Tuesday 26 October 2010

Towards A New Manifesto [part 1]

Extracted from a recent dialogue/discussion/arguements erupting over the
"[...] task (or one of them) must be to repurpose the building (and, indeed, UCF in general) in accordance with our own desires. To write over the rules that currently bind us from such simple acts as putting things on the walls or getting into the studios freely.

To this end, I want to produce some kind of text a bit like this from the Situationist/Lettrist bulletin Potlacht: http://www.notbored.org/improvements.html :But for the performance centre."

Here is my responce, written over several days and reserach into the Separatist, Autonomous, National Liberation Movements, Non-Violent Revolution, The Singing Revolutions, Sovereignty, Reistsance Movements , Linguistic Right etc.

Xiipal Lapiix
26 October at 21:23
Apologies for the late reply to the continuing dialogue [flexes finger muscles]

We have stepped into the future. From living in the tight grip of the impossible, the unavoidable, the unchangable and the inevitable, we now have stepped through, are stepping through, into Our future of the open plains of possibility. Or so the thoughts are set to 'wishful' and 'idealistic' in my mind: and do not presume that we are not aware of the history, ethos and modes of production that UCF deploy. However, it appears you are still suggesting that we should accept defeat, surrender, 'give in'. sooner rather than later? And forsake such a deliciously affecting socio-political climes where change is a daily, hourly occurance?

No!

Yet I heed your signs of just how unsustainable the ravenous student satiation. I work through the medium of energy [hold it: no string-theory or quarks here, and no Totnesian earfulls either). The energy of the student corp.us at this very moment is still brimming with the vim and vitality drummed up from the Final Festival. How can we deny them their outlets of expression? Why should we suppress in our peer-less glances, their need to vent? I fear that any peer-enforced suppresion will only serve to cause a rising pressure in the youth of the Performance-Polis. The masses and the youth need such acts of spectacle and radical actions and statement in order to experience a catharsis of their own pent up energies. It is our duty and position to enact their repressed needs through controlled action. Their energy, like mine, needs to be channeled and diverted from the flow of an explosion towards constancy and progression- on Our and [future student] Theirs.

Surely The Old World taught us that though the World(s) continue to reign under the One True System of free trade, there are still and will continue to be, those whom seek to forge another path, a new way? [The Elmhursts, Karl Marx via Lenin, Rudolph Laban, Mahatma Gandhi, Commandante Marcos, Che Guevara, Superhero Vigilante Groups in the USA etc. and, last but not least, our great mother and father Leonard & Dorothy [and Tagore, yes let's not forget him just yet] who believed there was another way for society to function. Their success and failure is discussion whole a separate argument- but that is not the point I am raising- but rather that they TRIED. That they attempted what all others around them told them was a waste of time, impossible, it'll never take off etc.

Indeed, it should be Our concern and aimed target to find 'another way', other to, and perhaps steered from, the behemoth Capitalism- yet there is the taller giant upon which his side effects of alienation, disenchantment, exclusion et al crouch on- that of Order and its antithesis Disorder/Chaos. Granted, such dichotomies have little place now in our supposed 'fluid' state of post-modernity, thanks to the deconstruction of the forward slash, yet flash forward and the spectres of their once-dominance persist; bleed through the layered socio-philosophical wallpaper of whose presence we take for granted, without peeling back.

My continued research and practice into [reverse] Freemasonry and it's roots in the 'founding of America' have provoked the questions of the formation of the American psyche, the rise of Freemasonry in the US and its prevalent symbols in major advertising and global banks. The symbolic exertion of their power and influence is present everywhere (even on the god damn Oreo cookies I dunk in my tea). Their hierarchical systems of supreme patriarchy I also find present in the World of UCF and need to be addressed and realigned. We must hold Ourselves back from being subsumed and sublated into the 'progressive' dialectical march of Hegel's helmsmen in the upper echelons of the Tremough.

UCF aren't playing anyone's game but their own- Agreed, the European Regional Development Fund may have and still be pulling a string or two, but UCF are no passive puppets, no muppets- they are their own masters, directors, Jim Hensons- all major academic institutions become such behemoths of self-satisfied parochial autonomy- they become metropolis' of research and knowledge capable of wielding immense power in the community and are able to coerce every move of their context. How long will a suit-donning student agent survive in their systemic machinations?

However, the fortress walls of our particular UCF are crumbling, the very bricks are rearranging and the mortar is supple and prime for the reshaping of All Our Futures.

We should NOT lose ourselves in trifle squabbles when this precious time all around us is waving in front of our faces, beckoning progress and in its double gesture, smiling in signal of her desiring radical action AND responsible, rational interrelations.

And with this word, 'interrelations' I hereby make my sentiments, demands and battle lines clear; that DCA MUST retain its own sense of artistic, social and hermeneutic integrity- it must remain as a separate, autonomous entity, capable to making its own decisions and and choices as to its future. And with this line being draw, in the process of drawing itself but with Our hands, will We seek to engage with their World as a friend, ally and comrade, but never as higher authority whose claw controls Our World. This is what happened in the past, in the Old World. This was the cause- one of the many- of our downfall and flight from the paradise we once knew. Must this Future we find our selves in, repeat itself into dissolving Our Past, repeating a perpetual Present?

Forgive me for this ad hominem, all return gladly accepted with refund and refute, but are you suggesting that you would willingly, without grudge, start to fund your practice from the financial uptake of other commercial work?

@Harris~ You offer only the frame of the situation, which is known to all and understood as being the given- but you bring no directions, no supplications. no artillery of your own; what plans would you propose? How do we, as McDeath says, "work with the system, not within it"? You propose that we adopt the manners and customs of these 'natives' but at what price? At the sacrifice of artistic integrity; I hear a cry from the back there – a loss of historical links, attempting to plier-cut the chains of our now 'ancestral' heritage.

@Zoot~ Zoot- I'm am sure those cliff-hanging posing models we're chosen because they erected walls, but rather for the erection of other exclusive appendages...

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