Textual Poaching

L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp's taken Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, drawn a mustache on it and included the caption "L.H.O.O.Q." (which in the French pronunciation resembles a mild sexual innuendo). Now, why would Duchamp do this?

The Grey Album by Danger Mouse

Danger Mouse has taken the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album and created a series of sample-based songs called the Grey Album. Why would Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) do this?

Concession by obsession_inc

Take a look at it here.

obsession_inc has authored a fan-fiction novel based on the character Christine Everhart (the Vanity Fair journalist Tony Stark has a one night stand with during the first Iron Man film). Why would she do this?

Rebirth of a Nation by DJ Spooky 

Watch a clip from it here.

DJ Spooky has created an audio-visual remix of D.W. Griffith's (in)famous film Birth of a Nation (1915). Why would he do this? 

Sound familiar?

This is King's Row (1942), directed by Sam Wood, music composed by Erich Korngold. Listen to the music in the opening credits...

Manifesto Examples

I mentioned in class that I would provide some examples of manifestos for you to sift through while preparing your own. Notice that underlying each of the following discussions of art is a particular understanding (and usually a critique) of society. Consider this. Why do you value this particular thing in art? Is it undervalued in today's culture? Are there greater--political, social, economic, cultural--factors that would contribute to the undervaluing of what you feel makes great art? If so, address those challenges, and then address how your art might engage with and overcome them.

First, the following is the manifesto from Dogme 95--a group of Danish filmmakers who, dissatisfied with contemporary cinema's reliance on big budgets and technological wizardry (and the inherently bourgeois ideology that informs such productions), forwarded an idea of a purer cinema. Here tis'.

Dogme 95

Dogme 95 is a collection of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995. 

Dogme 95 has the expressed goal of countering "certain tendencies" in the cinema today.

Dogme 95 is a rescue action! 

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck. 

Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby… false! 

To Dogme 95, cinema is not individual! 

Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratization of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the medium becomes, the more important the avant-garde. It is no accident that the phrase "avant-garde" has military connotations. Discipline is the answer… we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition! 

Dogme 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as The Vow of Chastity [see below]. 

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticized to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded. 

The "supreme" task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the "100 years" have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated?… By the individual artist's free choice of trickery? 

Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters' inner lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not "high art". As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise. 

The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love. 

To Dogme 95 the movie is not illusion! 

Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.

Dogme 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an indisputable set of rules know as The Vow of Chastity.

***

The Vow of Chastity 

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by Dogme 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.) 
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.) 
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden. 
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur. 
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.) 
8. Genre movies are not acceptable. 
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm. 
10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. 

Thus I make my Vow of Chastity. 

Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995 

On behalf of Dogme 95 

Lars von Trier         Thomas Vinterberg

So, that's one approach...

Here's another, from the Situationist International--a group of European artists/activists who were dissatisfied with the the opaque, hierarchical, dogmatic, bureaucratic (etc.) nature of contemporary art, and sought to introduce more spontaneity, transparency, activism, radical collectivism (etc.) into art. Pay particular attention to the italicized portion below.

The existing framework cannot subdue the new human force that is increasing day by day alongside the irresistible development of technology and the dissatisfaction of its possible uses in our senseless social life.

Alienation and oppression in this society cannot be distributed amongst a range of variants, but only rejected en bloc with this very society. All real progress has clearly been suspended until the revolutionary solution of the present multiform crisis.

What are the organisational perspectives of life in a society which authentically "reorganises production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers"? Work would more and more be reduced as an exterior necessity through the automation of production and the socialisation of vital goods, which would finally give complete liberty to the individual. Thus liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people, humankind will exude a new surplus value, incalculable in money because it would be impossible to reduce it to the measure of waged work. The guarantee of the liberty of each and of all is in the value of the game, of life freely constructed. The exercise of this ludic recreation is the framework of the only guaranteed equality with non-exploitation of man by man. The liberation of the game, its creative autonomy, supersedes the ancient division between imposed work and passive leisure.

The church has already burnt the so-called witches to repress the primitive ludic tendencies conserved in popular festivities. Under the existing dominant society, which produces the miserable pseudo-games of non-participation, a true artistic activity is necessarily classed as criminality. It is semi-clandestine. It appears in the form of scandal.

