It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
a group of artists who agree on general principles
A “contemporary” manifesto could perhaps be perceived as a naïvely optimistic call for collective action, as we live in a time that is more atomized and has far fewer cohesive artistic movements.
It may be precisely as a catch-all that it befits today’s field of artistic production more than ever, where—perhaps as a consequence of our collective disorientation—we have come to suspect modernity to be our antiquity; where the “Age of Manifestos” has long become the subject of our nostalgia—or not?
After all, the manifesto is a fundamentally transdisciplinary device, a history that is addressed in Martin Puchner’s recent publication, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes.7
the position that the meaning of life should be sought in the future
He breaks the history of manifestos down into three phases: first, the emergence of the manifesto as a recognizable political genre in the mid-nineteenth century (The Communist Manifesto, 1848); second, the creation of avant-garde movements through the explosion of art manifestos in the early twentieth century (Manifesto of Futurism, 1909); and third, the rivalry between the socialist manifesto and the avant-garde manifesto from the 1910s to the late 1960s.
Both Rouch and Agamben agree that being contemporary means to return to a present we have never been to, to resist the homogenization of time through ruptures and discontinuities.
What is suggested here then, and what Baudelaire’s “modern” seems to disregard, is a plurality of temporalities across space, a plurality of experiences and pathways through modernity that continues to this day, and on a truly global scale.
What is suggested here then, and what Baudelaire’s “modern” seems to disregard, is a plurality of temporalities across space, a plurality of experiences and pathways through modernity that continues to this day, and on a truly global scale.
(philosophy) a doctrine explaining phenomena by their ends or purposes
In his discussion of the word “revolution,” Göran Therborn has recently provided us with a striking indication of how this very shift from a cyclical conception of time to one of linearity and teleology took place in European thought: Take the word “revolution,” for example.
Defining contemporaneity as precisely “that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism,” he goes on to describe this contemporary figure as the one who is not blinded by the lights of his or her time or century: “The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness.”20
ideally perfect state; especially in its social and political and moral aspects
For one thing is certain: without some kind of a manifesto, we cannot write alternatives that are more than vague utopias; without a manifesto, we cannot conceive the future.5
anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form
It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
“The result is … an art forged in the image of the manifesto: aggressive rather than introverted; screaming rather than reticent; collective rather than individual.”8
He breaks the history of manifestos down into three phases: first, the emergence of the manifesto as a recognizable political genre in the mid-nineteenth century (The Communist Manifesto, 1848); second, the creation of avant-garde movements through the explosion of art manifestos in the early twentieth century (Manifesto of Futurism, 1909); and third, the rivalry between the socialist manifesto and the avant-garde manifesto from the 1910s to the late 1960s.
confirmation that some fact or statement is true through the use of documentary evidence
With regard to the manifesto—and its current absence—as a piece of printed matter, Zak Kyes (who designed the book for Manifesto Marathon) on this occasion said: The printed form of manifestos has always been inseparable from their radical agendas, which engage the act of publication and dissemination as sites for debate and exchange rather than mere documentation.
any process serving to define the shape of something
—Giorgio Agamben1 According to common-sense understanding, defining what we mean by the “contemporary” in art presents few problems: anything being produced in the present is always contemporary, and by the same token all art must necessarily have been contemporary at the time of its production and/or initial reception.
And here one encounters a paradox in the contemporary, just as the historicizing of modernism has itself been paradoxical: how can the ephemeral, the contingent, and the future be things of the past?
For this reason, it is prescient to revisit the clarity and articulation—or, in many cases, willful obfuscation—of published manifestos today, a time which is defined by a panoply of publications as voluminous as they are homogenous.
