Clusterfuck Manifesto

World BBC news commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Futurist manifesto with a segment on all that followed.

Of course, the publication of a manifesto is now seen as impotent at worst, and I was surprised to hear of at least one that I found exciting despite myself. Of course, in film, the Dogme manifesto felt necessary at the time and I love the films it produced. But the one that got into my daily thoughts enough to make me google it eight hours later is Stuckism. One of the principle engineers is British musician, novelist, and artist Billy Childish, whom I know mostly from his records: unadorned, spirited punk rock.

As someone who believes it is inherently healthy to have diverse means -- in other words, for there to be alternatives -- it's funny to read the manifesto making such propositions as painters should know how to fucking paint. Those are my words. If you don't see why this position is radical, and not at all reactionary, you aren't even familiar with SNL parodies of the art world, never mind the art itself.

This is not an ad for the know-nothingism of SNL, either. At least what I've seen of it.

*

What made the BBC piece linger with me is the current context. I dislike the word meme in this context, but I was thinking of the 25 things facebook note I wrote about in an earlier entry. It's being called a meme. I'll just call it a note.

The notes that most intrigued me -- Devin's, Anton's, and Bonnie's -- used apparently random autobiographical details to create a sort of soft manifesto -- a statement of beliefs, an invitation to understand why they like what they like and why they do what they do on something more than a superficial level. These notes are unlike a manifesto, in that their "do not's" tended to be concealed. To suggest why we pursue a course is also to suggest why we refused to take another.

(I note here that I didn't read everyone's notes -- if I happened to see it pass through my daily updates, I clicked, and, if you're my friend and not on this list, it's because it's either a given that you're in the above company, or that I can't remember it, or that your list has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Or that I never noticed you posted it in the first place. Despite appearances, my facebook usage is cursory. I'm sure it was great stuff.)

In fact, we might anticipate facebook precipitating a return to the manifesto: one can hardly read Charlie's page, for example, without coming away with the notion that he is making a case for certain decisions to be made about how we live our lives and what we put into our bodies. The febrile see this as arrogance, and perhaps would suggest that we ought never to take positions and believe in them unless they are so in line with the mainstream that they appear invisible. Work hard! Be good to yourselves!

It is a disruption of a bland middle class numbness to say, sorry kids, certain things are healthy. And certain things are not. And it's not about your subjective opinion on these matters. We can stake our claim in relative terms, but still do it with conviction.