So what really is the situation? It's the realisation of a better game, which more exactly is provoked by the human presence. The revolutionary gamesters of all countries can be united in the S.I. to commence the emergence from the prehistory of daily life.

Henceforth, we propose an autonomous organisation of the producers of the new culture, independent of the political and union organisations which currently exist, as we dispute their capacity to organise anything other than the management of that which already exists.

From the moment when this organisation leaves the initial experimental stage for its first public campaign, the most urgent objective we have ascribed to it is the seizure of U.N.E.S.C.O. United at a world level, the bureaucratisation of art and all culture is a new phenomenon which expresses the deep inter- relationship of the social systems co-existing in the world on the basis of eclectic conservation and the reproduction of the past. The riposte of the revolutionary artists to these new conditions must be a new type of action. As the very existence of this managerial concentration of culture, located in a single building, favours a seizure by way of putsch; and as the institution is completely destitute of any sensible usage outside our subversive perspective, we find our seizure of this apparatus justified before our contemporaries. And we will have it. We are resolved to take over U.N.E.S.C.O., even if only for a short time, as we are sure we would quickly carry out work which would prove most significant in the clarification of a long series of demands.

What would be the principle characteristics of the new culture and how would it compare with ancient art?

Against the spectacle, the realised situationist culture introduces total participation.

Against preserved art, it is the organisation of the directly lived moment.

Against particularised art, it will be a global practice with a bearing, each moment, on all the usable elements. Naturally this would tend to collective production which would be without doubt anonymous (at least to the extent where the works are no longer stocked as commodities, this culture will not be dominated by the need to leave traces.) The minimum proposals of these experiences will be a revolution in behaviour and a dynamic unitary urbanism capable of extension to the entire planet, and of being further extensible to all habitable planets.

Against unilateral art, situationist culture will be an art of dialogue, an art of interaction. Today artists - with all culture visible - have become entirely separated from society, just as they are separated from each other by competition. But faced with this impasse of capitalism, art has remained essentially unilateral in response.

This enclosed era of primitivism must be superseded by complete communication.

At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a producer-consumer of total culture creation, which will help the rapid dissolution of the linear criteria of novelty. Everyone will be a situationist so to speak, with a multidimensional inflation of tendencies, experiences, or radically different "schools" - not successively, but simultaneously.

We will inaugurate what will historically be the last of the crafts. The role of amateur-professional situationist - of anti-specialist - is again a specialisation up to the point of economic and mental abundance, when everyone becomes an "artist," in the sense that the artists have not attained the construction of their own life. However, the last craft of history is so close to the society without a permanent division of labour, that when it appeared amongst the S.I., its status as a craft was generally denied.

To those who don't understand us properly, we say with an irreducible scorn: "The situationists of which you believe yourselves perhaps to be the judges, will one day judge you. We await the turning point which is the inevitable liquidation of the world of privation, in all its forms. Such are our goals, and these will be the future goals of humanity."

And lastly, we have a significantly less philosophically-sophisticated (and definitely less radically revolutionary) Manifesto for the New Sincerity, drafted in 2006 by some dude who has a podcast, but nonetheless is (I think) on to something (as evidenced here, here, and here).

Word came down from America's commentary class around September 13th, 2001. Irony was dead. In what would come to be called "The Post 9-11 World," there would be no room for that particularly distasteful form of discourse. It was to be replaced by soft, sweet sincerity. Somewhere, an eagle shed a single tear.

Of course, reports of irony's death were greatly exaggerated. A few weeks after the tragedy, irony made a heroic, if modest, resurgence. Great exemplars of the form like The Onion and Jon Stewart went back to their grindstones. Hipsters in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn slapped on their Roos and drowned what was left of their trauma in Pabst Blue Ribbon. Within two years, America was watching The Simple Life and basking in contempt.

The great irony of all this is that the pundits and prognosticators who declared irony dead three years ago were absolutely right. Irony is dead. Their account of it's death, however, was greatly flawed. Irony died not in a fiery explosion, but slowly, quietly, of old age.

And it wasn't replaced by a return of the old guard. This time around, there's a new cultural paradigm, itching to get in the ballgame.

