Art: A Manifesto

I wrote this manifesto for a poli-sci class in college. It is one of the pieces going into the upcoming MEGAZINE.

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Art alters you.

While the artifacts are impermanent, there is an emotional force in art that lingers. A force that contains an experience that transcends rationality. A force that moves through, with, and against you in waves. When it resonates, the force seeks to replicate itself. It becomes contagious. These “contagious” experiences travel between us as we are compelled to mimic them, and leave traces of themselves wherever they go.

1. Fragility

The innermost layer of personal experience is vulnerable, and it is pre-ideological. Our ideologies serve to alternately fortify & activate this primal experience. Art appeals to this core, striking the pre-ideological, the subconscious, and the conscious in tandem.

2. Fortification

We are not separate, only less exposed. When our fragile core is threatened, it requires fortification. Proportionate to this fortification is the threshold of force required to access that core. The greater the force, the more violent it becomes.

Occasionally, a thing fortifies beyond practical means of communication, appearing separate from nature. They become something Else. This “Elseness” is toxic to communities.

3. Action & Consequence

Every action begs a complex web of reactions. Because resonant forces are contagious at a precognitive level, we must do our best to recognize the effects of what we do.

Elseness inhibits this recognition. When emotional force is absorbed by fortification, it cannot reach the core. Only the most violent forces make it through. It is not surprising then that Elseness produces both apathy and violence.

4. The Nature of Alteration

In art, there are forces which are expansive and forces which are reductive.

Expansive art is a pointer to that which is presently unattainable, yet recognizable. It helps to connect our experiences into more complex, ever-changing patterns.

Reductive art does not offer new connections, or question old ones. It simply revisits already-solved riddles for the pleasure of having solved them, and worse, it dulls the desire to solve new riddles. The complete consonance of their resonance discourages growth.

5. Embracing Artful Dissonance

When art directs our perceptions toward something outside of the threshold of what we know, it sometimes creates a dissonance. Growth occurs in this dissonance between what we know and what we feel. This liminal space is often uncomfortable, but it is also desirable. In this space, we can briefly observe the emotional forces that haunt us--both as individuals and as communities--as they seize ephemeral form.

Just as clay, pigments, and sounds are mediums of art, art is a medium of communication. As social creatures, we all have the capacity and the responsibility to strive for critical growth. As artists, it is our vital job to create art that communicates dynamically, to guide a suspended experience of the liminal, and to release toxic Elseness from our social webs.

“The goal of thought is not to continue the blind domination of nature and humans, but to point toward reconciliation.” - Theodor Adorno