon sign in Times Square, New York or on an item of clothing. The message can be very specific to a cause or political leaning. Although I actually prefer to read the list of original Truisms in their purest form, it can be very thought provoking when a certain message has a carrier and the meaning can become new and pertinent. It was with this in mind I was keen to create a set of T-Shirts with my messages on. For style I wanted them short, shouty and punchy. Being someone who grew up in the 80's the 'CHOOSE LIFE' T-Shirts were very prominent and I decided to use this as a style guide.
As I had created these visuals prior to our first session of the year where the whole of the MA cohort I wasn't sure how I could develop the idea, apart from creating a T-shirt for real. We worked in small groups, ideally with people we didn't know to help the interaction. Although I couldn't make a real T-shirt I did take a sheet of paper and sculpt a version. The results of this session were displayed on the Danish Steps in Duke Street Riverside and everyone had the opportunity to review the outcomes, of which there were many and quite diverse. There did seem an overriding commonality in that of 'Play', which was good to see and be encouraged.
Before we all started work various Tutors presented a Manifesto they particularly liked.
Roter Su (Film and Moving Image) started with the 'Free Cinema' Manifesto, created by Lyndsay Anderson and Lorenza Mazzetti which stated:
These films were not made together; nor with the idea of showing them together. But when they came together, we felt they had an attitude in common. Implicit in this attitude is a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and the significance of the everyday.'No film can be too personal...
The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments.
Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim.
An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude.'
Marina Velez Vago (Fine Art) referenced John Baldessari's Manifesto 'I will not make any more boring art' - Baldessari destroyed by burning most of his previous painting work and wrote the line a thousand times, as if in punishment for his previous work.
Desmond Brett (Fine Art) discussed the International Peripatetic Sculptors Society (IPSS). They use 'playful adventures through urban territories that use action-research and performance methods as a form of intervention into spaces of ‘everyday life’ ...
...By combining various peripatetic methodologies, the activities of the IPSS work to unshackle the chains of codified and conditioned behaviour to realise the possibility of free and spontaneous creation. (https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/11646/).
Alex Crocker (Fine Art) brought the artist Rose Wylie to our attention. In 1999 she wrote that 'I like to my work to be like something, not look like paintings...' In an interview in Artnet (2020) Wylie commented 'It’s not to do with the psychology or the plot or anything, it’s just the visual excitement,” she says. “Something stops me in my tracks, and I think I’ll go make a drawing of it because I simply want to remember it.”
Dean Bowman (Games) chose to talk about 'The Real Art Manifesto' (2006). Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are new media artists who have embraced realtime 3D game technology as their artistic medium of choice. Realtime 3D is the most remarkable new creative technology since oil on canvas. It is much too important to be wasted on computer games alone. This manifesto is a call-to-arms for creative people (including, but not limited to, video game designers and fine artists) to embrace this new medium and start realizing its enormous potential. As well as a set of guidelines that express our own ideas and ideals about using the technology.
1. Realtime 3D is a medium for artistic expression. 2. Be an author. 3. Create a total experience. 4. Embed the user in the environment. 5. Reject dehumanisation: tell stories. 6. Interactivity wants to be free. 7. Don’t make modern art. 8. Reject conceptualism. 9. Embrace technology. 10. Develop a punk economy.
Rob Nicol (Illustration) read a elements of the Bruce Mau 'Incomplete Manifesto for Growth'.
It was quite long and needs further reading to understand many of the points. There were many that resonated very much with me. Here are some, with a link to the full list.
3. PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUTCOME.
9. BEGIN ANYWHERE.
15. ASK STUPID QUESTIONS.
28. MAKE NEW WORDS.
34. MAKE MISTAKES FASTER.
37. BREAK IT, STRETCH IT, BEND IT, CRUSH IT, FOLD IT.
41. LAUGH.
These were all inspiring and great to hear. I like to think I can take an element of most of them forward to my Manifesto and hopefully practice.
I decided to see to get one of my T-shirts actually printed. I may do a whole set. I felt this one is the most relevant at the moment...
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