This radical new ethos has a name. It's called: The New Sincerity.

What is The New Sincerity? Think of it as irony and sincerity combined like Voltron, to form a new movement of astonishing power. Or think of it as the absence of irony and sincerity, where less is (obviously) more. If those strain the brain, just think of Evel Knievel.

Let's be frank. There's no way to appreciate Evel Knievel literally. Evel is the kind of man who defies even fiction, because the reality is too over the top. Here is a man in a red-white-and-blue leather jumpsuit, driving some kind of rocket car. A man who achieved fame and fortune jumping over things. Here is a real man who feels at home as Spidey on the cover of a comic book. Simply put, Evel Knievel boggles the mind.

But by the same token, he isn't to be taken ironically, either. The fact of the matter is that Evel is, in a word, awesome. His jumpsuit looks great. His stunts were amazing. As he once said of his own life: "I've had every airplane, every ship, every yacht, every racehorse, every diamond, and probably, with the exception of two or three, every woman I wanted in my lifetime. I've lived a better life than any king or prince or president." And as patently ridiculous as those words are, they're pretty much true.

So now, dear reader, you're in on the Next Big Thing. Something more Hedwig than Rocky Horror; more Princess Bride than Last Unicorn; more Bruce Lee than Chuck Norris. Something new, and beautiful. So join us.

Our greeting: a double thumbs-up. Our credo: "Be More Awesome." Our lifestyle: "Maximum Fun." Throw caution to the wind, friend, and live The New Sincerity.

 There are plenty more examples to explore--and these are just written ones. Remember RIP! A Remix Manifesto? Be open to the possibility of your manifesto taking another form or being expressed in different media (that is, IF the concepts you're communicating warrant such an approach).

Movement Manifesto

We didn't have a chance to discuss the upcoming assignment in class today. So to begin, here is the assignment description from the syllabus.

Students will work in groups of 3 - 4 to conceptualize a new artistic movement (or approach or style or genre), write a manifesto that expresses the movement’s objectives/motivations/characteristics, and create art (visual art, poetry, narrative, film, music, etc.) that demonstrate the significance of said movement.The form of the manifesto should compliment its content. The art created can be lots of littler things or one big thing, but it must clearly exemplify the concepts introduced in the manifesto. Students are encouraged to consider what they (collectively) have to offer the world of art and how best to articulate that in a manifesto and realize that in a few works of art.

So, you'll be writing something (a manifesto) that informs your making of something (some piece(s) of art), and then you'll write another thing (the artists' statement) that discusses the process behind your previous writing and making, and their significance.

On Thursday, you'll each be responsible for a 1-2 minute (no longer) presentation in which you use some existing work of art (it may be a poem, a film, a novel, a sculpture, etc. but it should not be your own work) to illustrate some 'aim of art' that will inform your group's Movement Manifesto.

For example, you consider the art that you find to be particularly compelling and find that there is a pattern. Maybe, like me, you find this next thing to be particularly meaningful.

the Scared is scared from Bianca Giaever on Vimeo.

Post that on your blog (you'll share at least a sliver of it on Thursday). Now consider what it is about that thing that makes it significant or compelling. 

• It might be a thematic thing--"Good art demonstrates how imaginative play and creative production help us meet the challenges of life." 
• OR it might be an aesthetic thing--"Good art utilizes foundational, primitive, even childlike aesthetics to represent complicated things as accessibly as possible." 
• OR it might relate to the creative process--"Good art relies upon the sharing of story and feeling between individuals, and the relationships that come out of those interactions."

Of course there are plural definitions of 'good art,' but you'll want to key in on something that you find particularly important. Then, on Thursday, share your piece of art, and then in a paragraph or so (max) share what you think is significant about this piece. (You can write this explanation out and post it on the blog with your art if you'd like, but it's not necessary. As long as you can briefly explain its significance to the class, that's what matters most.) 

Then, we'll have each student vote on the top 5 movements that they'd like to be a part of, we'll divide into groups and get crackin.'

History & Story

Remember that your Historical Stories should be properly formatted. So, if you haven't already found a resource, check this out.

Also, here's this clip of Cornel West clip from Examined Life. Let's consider it (again) in relation to History & Story.