It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
an outward or token appearance or form that is deliberately misleading
And yet, it is the “unbuilt” or unfulfilled nature of the future that drives manifestos, and we can perhaps find some semblance of their utopian thrust and social imagination in projects that were for one reason or another unrealized.
something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred
Defining contemporaneity as precisely “that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism,” he goes on to describe this contemporary figure as the one who is not blinded by the lights of his or her time or century: “The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness.”20
In October 2008 this question was addressed in depth at “Manifesto Marathon,” a two-day “futurological congress” we organized in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Kensington Garden, London.4
determined by conditions or circumstances that follow
It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
the shape or manner in which things come together and a connection is made
For this reason, it is prescient to revisit the clarity and articulation—or, in many cases, willful obfuscation—of published manifestos today, a time which is defined by a panoply of publications as voluminous as they are homogenous.
The word “contemporary” is traceable to the Medieval Latin word, “contemporarius,” whose constituent parts “con” (“with”) and “temporarius” (“of time”) similarly point towards a relational meaning: “with/in time.”
lawfulness by virtue of being authorized or in accordance with law
What is it that makes the “contemporary” maybe worth rescuing from the charges I have outlined—of equivocation, default legitimacy, or just plain bad common sense?
The early twenty-first century is witnessing the emergence of a multiplicity of new centers, above all in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi, Beirut, Tehran, and Cairo, to give a few examples.
It may be precisely as a catch-all that it befits today’s field of artistic production more than ever, where—perhaps as a consequence of our collective disorientation—we have come to suspect modernity to be our antiquity; where the “Age of Manifestos” has long become the subject of our nostalgia—or not?
In his discussion of the word “revolution,” Göran Therborn has recently provided us with a striking indication of how this very shift from a cyclical conception of time to one of linearity and teleology took place in European thought: Take the word “revolution,” for example.
But as Tom McCarthy pointed out on the same occasion, the certainty of the manifesto still lends it a certain charm: What interests me about the manifesto is that it’s a defunct format.
Genuine groups of people, sometimes rallying around a person or a periodical, however short-lived, are conscious of what they are against and what they think they have in common—a history, Hobsbawm acknowledges, embedded in the last century.
If “contemporary art” has largely replaced “modern art” in the public consciousness, then it is no doubt due in part to the term’s apparent simplicity, its self-evidence.
For this reason, it is prescient to revisit the clarity and articulation—or, in many cases, willful obfuscation—of published manifestos today, a time which is defined by a panoply of publications as voluminous as they are homogenous.
in essence; at bottom or by one's (or its) very nature
After all, the manifesto is a fundamentally transdisciplinary device, a history that is addressed in Martin Puchner’s recent publication, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes.7
He breaks the history of manifestos down into three phases: first, the emergence of the manifesto as a recognizable political genre in the mid-nineteenth century (The Communist Manifesto, 1848); second, the creation of avant-garde movements through the explosion of art manifestos in the early twentieth century (Manifesto of Futurism, 1909); and third, the rivalry between the socialist manifesto and the avant-garde manifesto from the 1910s to the late 1960s.
become or cause to become undone by separating the fibers or threads of
It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
Echoing Hobsbawm, Tino Sehgal suggested a receptiveness to such unintended consequences to be a characteristic of the twenty-first century: I thought the twenty-first century would be, hopefully, more like a dialogue, more like conversation, and maybe that in itself is a kind of manifestation or whatever.
He is able to read history in unforeseen ways, to “cite it” according to a necessity that does not arise in any way from his will, but from an exigency to which he cannot not respond.
a concise explanation of the meaning of a word or phrase or symbol
By definition, a bridge has two ends, and as the artist Huang Yong Ping recently pointed out: “Normally we think a person should have only one standpoint, but when you become a bridge you have to have two.”17
Of course, attempts to pinpoint a decisive historical break between the modernist and the contemporary are mostly stillborn and will lead to nothing but interminable wrangling.
For every planned project that is carried out, hundreds of other proposals by artists, architects, designers, scientists, and other practitioners around the world stay unrealized and invisible to the public.
It seems urgent to remember certain roads not taken, and—in an active and dynamic, rather than nostalgic or melancholic way—transform some of them into propositions or possibilities for the future.
