26 hod., compulsory

Key Themes: Underground, The Manifesto, Declarations, Participation, Surveillance, Social engagement, Identity Politics

The manifesto is a philosophical and theoretical framework within which deeds or experiments can and are performed in support of its proclamations. It provides a platform, radical in how it instates itself at the moment of its presentation, distribution, or publication, its incubation having taken place prior to it's formulation. What is characteristic for the avant-garde art manifesto is its intention to serve as a tool to initiate a paradigm shift in the approach to both the creation and the consumption of art, while having, at the moment of its inception, already bore witness to its establishment as a movement. When the avant-garde manifesto is written, there is already a body of work that represents what is being proclaimed. What is being proclaimed is a message intrinsic, or at the very least carried by the works that are made in its name, including those preceding its actual utterance. In addition the manifesto serves as a call to action, an invitation to join a movement with the potential to initiate change. Where, or whether, a paradigm shift takes place along this axis, and to what degree, varies from manifesto to manifesto. As with the political manifesto, the art manifesto is meant to cause a fracture or fissure through the representation of a communal body which speaks in the first-person plural, 'we'.