This has traditionally been the case for manifestos in the arts; however, it could be said that the twenty-first century art manifesto appears to be more introverted than aggressive, more reticent than screaming, and more individual than collective.
a list of matters to be taken up (as at a meeting)
With regard to the manifesto—and its current absence—as a piece of printed matter, Zak Kyes (who designed the book for Manifesto Marathon) on this occasion said: The printed form of manifestos has always been inseparable from their radical agendas, which engage the act of publication and dissemination as sites for debate and exchange rather than mere documentation.
And here one encounters a paradox in the contemporary, just as the historicizing of modernism has itself been paradoxical: how can the ephemeral, the contingent, and the future be things of the past?
The word “contemporary” is traceable to the Medieval Latin word, “contemporarius,” whose constituent parts “con” (“with”) and “temporarius” (“of time”) similarly point towards a relational meaning: “with/in time.”
(used of opinions and actions) far beyond the norm
And yet there seems to be an urgent desire for a radical change that may allow us to propose a new situation, to name the beginning of the next possibility rather than just look backwards.
It seems urgent to remember certain roads not taken, and—in an active and dynamic, rather than nostalgic or melancholic way—transform some of them into propositions or possibilities for the future.
precisely and clearly expressed or readily observable; leaving nothing to implication
Ever since the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes at the end of the seventeenth century, the modern has been placed in explicit opposition to some other force, whether temporal or ideological.
the movement of persons from one country or locality to another
Destinations connect and interweave to form networks of lines along which meaning is created though the variety of possibilities for the migration of forms.
The impossibility of capturing form in Boetti’s Cieli ad alta quota takes us to Giorgio Agamben’s “What Is the Contemporary?” which shows the one who belongs to his or her own time to be the one who does not coincide perfectly with it—to capture one’s moment is to be able to perceive in the darkness of the present this light which tries to join us and cannot: “the contemporary is the person who perceives the darkness of his time as something that concerns him, as something that never ...
It appears not to require any lengthy unraveling, of the kind that Baudelaire, for example, felt to be required of the “modern,” whose sense of “the ephemeral, the contingent” linked an orientation towards the future to a break with traditional values, and in particular to a break with a cyclical conception of time.2
an artifact that is one of the individual parts of which a composite entity is made up; especially a part that can be separated from or attached to a system
The word “contemporary” is traceable to the Medieval Latin word, “contemporarius,” whose constituent parts “con” (“with”) and “temporarius” (“of time”) similarly point towards a relational meaning: “with/in time.”
a phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon
It may be precisely as a catch-all that it befits today’s field of artistic production more than ever, where—perhaps as a consequence of our collective disorientation—we have come to suspect modernity to be our antiquity; where the “Age of Manifestos” has long become the subject of our nostalgia—or not?
For this reason, it is prescient to revisit the clarity and articulation—or, in many cases, willful obfuscation—of published manifestos today, a time which is defined by a panoply of publications as voluminous as they are homogenous.
Echoing Hobsbawm, Tino Sehgal suggested a receptiveness to such unintended consequences to be a characteristic of the twenty-first century: I thought the twenty-first century would be, hopefully, more like a dialogue, more like conversation, and maybe that in itself is a kind of manifestation or whatever.
the historic period preceding the Middle Ages in Europe
It may be precisely as a catch-all that it befits today’s field of artistic production more than ever, where—perhaps as a consequence of our collective disorientation—we have come to suspect modernity to be our antiquity; where the “Age of Manifestos” has long become the subject of our nostalgia—or not?
In January–December 1993 as part of Museum in Progress, Alighiero e Boetti made a variation of his work Cieli ad alta quota in which six versions of the watercolor drawings were published in Austrian Airlines’ in-flight magazine Sky Lines.18
one of a number of things from which only one can be chosen
For one thing is certain: without some kind of a manifesto, we cannot write alternatives that are more than vague utopias; without a manifesto, we cannot conceive the future.5
manifesto
